140-626: The New Gate ( Arabic : باب الجديد Bāb ij-Jdïd ) ( Hebrew : השער החדש HaSha'ar HeChadash ) is the newest of the gates of the Old City of Jerusalem . It was built in 1889 by the Ottomans under the directorship of the French consul and Franciscan brotherhood monkship order to provide direct access between the Christian Quarter and the new neighborhoods then going up outside the walls. The arched gate
280-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
420-680: A company of the Arab Legion 's 6th battalion during Operation Kedem . This occurred not because of Arab offensive action, which was restrained by orders of John Bagot Glubb , but because the Jewish demolition charge intended for the iron gate was detonated by a stray artillery shell that set the Arab wooden barricade in front of the New Gate on fire, halting the Stern Gang, Hagana and Irgun troops' advance just prior to
560-496: A congregational and a commemorative building", the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, respectively. Guy le Strange claims that Abd al-Malik used materials from the destroyed Church of Our Lady to build the mosque and points to possible evidence that substructures on the southeast corners of the mosque are remains of the church. The earliest source indicating al-Walid's work on the mosque
700-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
840-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
980-658: A dilapidated state. Between 1922 and 1924, the Dome of the Rock and Qibli Mosque were both restored by the Supreme Muslim Council , under Amin al-Husayni (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ), who commissioned Turkish architect Ahmet Kemalettin Bey to restore al-Aqsa Mosque and the monuments in its precincts. The council also commissioned British architects, Egyptian engineering experts and local officials to contribute to and oversee
1120-558: A gate preexisting at this point in the wall before the city was occupied by the Crusaders. There is a suggestion that the Crusaders did maintain a small postern gate, named after the Order of St. Lazarus , just east of the Ottoman construction, for the use of troops stationed at Tancred's Tower (Goliath's Tower). Uncovered during drainage and sewage works in the area, it may have also been used by
1260-436: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
1400-541: A magnificent dome. Al-Muqaddasi further noted that the mosque consisted of fifteen aisles aligned perpendicularly to the qibla and possessed an elaborately decorated porch with the names of the Abbasid caliphs inscribed on its gates. According to Hamilton, al-Muqaddasi's description of the Abbasid-era mosque is corroborated by his archaeological findings in 1938–1942, which showed the Abbasid construction retained some parts of
1540-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
SECTION 10
#17328490636771680-577: A mosaic from an Umayyad palace excavated adjacent to the Temple Mount's southern wall. By comparing the photographs to Hamilton's excavation report, Di Cesare determined that they belong to the second phase of mosque construction in the Umayyad period. Moreover, the mosaic designs were common in Islamic, Jewish and Christian buildings from the 2nd to the 8th century. Di Cesare suggested that Hamilton didn't include
1820-611: A myriad of political, dynastic and religious reasons, built on local and Quranic traditions articulating the site's holiness, a process in which textual and architectural narratives reinforced one another. The shrine became known as the Dome of the Rock ( قبة الصخرة , Qubbat as-Sakhra ). (The dome itself was covered in gold in 1920.) In 715 the Umayyads, led by the Caliph al-Walid I , built al-Aqsa Mosque ( المسجد الأقصى , al-Masjid al-'Aqṣā , lit. "Furthest Mosque"), corresponding to
1960-567: A rebellion against him by rival princes, and tore down the city's walls. In 746, the al-Aqsa Mosque was ruined in an earthquake. Four years later, the Umayyads were toppled and replaced by the Iraq-based Abbasid Caliphate . The Abbasids generally exhibited little interest in Jerusalem, though the historian Shelomo Dov Goitein notes they "paid special tribute" to the city during the early part of their rule, and Grabar asserts that
2100-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
2240-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
2380-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
2520-498: A slightly raised platform accessed by eight staircases, each of which is topped by a free-standing arcade known in Arabic as the qanatir or mawazin . The arcades were erected in different periods from the 10th to 15th centuries. The Dome of the Rock's structure is basically octagonal. It is capped at its centre by a dome, approximately 20 m (66 ft) in diameter, mounted on an elevated circular drum standing on 16 supports (4 tiers and 12 columns). Surrounding this circle
2660-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
2800-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
