Who Built Mosque Al-Aqsa: Architecture at the Heart of Sacred Geography

Mosque Al-Aqsa, known formally as al-Masjid al-Aqsa or the “Furthest Mosque,” was originally built by Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik beginning around 691 CE and completed by his son al-Walid I in 705–715 CE. Located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, it is Islam’s third holiest site and one of the most architecturally layered religious buildings in the world, shaped by over thirteen centuries of earthquakes, renovations, and successive ruling dynasties.

Where Is the Al-Aqsa Mosque Located?

The al-Aqsa mosque sits on the southern end of the Haram al-Sharif, a 144,000-square-meter walled compound in the Old City of Jerusalem known in English as the Temple Mount. This elevated stone platform occupies the southeastern corner of Jerusalem’s Old City and is among the most contested sacred landscapes on Earth. The compound is revered by all three Abrahamic faiths: Jews regard it as the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon; Christians connect it to the ministry of Jesus; and for Muslims, it is the location of the Prophet Muhammad’s miraculous Night Journey as described in the Quran (Surah Al-Isra 17:1).

The mosque building itself occupies the southern portion of the Haram, directly aligned on the same north-south axis as the Dome of the Rock to its north. This intentional axial relationship was not accidental. Art historian Oleg Grabar described the two structures as “part of an architecturally thought-out ensemble comprising a congregational and a commemorative building” — the mosque as the active place of prayer, the Dome of the Rock as the monument marking the sacred rock beneath. Together they define the spatial logic of the entire compound.

The platform itself measures approximately 480 meters from north to south and 300 meters from east to west. It slopes slightly from north to south, and the mosque is elevated on a substructure that addresses this topographic change. The compound is entered through a series of historic gates, each with its own architectural and historical identity, accumulated across Umayyad, Mamluk, and Ottoman building campaigns.

When Was the Al-Aqsa Mosque Built?

The question of when the al-Aqsa mosque was built requires separating the physical building from the sacred site itself. In Islamic tradition, the site has been holy since the time of the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham), and was the first qibla — the direction of prayer — before Muslims reoriented toward Mecca. The first communal prayer space on the Temple Mount is associated with the Rashidun Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, who entered Jerusalem peacefully in 637–638 CE and reportedly cleared debris from the area to establish a simple place of worship on the southern end of the mount.

The pilgrim Arculf, visiting around 670 CE during the reign of Caliph Mu’awiya I, recorded seeing a rectangular wooden prayer house on the Temple Mount capable of accommodating approximately 3,000 worshippers. This document is the earliest eyewitness account of a structure at the site.

The permanent stone mosque — the building that forms the basis of what stands today — was commissioned by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705 CE) and completed by his son al-Walid I (r. 705–715 CE). Several architectural historians, including K.A.C. Creswell and Robert Hamilton, attribute the original Umayyad construction primarily to al-Walid, while scholars including Jere Bacharach and Yildirim Yavuz argue that Abd al-Malik initiated the project. The Aphrodito Papyri — letters between al-Walid’s Egyptian governor and a government official dated 708–711 CE — document the dispatch of craftsmen and laborers from Egypt to help construct what the documents call the “Mosque of Jerusalem,” providing some of the earliest direct historical evidence for al-Walid’s involvement.

Who Built Mosque Al-Aqsa: The Umayyad Foundation

The Umayyad caliphate (661–750 CE) transformed the architecture of the Islamic world through ambitious building programs in Syria, Palestine, and beyond. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was one of their most significant projects. Abd al-Malik initiated construction of the Dome of the Rock around 691 CE, and the al-Aqsa Mosque was built on the same axis to form a paired architectural ensemble — the commemorative shrine to the north, the congregational prayer hall to the south.

The original Umayyad mosque was substantially larger than the building that exists today. Architectural historians estimate its dimensions ranged from 112 by 39 meters to 114.6 by 69.2 meters, depending on the source. According to historian Grabar, the layout was “a modified version of the traditional hypostyle mosque of the period,” though with the unusual characteristic that its aisles ran perpendicular to the qibla wall rather than parallel to it. Historical sources suggest the original building had as many as fifteen aisles; the current structure has seven. The central aisle, double the width of the others, was likely topped by a dome from the beginning.

Craftsmen from Egypt, Syria, and other regions of the Umayyad empire contributed to the construction, bringing with them skills in stone carving, mosaic work, and woodworking that defined early Islamic architecture. Numerous materials from earlier buildings on the site were reused — ancient Roman and early Byzantine columns and capitals, and cedar roof beams from the sixth century, some inscribed in Greek — embedding layers of pre-Islamic history directly into the fabric of the mosque.

