Temple Mount

About

The Temple Mount, in Hebrew Har haBayit and in Arabic al-Haram al-Sharif or simply al-Aqsa, rises above the Old City of Jerusalem and is among the most sacred places of three Abrahamic traditions. Long the site of two successive Israelite Temples, today it hosts the Islamic precinct dominated by the seventh-century Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Mount appears as a flat, walled plaza ringed by massive Herodian retaining walls, the most famous portion of which is the Western Wall venerated by Jews. The plaza is reached through eleven gates, ten reserved for Muslims and one for visitors of other faiths, and the courtyard is bounded on north and west by Mamluk arcades and four minarets.

For Jews the Mount is the holiest place on earth, site of Solomon's First Temple of 957 BCE and of the Second Temple completed in 516 BCE, enlarged by Herod and destroyed by Rome in 70 CE. Many Jews refrain from ascending the platform to avoid stepping unknowingly upon the location of the Holy of Holies, and Orthodox tradition expects the third Temple to rise here at the coming of the Mashiach.

For Muslims the Mount is the third holiest place in Islam after Mecca and Medina, sanctified by the Night Journey in which the Prophet Muhammad was carried from Mecca to al-Aqsa and ascended through the heavens. The Dome of the Rock, raised in 691–692 above the rock from which tradition holds that the Prophet rose, is among the oldest extant Islamic monuments.

History

Solomon's Temple is held by Jewish tradition to have stood here from the tenth century BCE until its destruction by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. The Second Temple was raised under Zerubbabel in 516 BCE and dramatically enlarged by Herod the Great in the first century BCE, before its destruction by Roman forces in 70 CE during the Jewish War. Following the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 637 the Umayyads built the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, defining the precinct as a Muslim sanctuary administered today by the Jordanian Islamic Waqf under arrangements established after 1967.

Significance

The Temple Mount is unsurpassed in religious significance, holiest place of Judaism and third holiest of Islam, and remembered by Christians as the courtyard where Jesus taught. The interweaving of the Jewish memory of the Temples with the living Muslim worship at al-Aqsa makes this single hill perhaps the most charged sacred precinct on earth.