2940-608: A whole. This included building the Fountain of Qasim Pasha (1527), restoring the Pool of Raranj , and building three free-standing domes—the most notable being the Dome of the Prophet built in 1538. All construction was ordered by the Ottoman governors of Jerusalem and not the sultans themselves. The sultans did make additions to existing minarets, however. In 1816, the mosque was restored by Governor Sulayman Pasha al-Adil after having been in
SECTION 20
#17328490636773080-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
3220-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
3360-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
3500-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
3640-404: Is an octagonal arcade of 24 piers and columns. The octagonal arcade and the inner circular drum create an inner ambulatorium that encircles the holy rock. The outer walls are also octagonal. They each measure approximately 18 m (60 ft) wide and 11 m (36 ft) high. The outer and inner octagon create a second, outer ambulatorium surrounding the inner one. Both the circular drum and
3780-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
3920-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
4060-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
4200-531: Is decorated with crenelated stonework. The New Gate was built at the highest point of the present wall, at 790 metres (2,590 ft) above sea level. The New Gate was the name used by the Ottoman administration. It was also known as Bab es Sultan Abd ul Hamid by the Arab workforce for the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II who allowed the building. It should not be confused with the New Gate of
4340-428: Is not known. The art historian Oleg Grabar deems it likely that it was close to the present prayer hall, while the historian Yildirim Yavuz asserts it stood at the present site of the Dome of Rock. The architectural historian K. A. C. Creswell notes that Arculf's attestation lends credibility to claims by some Islamic traditions and medieval Christian chronicles, which he otherwise deems legendary or unreliable, that
New Gate - Misplaced Pages Continue
4480-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
4620-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
4760-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
4900-611: Is the Aphrodito Papryi. These contain the letters between al-Walid's governor of Egypt in December 708–June 711 and a government official in Upper Egypt which discuss the dispatch of Egyptian laborers and craftsmen to help build the al-Aqsa Mosque, referred to as the "Mosque of Jerusalem". The referenced workers spent between six months and a year on the construction. Several 10th and 13th-century historians credit al-Walid for founding
5040-647: Is the compound of Islamic religious buildings that sit atop the Temple Mount , also known as the Haram al-Sharif , in the Old City of Jerusalem , including the Dome of the Rock , many mosques and prayer halls, madrasas , zawiyas , khalwas and other domes and religious structures, as well as the four encircling minarets . It is considered the third holiest site in Islam . The compound's main congregational mosque or prayer hall
5180-450: Is the translation of both al-Masjid al-Aqṣā ( ٱلْمَسْجِد ٱلْأَقْصَىٰ ) and Jāmiʿ al-Aqṣā ( جَامِع ٱلْأَقْصَىٰ ), which have distinct Islamic meanings in Arabic . The former ( al-Masjid al-Aqṣā ) refers to the Quran 's Surah 17 – "the farthest mosque" – traditionally refers to the entirety of the Temple Mount compound, while the latter name ( Jāmiʿ al-Aqṣā ) is used specifically for
5320-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
5460-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
5600-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
5740-500: Is variously known as Al-Aqsa Mosque , Qibli Mosque or al-Jāmiʿ al-Aqṣā , while in some sources it is also known as al-Masjid al-Aqṣā ; the wider compound is sometimes known as Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in order to avoid confusion. During the rule of the Rashidun caliph Umar ( r. 634–644 ) or the Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya I ( r. 661–680 ), a small prayer house on
New Gate - Misplaced Pages Continue
5880-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
6020-509: The Council of Nablus in January 1120. During this period, the building underwent some structural changes, including the expansion of its northern porch, and the addition of an apse and a dividing wall. A new cloister and church were also built at the site, along with various other structures. The Templars constructed vaulted western and eastern annexes to the building; the western currently serves as
6160-495: The Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca . He found the structures on the Haram in ruins from the 746 earthquake, including the al-Aqsa Mosque. According to the tradition cited by Mujir al-Din, the caliph was beseeched by the city's Muslim residents to fund the buildings' restoration. In response, he had the gold and silver plaques covering the mosque's doors converted into dinars and dirhams to finance
