Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif

Overview

Temple Mount is a walled compound in the Old City of Jerusalem held sacred by Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, three faiths whose ties to the site reach back thousands of years. On its raised platform stand the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, both central to Islam, and adjoining the platform's western side is the Western Wall, the holiest place of prayer in Judaism. The compound is a place of active worship and pilgrimage. At the same time, it is one of the most contested sites in the world and a long-standing focus of religious and political dispute. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Present

The site operates under a set of long-standing arrangements known as the Status Quo, which govern its religious use: an Islamic religious trust, the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, manages the Muslim holy places under a custodial role retained by Jordan, while Israel has controlled the site and its security since the 1967 war. The Al-Aqsa Mosque is an active mosque where large numbers of Muslims gather for Friday prayers, the main weekly act of communal worship in Islam, and Jewish worshippers gather at the Western Wall plaza below the western side of the compound. The site is affected by the wider decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict over territory and political control in the region.

Religious Significance

Judaism (from the 10th century BCE)

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism. According to Jewish tradition this is Mount Moriah, where God tested Abraham (the patriarch revered as a founding father of the Jewish people) by commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac, then stopping him before he could carry it out. Tradition also holds that Solomon, an early king of ancient Israel, later chose this spot for the Temple of ancient Judaism because of that sacred association. The Temple was the single central sanctuary of the faith, and the one place where its priestly worship was carried out. The Western Wall is the closest place Jews can reach to the spot where the vanished Temple once stood, and it became the enduring focus of Jewish prayer and of mourning for the Temple's loss.

Christianity (from the 1st century CE)

Christians venerate the site because, according to their tradition, Jesus, whom they hold to be the Son of God, taught and preached within the Temple courts in 1st-century Jerusalem.

Islam (from the 7th century CE)

The Temple Mount is the third holiest site in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was carried here from Mecca in a journey known as the Night Journey, and that from the rock now enshrined beneath the Dome of the Rock he ascended through the heavens into the presence of God. The Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque stand on the compound and remain places of Muslim worship.

History & Structure

The First Temple stood from the 10th century BCE until the Babylonian empire destroyed it, along with Jerusalem, in 586 BCE. A second Temple was later built on the same spot and completed in 515 BCE; these two successive buildings are known as the First and Second Temples. Herod the Great, the Roman-appointed king of Judea, greatly enlarged the Second Temple and the platform around it from about 19 BCE. Roman forces destroyed the Temple in 70 CE, and none has stood on the site since.

The Dome of the Rock, the gold-domed shrine that dominates the compound, was completed in 691 CE under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. The Al-Aqsa Mosque, at the southern end of the platform, was first completed in the early 8th century CE and has been rebuilt several times after earthquakes. The Western Wall, at the western edge of the platform, is a surviving section of the retaining wall Herod built to support it. The Old City of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount compound, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Resources

• Related: Temple Mount (Encyclopædia Britannica)
• UNESCO: Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls
• Book: Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore (2011)