Pictures of the Al-Aqsa Mosque have been circulating on social media since last week when the Israeli forces raided the Palestinian worshipers on the holiest night of the Holy month of Ramadan. The raid by armed Zionists on harmless Muslim devotees sparked outrage in the entire Muslim world and hashtags like Free Palestine and Masjid Al-Aqsa started trending on social media platforms along with the pictures of the Muslim’s third holiest site.
The pictures showing the golden dome, however, are not of real Masjid Al-Aqsa and the golden dome is, in fact, Dome of the Rock or Qubbat al Sakhra, an Islamic shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Masjid Al-Aqsa, in general, refers to an entire compound consisting of several buildings and prayer areas including the Dome of the Rock or Qubbat al Sakhra, Masjid Al-Buraq, Mussala Marwani or Solomon’s Stables, and the Qibli Mosque or Masjid Al-Aqsa. The compound has several minarets located within the perimeter of the Mosque.
The real Al Aqsa mosque is situated at the Southern end of the Al Aqsa compound. Unlike the shiny dome of the rock, the dome of Al-Aqsa mosque is bluish-grey and reflects the characteristic of early Islamic architecture.
The covered mosque building of Al-Aqsa was originally a small prayer house erected by the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, Hazrat Umar Farooq after the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the early 7th century. It was rebuilt many times after that and the outline preserved in the current structure was built by Caliph Ali az-Zahir in 1035.
Many social media users are calling the representation of the dome of Rock as Al-Aqsa mosque a Jewish conspiracy of misleading Muslims so that it goes unnoticed when they take over the real Al-Aqsa mosque.
The dome of the Rock which is situated in North of the real masjid Al-Aqsa, in its core reflects classical Byzantine architecture. It was originally built during the period of 691–92 by Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik. The original dome collapsed in 1015 and was rebuilt in 1022–23 as what we see today.
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