Al-Aqsa Mosque

The Aqsa Mosque, also known as the Qibli Mosque, is the main congregational mosque or prayer hall in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem. In some sources the building is also named al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, but this name primarily applies to the wider compound in which the building sits, which is itself also known as 'al-Aqsa Mosque', 'al-Aqsa' or 'Haram al-Sharif'. According to Islamic tradition, a small prayer hall (musalla), what would later become the al-Aqsa Mosque, was built by Umar (r.634–644), the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate. In the reign of Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya I (r.661–680), a quadrangular mosque with capacity for 3,000 worshipers is recorded on the compound. The current mosque, located on the south wall of the compound, was originally built by the fifth Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (r.685–705) or his successor al-Walid I (r.705–715) (or both) as a congregational mosque on the same axis as the Dome of the Rock, a commemorative Islamic monument. After being destroyed in an earthquake in 746, the mosque was rebuilt in 758 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur. It was further expanded upon in 780 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi, after which it consisted of fifteen aisles and a central dome. It was destroyed again during an earthquake in 1033. The mosque was rebuilt by the Fatimid caliph al-Zahir (r.1021–1036), who reduced it to seven aisles but adorned its interior with an elaborate central archway covered in vegetal mosaics; the current structure preserves the 11th-century outline. During the periodic renovations, the ruling Islamic dynasties constructed additions to the mosque and its precincts, such as its dome, façade, minarets, and minbar and interior structure. Upon its capture by the Crusaders in 1099, the mosque was used as a palace; it was also the headquarters of the religious order of the Knights Templar. After the area was conquered by Saladin in 1187, the structure's function as a mosque was restored. More renovations, repairs, and expansion projects were undertaken in later centuries by the Ayyubids, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the Supreme Muslim Council of British Palestine, and during the Jordanian rule of the West Bank. Since the beginning of the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the mosque has remained under the independent administration of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf.

The English term "Al-Aqsa Mosque" is the translation of two distinct Arabic terms: al-Masjid al-Aqṣā and Jāmi al-Aqṣā. The former name (al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, "the furthest mosque") was first used in the Quran's Surah 17, where it referred to the whole compound of Al Aqsa, or Haram al-Sharif – there were no buildings on the site at the time the Quran was written. The latter name (Jāmi al-Aqṣā) is used for the subject of this article – the silver-domed congregational mosque building. Arabic and Persian writers such as 10th-century geographer al-Muqaddasi, 11th-century scholar Nasir Khusraw, 12th-century geographer al-Idrisi and 15th-century Islamic scholar Mujir al-Din, as well as 19th-century American and British Orientalists Edward Robinson, Guy Le Strange and Edward Henry Palmer explained that the term Masjid al-Aqsa refers to the entire esplanade plaza also known as the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif ('Noble Sanctuary') – i.e. the entire area including the Dome of the Rock, the fountains, the gates, and the four minarets – because none of these buildings existed at the time the Quran was written. Al-Muqaddasi referred to the southern building (the subject of this article) as Al Mughattâ ("the covered-part") and Nasir Khusraw referred to it with the Persian word Pushish (also the "covered part", exactly as "Al Mughatta") or the Maqsurah (a part-for-the-whole synecdoche). The building is also referred to

Mosque data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).