The Dome of the Rock, Temple Mount

Jerusalem is one of the most important historical cities in the world, and beckons all who enter through its gates to fully experience the past and present of this great city. Every major Western religion views Jerusalem as a holy city, giving it an intense spirituality of unlike any other place on earth.

In this post, we focus on the most important site in Jerusalem for Muslims: the Temple Mount (or Haram es-Sharif — Noble Sanctuary — in Arabic). The Temple Mount sits high above the city and occupies a large space, which was once the home of Herod’s Temple (the original 7 courses of the wall that served as the foundation for Herod’s Temple can be seen on the western side of the structure and are known as the Western “Wailing” Wall).

There are three key sites on the Temple Mount:

Dome of the Rock

View of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

The Dome of the Rock was built in 691 CE by the conquering Islamic Umayyad caliph, Abd al-Malik, over the former site of the two Jewish Temples, which were built, in turn, over the rock on which Abraham had planned to kill his son Isaac at God’s command. Despite its definitively Islamic orientation, the structure is based almost entirely upon Christian (more specifically, Byzantine) architectural and decorative precedent, with its prominent dome (at 20.44m in diameter, it is nearly the exact size of the dome of the Holy Sepulchre) and elaborate, internal mosaics.  This structure is intended as a shrine, not a mosque (there is no direction indicated for prayer and no room for the faithful to pray), and was chiefly intended to be a symbolic place of pilgrimage. The construction of the dome symbolizes the victory of the new faith of Islam over those religions that came before and beckons (with its text inscribed in tiles on the exterior) the non-Muslims of the city to join the victorious faith.

El-Aqsa Mosque

The El-Aqsa Mosque was originally built in 709-715, but was entirely rebuilt in 1033 after fire and earthquakes destroyed the original structure.  The current structure conforms to a basilical plan, consisting of 7 aisles lined by columns. These aisles lead to a central dome made of silver-colored lead sheets that rises over the mihrab. El-Aqsa means “the furthermost sanctuary”, implying its far distance from Mecca.

Solomon’s Stables

These stables have nothing to do with King Solomon and are actually an underground support structure erected by Herod when he needed to raise the ground level to support his expanded platform for the Temple Mount. The “stables”, which are located on the south-east corner of the Haram, supposedly had four levels of arcading that raised the ground level from 695 to 738 meters above sea level. At one point in history (most likely during the Crusader period), the arcades might have been used to house horses, hence the name.

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