How Did Earthquakes Shape the Building?

The al-Aqsa Mosque has been repeatedly damaged and rebuilt following major seismic events. An earthquake in 746 CE during the late Umayyad period ruined the building. The Abbasid Caliph Abu Ja’far al-Mansur undertook the first major post-Umayyad restoration, followed by Caliph al-Mahdi (r. 775–785 CE), who substantially rebuilt the mosque in a reduced form. It was al-Mahdi’s reconstruction that narrowed the building from its original fifteen aisles down to the seven that survive today. A second major earthquake in 1033 CE again caused severe damage, prompting the Fatimid Caliph al-Zahir (r. 1021–1036 CE) to undertake another significant rebuilding campaign. Al-Zahir’s reconstruction also introduced the elaborate mosaic program that still adorns the drum and interior of the dome, reviving a decorative tradition established by the Umayyads in the Dome of the Rock.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque Under the Crusaders and Saladin

In 1099, Crusader forces captured Jerusalem following the First Crusade and converted the mosque al-Aqsa into a royal palace for the Christian kings of Jerusalem. Later, it became the headquarters of the Knights Templar, who named it Templum Solomonis — Solomon’s Temple — and added Romanesque architectural elements to the facade, including arches and columns that remain embedded in the building today. The intertwined columns that flank what is now a side mihrab (known as the “mihrab of Umar”) are twelfth-century Christian works; the animal heads on the capitals were deliberately removed because figurative decoration is prohibited in mosque architecture.

Saladin (Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi) recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187 CE and restored the mosque to Islamic worship. He commissioned the installation of a celebrated wooden minbar (pulpit) that had been ordered years earlier by the Zengid ruler Nur al-Din in anticipation of the reconquest. The original minbar was destroyed in the 1969 arson attack; a replica was later installed. Saladin also commissioned the principal mihrab that still occupies the qibla wall today, its rich coloring a visual counterpoint to the older architectural elements around it.

Mamluk and Ottoman Contributions to the Mosque of Al-Aqsa

Following the Ayyubid period, the Mamluk Sultanate (1260–1517 CE) contributed significantly to the architectural fabric of the Haram al-Sharif without necessarily altering the mosque building itself. Mamluk patronage focused on building and refining the gates, arcades, and surrounding structures of the compound, including the elaborately carved stone portals and the arcaded colonnade (riwaq) along the compound’s perimeter. The madrasa buildings constructed along the western edge of the platform during the Mamluk period remain some of the finest examples of late medieval Islamic stonework in Jerusalem.

The Ottoman Empire took control of Jerusalem in 1517 CE under Sultan Selim I, and subsequent sultans made contributions to the compound. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566) is credited with rebuilding the city’s defensive walls, refacing the exterior of the Dome of the Rock with its now-iconic Iznik tile cladding, and adding various structures within the compound including fountains and domes. The Ottoman architectural vocabulary — with its emphasis on tile decoration, muqarnas vaulting, and refined stonework — is visible in several additions to the compound, though the mosque’s core spatial structure remained consistent with its earlier configurations.

The Jordanian Hashemite custodianship, established formally by agreement in 1994, continues to oversee maintenance and preservation of the mosque and compound today. Early twentieth-century restorations under the Supreme Muslim Council introduced the Italian marble columns visible in the eastern portion of the prayer hall, replacing earlier supports that had deteriorated.

Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque: Understanding the Compound

One of the most common sources of confusion about the masjid al-Aqsa mosque is the boundary of what the name actually describes. In common Western usage, “Al-Aqsa Mosque” typically refers to the silver-domed congregational prayer hall at the southern end of the compound. In Islamic theological and legal tradition, however, al-Aqsa designates the entire walled compound — the Haram al-Sharif — including the Dome of the Rock, all smaller mosques and prayer halls, the open plazas, the historic gates, and the subterranean structures beneath the platform.

This distinction matters architecturally because the palestine al-Aqsa mosque compound is not a single building but an accumulated urban landscape of religious structures built across more than a millennium. The compound contains, among other things: the Qibli Mosque (the main silver-domed prayer hall most often identified simply as “Al-Aqsa”), the Dome of the Rock, the Marwani Mosque (occupying the vaulted substructures at the southeastern corner of the platform, built by Herod), the Buraq Mosque along the western wall, and numerous smaller domes, arcades, and prayer spaces distributed across the platform.

