BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW OF BAYT AL-MAQDIS (AL-AQSA)

Al-Aqsa Mosque, also referred as Bayt al-Muqaddas and meaning “the Farthest Mosque”, is the third holiest religious site of Islam. It is situated at the old city of Jerusalem. The place in and around the silver domed mosque and the Dome of the Rock is called al-Haram ash-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) and the Temple Mount. It is the holiest site for the Jews as they believe the Temple stood there before being demolished by the Romans in about 70 CE. Muslims, on the other hand, believe that Muhammad was taken to al-Aqsa from the Sacred Mosque in Mecca during the Night Journey, and He led the prayers here for seventeen months after which He set out for the Kaaba as per God’s instructions.

The mosque was initially a tiny prayer house got constructed by the Rashidin caliph Umar, and was re-built and widened by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik and his son al-Walid in 705 CE. The mosque was destroyed completely by the earthquake in 746, and re-built in 754 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur. The mosque was once again re-built by al-Mansur’s successor al-Mahdi in 780. The al-Aqsa Mosque was again destroyed in a devastating earthquake in 1033, and had to be re-constructed. It was in 1035 that the Fatimid caliph Ali az-Zahir re-built the structure all over again, and that mosque exists there to these days. When Jerusalem was captured in 1099 by the Crusaders, they used the mosque as a palace. However, with the mosque re-captured by Saladin in 1187, the sanctity of the mosque was restored. There have been numerous renovations and repairs carried out since then by various rulers and caliphs. Presently, most of the Old City is under Israeli occupation, but the mosque has remained under the control of the Islamic Waqf led by Jordan and Palestine. There have been constant fights between the Israeli forces and Palestinian troops over the Mosque where Israelis want to construct the Third Temple.

The rectangle Mosque and its precincts cover an area of 144000 square meters, while the mosque is built on an area of only 35000 square meters. It can accommodate around 5000 devotees at a time as it measures 272 feet in length, and 184 feet in width. While the Dome of the Rock represents classical Byzantine architecture, the al-Aqsa Mosque characterizes early Islamic architecture. Nothing remains of the dome originally built by Abd al-Malik. The present dome has been constructed by az-Zahir. However, it has undergone several renovations starting from 1969 to 1983. It has four minarets on the western, southern, and the northern sides. These minarets have been constructed during the period spanning several centuries starting from 1278 when the first minaret was built on the southwestern corner. The second minaret was built in 1297-98, the third in 1329, and the last one in 1367. There is no minaret in the eastern side of the Mosque. However, King Abdullah II of Jordan has expressed his desire in 2006 to build a minaret, the fifth and the tallest in Jerusalem, in the eastern side of the Mosque.

Al-Aqsa Mosque