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Al-Aqsa Mosque

The silver-domed mosque on the southern edge of the Temple Mount, completed around 705 CE, roughly seventy years after Muhammad died in Medina. Islam honours the site through the Night Journey (Quran 17:1), in which Muhammad is carried to “the farthest mosque” (al-masjid al-aqsa) and ascends to heaven, though the verse never names Jerusalem and no mosque yet stood there in his lifetime, so the identification came later. The modern cry that “Al-Aqsa is in danger” has been used since the 1920s, from the Grand Mufti onward, to incite violence with the false claim that Israel plans to destroy it. Israel has preserved the site and left it under Islamic administration since 1967.

Etymology and scope

Section titled “Etymology and scope”

Al-masjid al-aqsa is Arabic for “the farthest mosque,” a name that in the Quran refers to a place of vision, not a building with a street address. The term is used two ways today, and conflating them fuels much of the confusion. Narrowly, “Al-Aqsa Mosque” names the large silver-domed prayer hall (the Qibli Mosque) at the southern end of the compound. Broadly, “Al-Aqsa” is used for the entire 35-acre platform, called the Haram al-Sharif by Muslims and the Temple Mount by Jews, which also holds the golden Dome of the Rock, built in 691 CE as a shrine over the rock tied to Abraham’s binding of Isaac and to the two Jewish Temples. Sifting of Temple Mount debris has recovered First and Second Temple period artifacts, confirming Jewish presence on the mount centuries before any Islamic structure existed there.

History of the site

Section titled “History of the site”

The Umayyad caliphs built the first mosque on the platform under Caliph Abd al-Malik and his son al-Walid I, completing it around 705 CE. Earthquakes destroyed and reshaped the building repeatedly, most severely in 1033, when the Fatimids rebuilt it largely to its present footprint. Jerusalem’s holy sites, including the mosque, operated for centuries under a “status quo” understanding among religious communities, formalized under Ottoman rule and still cited today to describe who may pray where. Jordan occupied the Old City and the Temple Mount from 1948 to 1967, during which it barred Jews from the site entirely and destroyed dozens of synagogues in the Jewish Quarter. When Israel captured the Old City in the Six-Day War of June 1967, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan handed administrative control of the mount back to the Islamic Waqf (religious endowment authority), a decision Israel has maintained for over half a century even as it holds sovereign security control of the site. That arrangement is what the status quo at Jerusalem’s holy places refers to in practice today.

The propaganda cycle

Section titled “The propaganda cycle”

“Al-Aqsa is in danger” is not a description, it is a slogan with a specific pedigree. Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini spread the rumor in 1928 and 1929 that Jews intended to seize the mosque, which helped trigger nationwide riots including the 1929 Hebron massacre of 67 Jews. The same claim, updated but structurally identical, has recurred before nearly every major round of violence since: the 1996 Western Wall tunnel riots, the September 2000 outbreak that took the name al-Aqsa Intifada after Ariel Sharon’s visit to the mount, and repeated flashpoints in 2021 and after. In every case, the underlying claim, that Israel is plotting to destroy or seize the mosque, has proven false; Israel has not altered Waqf administration of the site since 1967, and Jewish visitors remain barred from praying there under the very status quo Israel enforces. The accurate usage of the term describes a real, specific building with a documented construction date and religious history; the propagandized usage treats it as a permanent alarm bell disconnected from any actual Israeli action, useful for mobilizing crowds regardless of the facts on the ground.

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Sources

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