The al-Aqsa mosque, on the Temple mount in the Old city, is the third holiest Shrine in the Islamic world. The legend says that here was received up into heaven, the prophet Muhammad after his night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem.

The temple mount is the holiest place in Judaism: here stood the First Temple of Solomon (destroyed by the army Nabuchodonosor in 586 BCE) and Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. Was left of a man-made platform on which already in 705 at the end of the Umayyad period there was a small prayer house, a distant predecessor of the current mosque.

The miraculous night journey of prophet Muhammad (Isra) took place almost a century earlier, around the year 621. According to the hadith, which tells of the life of the prophet, at night it was the angel Gabriel and offered to go to Jerusalem. Rational animal Burak (sparkling, with a human face, "above the donkey and below the mule") in the blink of an eye brought travelers to the gate of the temple. Here the prophet met Ibrahim, Musa and ISA (Abraham, Moses and Jesus) and led them in prayer. After that Muhammad ascended to the throne of Allah (made Miraj). Hadiths read as follows: along the way he saw hell and heaven, then received the instruction of Allah on mandatory for Muslims five times daily prayer, after which he returned to Mecca.

Evidence about how the temple looked like in the time of prophet Mohammed, no. However, it is known that built the Umayyad mosque in 746 was destroyed by an earthquake. Caliph al-Mansur was restored in the year 754, al-Mahdi was rebuilt in 780. But in 1033 the new earthquake destroyed most of al-Aqsa. During renovations, the mosque has received important additions: the dome, beautiful facade and minarets. In 1099 Jerusalem was captured by the crusaders, when they were placed there the Church, the Palace, the stables. Large construction works were conducted by the Templars, who in building his headquarters. The mosque was restored after Saladin conquered the city for the Muslim world in 1187.

In the next century al-Aqsa mosque has been repaired and rebuilt several times during the Ayyubids, the Mamluks, the Ottoman Empire. In our days, when the Old city is under Israeli control, the area of the Temple mount, the mosque transferred to the Muslim Waqf. This means that the Israeli government transferred the land and its buildings for religious purposes and cannot take them back.

The mosque is huge: 83 meters long, 56 meters wide. At the same time it can accommodate five thousand worshipers. Its large dome, initially resting on the wooden structures, in 1969, was replaced with concrete. The oldest of the four minarets on the South-West corner, built in 1278 on the orders of the Mamluk Sultan of Lachin. In the facade of the mosque fancy mixed legacy of the great era of the Fatimids and the arches of the Romanesque style, built by the crusaders. The most conspicuous part of the interior – 121 stained glass window, the rest of the epochs of the Abbasids and Fatimids. The drum of the dome and the walls underneath decorated with mosaics, columns of white marble.