6300-826: The Latin Patriarchate and the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land , which have refused to sell it to the Israeli government. It required many years to lease land from the Patriarchate between the New Gate and the Damascus Gate for a park. In the current urban layout of Jerusalem the New Gate provides the quickest route from the Old City to West Jerusalem, including via Egged No.1 & 2 buses, via its HaSha'ar HaKhadash (New Gate) Road. There are several notable buildings near
6440-660: The Ottoman period and again in the modern period, notably with the addition of the gold-plated roof, in 1959–61 and again in 1993. The octagonal plan of the structure may have been influenced by the Byzantine -era Church of the Seat of Mary (also known as Kathisma in Greek and al-Qadismu in Arabic), which was built between 451 and 458 on the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem . The dome sits on
6580-669: The Rashidun Caliphate under Umar , the father-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad , besieged and captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire. There are no contemporary records, but many traditions, about the origin of the main Islamic buildings on the Temple Mount . A popular account from later centuries is that Umar was led to the place reluctantly by the Christian patriarch Sophronius . He found it covered with rubbish, but
6720-677: The Second Coming of Jesus . In response to the incident, a summit of Islamic countries was held in Rabat that same year, hosted by Faisal of Saudi Arabia , the then king of Saudi Arabia . The al-Aqsa fire is regarded as one of the catalysts for the formation of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC, now the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ) in 1972. Following the fire, the dome
6860-628: The Second Intifada , but also referred to as the al-Aqsa Intifada after the incident. On 5 November 2014, Israeli police entered the main prayer hall itself for the first time since capturing Jerusalem in 1967, according to Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, director of the Islamic Waqf. Previous media reports of 'storming Al-Aqsa' referred to the whole compound rather than the Qibli Mosque prayer hall itself. The entire precinct or courtyard ( sahn ) of
7000-404: The Second Temple complex mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah ( Jer 26:10; 36:10 ) that served as entrance to the Great Sanhedrin 's Hall of Hewn Stones , and was previously called the Benjamin Gate. During the 3rd and 4th centuries the northern wall was rebuilt and improved by the Byzantines leaving no trace or record of a gate in this sector of the fortifications. There is no information about
7140-467: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
SECTION 50
#17328490636777280-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
7420-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
7560-852: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Al-Aqsa Al-Aqsa ( / æ l ˈ æ k s ə / ; Arabic : الأَقْصَى , romanized : Al-Aqṣā ) or al-Masjid al-Aqṣā ( Arabic : المسجد الأقصى )
7700-568: The "triumphal arch" by Grabar or the " maqsura " by Pruitt. Mosaic designs were rare in Islamic architecture in the post-Umayyad era and al-Zahir's mosaics were a revival of this Umayyad architectural practice , including Abd al-Malik's mosaics in the Dome of the Rock, but on a larger scale. The drum mosaic depicts a luxurious garden inspired by the Umayyad or Classical style. The four pendentives are gold and characterized by indented roundels with alternating gold and silver planes and patterns of peacock's eyes, eight-pointed stars, and palm fronds. On
7840-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
7980-462: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
8120-603: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
8260-425: The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound can host more than 400,000 worshippers, making it one of the largest mosques in the world . The compound comprises numerous buildings, including the Dome of the Rock , Qibli Mosque , four encircling minarets , various other domed shrines and the entry gates . The Dome of the Rock is the gold-domed Islamic shrine at the center of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Its initial construction
8400-418: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter. Contrary to popular belief, Kaiser Wilhelm II during his visit to Jerusalem entered not through the New Gate, but through the "Hole in the Wall", made so that he wouldn't have to dismount his carriage to enter the city. From the beginning of the First World War the headquarters of Roshen Bey, the most senior Ottoman military officer in the Jerusalem area,
