Built by the Caliph al-Walid (r. 705-715), of the Umayyad dynasty, El-Aksa is one of the largest and most important mosques in the Muslim world, and the earliest in Palestine. Its construction was probably the architectural expression of the destination of Muhammad's Night Journey and of the place where his ascension to heaven occurred. The mosque was beautiful and vast twice the size of today's structure. The original mosque was destroyed in an earthquake in the middle of the eighth century and restored by the Abassids toward the end of that century. Other than a few pieces of wood bearing carvings of floral images, nothing remains of the decorations of the original mosque. Most of those in today's mosque date from medieval times. |
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