Architectural Features of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Interior

The interior of the Jerusalem al-Aqsa mosque reflects the accumulated decisions of more than a dozen building campaigns. The seven aisles run north to south, with the widest central aisle rising higher than the flanking colonnades and punctuated by the dome above the space in front of the mihrab. This spatial hierarchy — a wider, taller central nave terminating in a domed bay before the qibla wall — was an innovation of the Umayyad period that would become highly influential in later mosque design, particularly in the Great Mosque of Damascus.

The 45 columns supporting the interior represent multiple historical layers. The historic stone columns date to pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods; the marble columns in the eastern colonnades were installed during the early twentieth-century restoration. Above, 121 stained glass windows — from Abbasid and Fatimid building campaigns — filter light into the prayer hall, creating the kind of diffuse, atmospherically rich interior light that characterizes the finest medieval religious architecture regardless of tradition. The floor is carpeted throughout to accommodate prayer.

The principal mihrab on the qibla wall was commissioned by Saladin in 1187 CE and remains one of the most refined pieces of medieval Islamic decorative stonework in Jerusalem. The drum of the central dome carries a mosaic program commissioned by the Fatimid Caliph al-Zahir in the eleventh century, depicting a luxurious garden in the Umayyad or classical style with gold pendentives, peacock’s eyes, eight-pointed stars, and palm frond patterns — reviving the mosaic tradition of the earlier Umayyad Dome of the Rock.

How Has the Dome Changed Over Time?

The dome of the al-Aqsa Mosque has been rebuilt multiple times. The original Umayyad dome was likely made of wood. Over subsequent centuries, it was rebuilt in different materials following earthquake damage and other interventions. The current dome, completed in 1969 following an arson attack that destroyed the earlier wooden dome and the Minbar of Saladin, is made of reinforced concrete covered with lead sheeting — a pragmatic modern construction that maintains the visual profile from the compound’s exterior while providing a structurally durable enclosure. The interior of the dome retains the Fatimid-era mosaic decoration that survived the fire.

The Architectural Legacy of the Masjid Al-Aqsa Mosque

The influence of the al-Aqsa mosque on subsequent Islamic religious architecture is substantial. The Umayyad innovation of placing a dome above the bay in front of the mihrab, first realized at al-Aqsa and the Great Mosque of Damascus, became a standard feature of congregational mosque design across the Islamic world for centuries. The hypostyle plan — a grid of columns supporting a flat or slightly elevated roof, organized around a central nave — remained the dominant spatial model for large mosques from Spain to Central Asia through the early medieval period.

The compound itself represents one of the most studied examples of what might be called sacred urban accumulation: the layering of built form over a single sacred site across multiple religious traditions and political regimes. The Temple Mount contains structural traces of the Herodian platform, Roman occupation, early Byzantine presence, Umayyad foundation, Abbasid and Fatimid reconstruction, Crusader adaptation, Ayyubid restoration, Mamluk embellishment, and Ottoman refinement — all legible, at different scales of analysis, in the fabric of the present compound.

For contemporary architects studying how historic structures inspire design, al-Aqsa offers a particularly rich case study in the architecture of continuity — how a building and its surrounding landscape absorb, adapt, and survive across radically different political and cultural regimes while maintaining spatial coherence and sacred significance. The compound’s ability to accommodate hundreds of thousands of worshippers during major Islamic occasions, while also functioning as a site of intense scholarly and archaeological scrutiny, reflects an architectural resilience that few sacred sites in the world can match.

The evolution of religious architecture over centuries is nowhere more concentrated or more contested than here. Every stone in the compound carries multiple histories, and the architecture of the mosque itself is inseparable from the geography, theology, and geopolitics of Jerusalem al-Aqsa mosque as a whole.

For further reading on Islamic sacred architecture, the Wikipedia entry on Al-Aqsa Mosque offers a documented overview of the building’s structural history. The Museum with No Frontiers — Discover Islamic Art database provides scholarly architectural documentation. The Archnet Digital Library at MIT holds extensive primary and secondary source material on Islamic architecture and the Haram al-Sharif specifically. For the broader context of early Islamic architectural development, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture documents conservation and scholarship relating to Islamic heritage sites. The UNESCO World Heritage listing for the Old City of Jerusalem, inscribed in 1981, provides the international conservation framework within which al-Aqsa is understood today.