8540-413: The Dome of the Rock mosques. The first known eyewitness testimony is that of the pilgrim Arculf who visited about 670. According to Arculf's account as recorded by Adomnán , he saw a rectangular wooden house of prayer built over some ruins, large enough to hold 3,000 people. In 691, an octagonal Islamic building topped by a dome was built by the Caliph Abd al-Malik around the Foundation Stone , for
SECTION 60
#17328490636778680-463: The Dome of the Rock, which they named Templum Domini (Temple of God). While the Dome of the Rock was turned into a Christian church under the care of the Augustinians , the Qibli mosque was used as a royal palace and also as a stable for horses. In 1119, the Crusader king accommodated the headquarters of the Knights Templar next to his palace within the building. This was probably by Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem at
8820-435: The Egypt-based Fatimid Caliphate conquered Palestine from the Ikhshidids , nominal allegiants of the Abbasids. Unlike the Abbasids and the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem, who were Sunnis , the Fatimids followed Shia Islam in its Isma'ili form. In 1033, another earthquake severely damaged the mosque. The Fatimid caliph al-Zahir ( r. 1021–1036 ) had the mosque reconstructed between 1034 and 1036, though work
8960-407: The Haram, including the al-Aqsa Mosque, amid the political instability in the capital Cairo , rebellions by Bedouin tribes, especially the Jarrahids of Palestine, and plagues, indicate the caliph's "commitment to Jerusalem", in Pruitt's words. Although the city had experienced decreases in its population in the preceding decades, the Fatimids attempted to build up the magnificence and symbolism of
9100-436: The Haram. He also contributed a bronze portal to the mosque's interior, and the geographer Nasir Khusraw noted during his 1047 visit that al-Ma'mun's name was inscribed on it. Abd Allah ibn Tahir , the Abbasid governor of the eastern province of Khurasan ( r. 828–844 ), is credited by al-Muqaddasi for building a colonnade on marble pillars in front of the fifteen doors on the mosque's front (north) side. In 970,
9240-495: The Islamic belief of Muhammad's miraculous nocturnal journey as recounted in the Quran and hadith . The term "Noble Sanctuary" or "Haram al-Sharif", as it was called later by the Mamluks and Ottomans , refers to the whole area that surrounds that Rock. A mostly wooden, rectangular prayer hall on the Temple Mount site with a capacity for 3,000 worshippers is attested by the Gallic monk Arculf during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in c. 679–682 . Its precise location
9380-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
9520-408: The Muslim armies. The earlier Crusader gate had "...a roundabout entrance, dim approaches, and a tower that protruded from the line of fortifications." By contrast the earlier gates as well as the Ottoman gate are built within the city, and aligned with the facade of the wall. The older gates were probably sealed by the external wall built in the 1530s by Suleyman the Magnificent. However, another gate
9660-634: The New Gate on Ha-Tsanchanim Road ( Paratroopers Road), as is the St. Louis Hospital. 31°46′45.5″N 35°13′34.6″E / 31.779306°N 35.226278°E / 31.779306; 35.226278 Gates 1. Jaffa 2. Zion 3. Dung 4. Golden 5. Lions 6. Herod 7. Damascus 8. New ( Double, Single, Tanners ' ) Al-Mawazin Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
9800-416: The New Gate, both inside the Old City behind the gate, and outside across the road. Inside the Old City are the Collège de La Salle/Collège des Frères (for boys), the Greek Orthodox St. Basil Monastery, and the Catholic Monastery of Saint Saviour . Under the Collège are the remains of Tancred's Tower (Goliath's Castle). Notre-Dame de France is a Catholic monastery and guesthouse located across from
9940-532: The Old City of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War of June 1967, though control over access to the site passed to Israel. Jordan undertook two renovations of the Dome of the Rock, replacing the leaking, wooden inner dome with an aluminum dome in 1952, and, when the new dome leaked, carrying out a second restoration between 1959 and 1964. On 21 August 1969, a fire was started by a visitor from Australia named Denis Michael Rohan , an evangelical Christian who hoped that by burning down al-Aqsa Mosque he would hasten
10080-506: The Persian word Pushish (also the "covered part," exactly as "Al Mughatta") or the Maqsurah (a part-for-the-whole synecdoche ). During the period of Mamluk (1250–1517) and Ottoman rule (1517–1917), the wider compound began to also be popularly known as the Haram al-Sharif, or al-Ḥaram ash-Sharīf (Arabic: اَلْـحَـرَم الـشَّـرِيْـف ), which translates as the "Noble Sanctuary". It mirrors
10220-672: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
10360-553: The Rock . Etzion believed that blowing up the two mosques would cause a spiritual awakening in Israel, and would solve all the problems of the Jewish people. They also hoped the Third Temple would be built on the location of the mosque. In 1990, the Waqf began construction of a series of outdoor minbar (pulpits) to create open-air prayer areas for use on popular holy days. A monument to
10500-561: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
10640-561: The Temple Mount from the west by constructing huge substructures, on which they then built on a large scale. The Mamluk-period substructures and over-ground buildings are thus covering much of the Herodian western wall of the Temple Mount. After the Ottomans assumed power in 1517, they did not undertake any major renovations or repairs to the mosque itself, but they did to the Noble Sanctuary as
10780-617: The West Bank , the mosque has remained under the independent administration of the Jerusalem Waqf . Al-Aqsa holds high geopolitical significance due to its location atop the Temple Mount , in close proximity to other historical and holy sites in Judaism , Christianity and Islam , and has been a primary flashpoint in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict . The English term "Al-Aqsa Mosque"
10920-619: The afternoon of Friday, 23 August 1929, an unprovoked attack was staged by the Arabs from the Old City between the New and Damascus gates that resulted in the killing of several Jews after the Arabs were inflamed by the sermons during the noon prayers at Haram esh Sherif . From 1946 and until Independence the British Administration created a security zone between the New Gate and Jaffa Road, called euphemistically Bevingrad for Ernest Bevin , due to
11060-403: The arch are large depictions of vegetation emanating from small vases. Atop the mihrab arch is a lengthy inscription in gold directly linking the al-Aqsa Mosque with Muhammad's Night Journey (the isra and mi'raj ) from the " masjid al-haram " to the " masjid al-aqsa ". It marked the first instance of this Quranic verse being inscribed in Jerusalem, leading Grabar to hypothesize that it
11200-573: The area was conquered by Saladin ( r. 1174–1193 ) 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 annexation of the West Bank . Since the beginning of the ongoing Israeli occupation of
11340-595: The ceasefire announcement. Subsequently the Jordanian occupation administration had the gate sealed off. The gate was reopened by the Israeli Army in 1967 and the iron gate removed following the capture of East Jerusalem during the Jordanian campaign . The gate itself is maintained under the preservation orders, supervised by the Israel Antiquities Authority . The land around the New Gate is largely owned by
11480-419: The compound was erected near the mosque's site. The present-day 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,
11620-567: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
11760-532: The current structure preserves the 11th-century outline. During the periodic renovations undertaken, 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
11900-415: The early Abbasids' work on the mosque suggests "a major attempt to assert Abbasid sponsorship of holy places". Nevertheless, in contrast to the Umayyad period, maintenance of the al-Aqsa Mosque during Abbasid rule often came at the initiative of the local Muslim community, rather than from the caliph. The second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur ( r. 754–775 ), visited Jerusalem in 758, on his return from
12040-577: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
12180-438: 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
12320-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
12460-399: The exterior walls contain many windows. The interior of the dome is lavishly decorated with mosaic , faience and marble , much of which was added several centuries after its completion. It also contains Qur'anic inscriptions. They vary from today's standard text (mainly changes from the first to the third person) and are mixed with pious inscriptions not in the Quran. The decoration of
12600-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
12740-548: The following description: This mosque is even more beautiful than that of Damascus ... the edifice [after al-Mahdi's reconstruction] rose firmer and more substantial than ever it had been in former times. The more ancient portion remained, even like a beauty spot, in the midst of the new ... the Aqsa mosque has twenty-six doors ... The centre of the Main-building is covered by a mighty roof, high pitched and gable -wise, over which rises
12880-453: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
13020-579: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
13160-608: The inhabitants revolted against him, and were slaughtered by Atsiz, including those who had taken shelter in the al-Aqsa Mosque. He was killed by the Turkish Seljuks in 1078, establishing Seljuk rule over the city, which lasted until the Fatimids regained control in 1098. Jerusalem was captured by the Crusaders in 1099, during the First Crusade . They named the mosque Templum Solomonis ( Solomon's Temple ), distinguishing it from
13300-500: The interior arches that had been covered with plasterwork . The arches were decorated with gold and green-tinted gypsum and their timber tie beams were replaced with brass . A quarter of the stained glass windows also were carefully renewed so as to preserve their original Abbasid and Fatimid designs. Severe damage was caused by the 1837 and 1927 earthquakes, but the mosque was repaired in 1938 and 1942. Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini donated Carrara marble columns in
13440-611: The knights of the Lepers Order also quartered there. Early records of the Crusades suggest the wall was breached after the Crusader occupation on the orders of Tancred of Hauteville , with the tower subsequently named after him. The breach may have been later converted into a gate. The Crusader gate may have been sealed up following Saladin's capture of Jerusalem in 1187 because it did not conform to architectural style of fortifications used by
13580-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
13720-400: The late 30s. An earthquake in 1927 and a small tremor in the summer of 1937 eventually brought down the roof of the Aqsa mosque, prompting the reconstruction of the upper part of the north wall of the mosque and the internal refacing of the whole; the partial reconstruction of the jambs and lintels of the central doors; the refacing of the front of five bays of the porch; and the demolition of
13860-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
14000-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
14140-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
14280-573: The mosaics in his book because they were destroyed to explore beneath them. Since 1948, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound has been under the custodianship of the Hashemite rulers of Jordan , administered through the Jerusalem Waqf , the current version of which was instituted by Jordan after its conquest and occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, during the 1948 war. The Jerusalem Waqf remained under Jordanian control after Israel occupied
14420-629: The mosque was rebuilt in 758 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur ( r. 754–775 ). It was further expanded upon in 780 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi ( r. 775–785 ), after which it consisted of fifteen aisles and a central dome. However, it was again destroyed during the 1033 Jordan Rift Valley earthquake . 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;
14560-499: The mosque with three gates in 1218. Further building work was carried out under the Mamluks. In 1345, the Mamluks under al-Kamil Shaban added two naves and two gates to the mosque's eastern side. There are several Mamluk buildings on and around the Haram esplanade, such as the late 15th-century al-Ashrafiyya Madrasa and Sabil (fountain) of Qaytbay . The Mamluks also raised the level of Jerusalem's Central or Tyropoean Valley bordering
14700-719: The mosque's walls with mosaics. Grabar notes that the Umayyad-era mosque was adorned with mosaics, marble, and "remarkable crafted and painted woodwork". The latter are preserved partly in the Palestine Archaeological Museum and partly in the Islamic Museum . Estimates of the size of the Umayyad-built mosque by architectural historians range from 112 by 39 meters (367 ft × 128 ft) to 114.6 by 69.2 meters (376 ft × 227 ft). The building
14840-472: The mosque, and the Haram in general, for their own religious and political reasons. The present-day mosque largely retains al-Zahir's plan. Fatimid investment in Jerusalem ground to a halt toward the end of the 11th century as their rule became further destabilized. In 1071, a Turkish mercenary, Atsiz , was invited by the city's Fatimid governor to rein in the Bedouin, but he turned on the Fatimids, besieging and capturing Jerusalem that year. A few years later,
14980-420: The mosque, though the historian Amikam Elad doubts their reliability on the matter. In 713–714, a series of earthquakes ravaged Jerusalem, destroying the eastern section of the mosque, which was subsequently rebuilt by al-Walid's order. He had gold from the Dome of the Rock melted to use as money to finance the repairs and renovations. He is credited by the early 15th-century historian al-Qalqashandi for covering
15120-768: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
15260-417: The older structure and had a broad central aisle topped by a dome. The mosque described by al-Muqaddasi opened to the north, toward the Dome of the Rock, and, unusually according to Grabar, to the east. Other than al-Mansur and al-Mahdi, no other Abbasid caliphs visited Jerusalem or commissioned work on the al-Aqsa Mosque, though Caliph al-Ma'mun ( r. 813–833 ) ordered significant work elsewhere on
15400-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
15540-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
15680-478: The project and that al-Walid finished or expanded it. Abd al-Malik inaugurated great architectural works on the Temple Mount, including construction of the Dome of the Rock in c. 691 . A common Islamic tradition holds that Abd al-Malik simultaneously commissioned the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. As both were intentionally built on the same axis, Grabar comments that the two structures form "part of an architecturally thought-out ensemble comprising
15820-488: The reconstruction. A second earthquake damaged most of al-Mansur's repairs, except for the southern portion near the mihrab (prayer niche indicating the qibla ). In 780, his successor, al-Mahdi , ordered its reconstruction, mandating that his provincial governors and other commanders each contribute the cost of a colonnade . Al-Mahdi's renovation is the first known to have written records describing it. The Jerusalemite geographer al-Muqaddasi , writing in 985, provided
15960-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
16100-461: The repairs and additions which were carried out in 1924–25 by Kemalettin. The renovations included reinforcing the mosque's ancient Umayyad foundations, rectifying the interior columns, replacing the beams, erecting a scaffolding , conserving the arches and drum of the main dome's interior, rebuilding the southern wall, and replacing timber in the central nave with a slab of concrete. The renovations also revealed Fatimid-era mosaics and inscriptions on
16240-420: The sacred Rock was found with the help of a converted Jew, Ka'b al-Ahbar . Al-Ahbar advised Umar to build a mosque to the north of the rock, so that worshippers would face both the rock and Mecca, but instead Umar chose to build it to the south of the rock. It became known as al-Aqsa Mosque. According to Muslim sources, Jews participated in the construction of the haram, laying the groundwork for both al-Aqsa and
16380-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
16520-461: The second Rashidun caliph , Umar ( r. 634–644 ), ordered the construction of a primitive mosque on the Temple Mount. However, Arculf visited Palestine during the reign of Caliph Mu'awiya I ( r. 661–680 ), founder of the Syria -based Umayyad Caliphate. Mu'awiya had been governor of Syria, including Palestine , for about twenty years before becoming caliph and his accession ceremony
16660-428: 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
16800-509: The site being used a synagogue for Jewish prayers. A spate over the use of the Golden Gate (Bab adh-Dhahabi) gatehouse as a mosque has followed in 2019. On 28 September 2000, then-opposition leader of Israel Ariel Sharon visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound along with 1,000 armed guards. The visit was provocative and helped spark the five-year uprising by the Palestinians commonly known as
16940-503: The site, returning it to its role as a mosque in time for Friday prayers within a week of his capture of the city. The ivory -set Minbar of the al-Aqsa Mosque , commissioned earlier by the Zengid sultan Nur al-Din but only completed after his death, was also added to the mosque in November 1187 by Saladin. The Ayyubid sultan of Damascus, Al-Mu'azzam Isa , also built the northern porch of
17080-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
17220-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
17360-731: The terminology of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca ; This term elevated the compound to the status of Haram , which had previously only been reserved for the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and the Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina . Other Islamic figures disputed the haram status of the site. Usage of the name Haram al-Sharif by local Palestinians has waned in recent decades, in favor of the traditional name of Al-Aqsa Mosque. In 637,
17500-457: The terrorist activity from both sides. On November 15, 1945 the Stern Gang attempted to demolish part of the wall next to the New Gate, using a massive device that required ten men to transport and emplace; however it failed to function. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war , David Shaltiel 's Etzioni Brigade ( Hagana ) failed to capture East Jerusalem from the local Arab defenders reinforced by
17640-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
17780-447: The vaulted buildings that formerly adjoined the east side of the mosque. During his excavations in the 1930s, Robert Hamilton uncovered portions of a multicolor mosaic floor with geometric patterns, but did not publish them. The date of the mosaic is disputed: Zachi Dvira considers that they are from the pre-Islamic Byzantine period, while Baruch, Reich and Sandhaus favor a much later Umayyad origin on account of their similarity to
17920-663: The victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre was also erected. In 1996, the Waqf began underground construction of the new el-Marwani Mosque in the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount. The area was claimed by the Waqf as a space that served in earlier Islamic periods as a place of prayer, but some saw the move as a part of a "political agenda" and a "pretext" for the Islamization of the underground space, and believed it had been instigated to prevent
18060-474: The women's mosque and the eastern as the Islamic Museum . The Temple Mount had a mystique because it was above what were believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon . Following the 1187 siege and recapture of Jerusalem , Saladin removed all traces of Crusader activity at the site, removing structures such as toilets and grain stores installed by the Crusaders, and oversaw various repairs and renovations at
18200-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
18340-459: Was an official move by the Fatimids to magnify the site's sacred character. The inscription credits al-Zahir for renovating the mosque and two otherwise unknown figures, Abu al-Wasim and a sharif , al-Hasan al-Husayni, for supervising the work. Nasir Khusraw described the mosque during his 1047 visit. He deemed it "very large", measuring 420 by 150 cubits on its western side. The distance between each "sculptured" marble column, 280 in number,
18480-416: Was held in Jerusalem. The 10th-century Jerusalemite scholar al-Mutahhar ibn Tahir al-Maqdisi claims Mu'awiya built a mosque on the Haram. There is disagreement as to whether the present prayer hall was originally built by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ( r. 685–705 ) or his successor, his son al-Walid I ( r. 705–715 ). Several architectural historians hold that Abd al-Malik commissioned
18620-537: Was located at the Notre Dame Hospice opposite the New Gate. During the 1920s and 1930s the New Gate became the nearest gate to the modern city Jerusalem with the Christian Brothers' College located just inside its structure in the Old City. At this time the New Gate, as all gates to the Old City, included an iron gate which was operated by the police, and shut as required by the administrative regulations. On
18760-419: Was not completed until 1065, during the reign of Caliph al-Mustansir ( r. 1036–1094 ). The new mosque was considerably smaller, reduced from fifteen aisles to seven, probably a reflection of the local population's significant decline by this time. Excluding the two aisles on each side of the central nave, each aisle was made up of eleven arches running perpendicular to the qibla . The central nave
18900-457: Was reconstructed in concrete and covered with anodized aluminium , instead of the original ribbed lead enamel work sheeting. In 1983, the aluminium outer covering was replaced with lead to match the original design by az-Zahir. In the 1980s, Ben Shoshan and Yehuda Etzion , both members of the Israeli radical Gush Emunim Underground group, plotted to blow up the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of
19040-577: Was rectangular. In the assessment of Grabar, the layout was a modified version of the traditional hypostyle mosque of the period. Its "unusual" characteristic was that its aisles laid perpendicular to the qibla wall. The number of aisles is not definitively known, though fifteen is cited by a number of historians. The central aisle, double the width of the others, was probably topped by a dome. The last years of Umayyad rule were turbulent for Jerusalem. The last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II ( r. 744–750 ), punished Jerusalem's inhabitants for supporting
19180-699: Was reported in the 16th century called the New Gate of the Serbian Monastery , that was used by the Franciscans while they were building the Church of St Saviour . It was built at the request of the French consul to provide access to the Old City from the Notre Dame Hospice that was completed in 1886, and to provide Russian Christian pilgrims living at the Russian Compound (outside the Old City walls) direct access to
19320-502: Was six cubits. The columns were supported by stone arches and lead joints. He noted the following features: ... the mosque is everywhere flagged with coloured marble ... The Maksurah [or space railed off for the officials] is facing the centre of the south wall [of the Mosque and Haram Area], and is of such size as to contain sixteen columns. Above rises a mighty dome that is ornamented with enamel work. Al-Zahir's substantial investment in
19460-425: Was twice the breadth of the other aisles and had a gabled roof with a dome. The mosque likely lacked the side doors of its predecessor. A prominent and distinctive feature of the new construction was the rich mosaic program endowed to the drum of the dome, the pendentives leading to the dome, and the arch in front of the mihrab . These three adjoining areas covered by the mosaics are collectively referred to as
19600-538: Was undertaken by the Umayyad Caliphate on the orders of Abd al-Malik during the Second Fitna in 691–692 CE. The original dome collapsed in 1015 and was rebuilt in 1022–23. The Dome of the Rock is the world's oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture , and its architecture and mosaics were modelled after nearby Byzantine churches and palaces , although its outside appearance was significantly changed during
#676323