Posted on: 2000

By Adly Muhatadi

The Wailing Wall, or Western Wall, is held by most Jews to be the remnant of the Second Temple, and thus has become an object of veneration. It forms the base of the Haram al-Sharif, where stands the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque. This wall is also known to Muslims as al-Buraq, considered a holy place because it was here that Muhammed tethered his winged steed on his journey to Jerusalem. Access to the wall was through a passage in the Magrebi residential quarter, completely destroyed by Israel in 1967.

The wall and much of the area around it constitutes Waqf property ( a religiously and legally protected endowment), owned by the Muslims since the time of Salah-al-din.

Acquired by trade and purchase, this Waqf property is open to all to come and worship and pray there. Throughout the centuries of Muslim rule, Jewish rights to pray at the wall have always been safeguarded. With the emergence of the Zionist movement, more militant Zionist elements began to emerge, and in the late 1920s these groups sought to change the status of the wall. Rather than addressing their demands to the appropriate concerned authorities, these elements forced the issue by bringing screens, benches, and other objects to the area. These objects not only caused great congestion in the area because they did not allow for the free passage of people, but it also was a change in the “status quo”.

The concept of “status quo” in the religious sites in Jerusalem allows religious communities to preserve their rights over certain sites. According to the British who were ruling Palestine at that time, “the regulations pertaining to religious practices at the holy places in Jerusalem and the balance between the rights and claims of the different faiths and denominations with regard to these places have in the past always been based the so-called Status Quo.

” If any change in status is not protested by a community, then after a period of time, the change becomes the new status quo. Thus, the Moslem community was concerned that any additions to the wall by Jewish worshippers would change the status quo- “ for after stools would come benches, the benches would then be fixed, and before long the Jews would have established legal claim to the site.

Zionists Jews in the 1920’s forced such changes in the status quo. The Jewish worshippers brought benches and a screen to separate men and women, which were removed by the police several times. The Deputy District Commissioner noted in 1927 “ several incidents and many problems caused by the Jews around the question of the Buraq plainly indicate that they have laid down a plan of gradually obtaining this place.”

The tensions escalated and the ensuing violence resulted in riots on August 1929 with hundreds of casualties on both sides. The British sent in a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the cause of the “disturbances.” The Commission, headed by Sir Walter Shaw, former Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements, arrived in Palestine in October that same year and remained there for two months. One of the recommendations he made to the Secretary of State for the Colonies was the need to establish an ad hoc Commission to determine the rights and claims for Moslems and Jews in connection with the Wailing Wall and, on January 1930, it was decided that:

A Commission shall be entrusted with the settlement of the rights and claims of the Jews and Moslems with regard to the Wailing Wall:

The Commission shall consist of members not of British nationality…

Elief Lofgren, formerly Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs. Member of the Upper Chamber of the Swedish Riksdag (as Chairman). Charles Barde, Vice-President of the Court of Justice at Geneva, President of the Austro-Roumanian Mixed Arbitration tribunal and C.J. Van Kempen, formerly Governor of the East Coast of Sumatra, Member of the States-General of the Netherlands.

On June 13, 1930, the members of the new Commission sailed for Palestine and arrived on the June 19, and stayed for one month. The Commission was appointed by the United Kingdom and approved by the League of Nations.

From the book The Right and Claims of Moslems and Jews in connection with the Wailing Wall at Jerusalem by the Institute for Palestine Studies. 

With respect to the position of the Western or Wailing Wall ( in Arabic Al Buraq; in Hebrew, Kothel Maarawi and the lie of the surrounding area, see the official plan drawn by the Palestine Government.

The Wailing Wall forms an integral part of the western exterior shell of the Haram-el-Sherif which itself is the site of the ancient Jewish temples, at the present day supplanted by Moslem Mosques. The Haram-el-Sherif ina ctual fact is a vast rectangular platform, several hundred metres in length and width. One of the said Mosques, the Mosque of Aqsa, is contiguous to the southern exterior wall of the Haram and extends up to the Wailing Wall at its southern end. The other Mosque, the Dome of the Rock ( in Arabic, Qubet Al Sakra), or, as it is usually called, the Mosque of Omar, is situated in the middle of the Haram area.

The Eastern Wall of the Haram-el-Sherif as a whole is a structure of more than 100 meters in length and about 20 meters in height. The very large blocks of stone at the base of the Wall, more especially the six courses of drafted stones, are dated by most archaeologists to the times of the Temple of Herod (i.e., the second reconstructed Temple). Many of the stones bear inscriptions in Hebrew on their faces, some of them painted, others engraved.

Above these stones there are three courses of undrafted masonry; these are probably colony by the Emperor Hadrian). The upper strata again are of much later date, belonging probably to the period about 1500 A.D. Recent researches go to show that the boundaries of the Wall coincide with those of the platform of the Temple of Solomom, of which courses of stones are supposed to still remain beneath the surface. The part of the Wall about which dispute has arisen between the Jews and the Moslems comprises about 30 metres of the exterior wall mentioned. In front of that part of the wall there is a stretch of pavement to which the only access, on the northern side, is by a narrow lane proceeding from King David’s street. To the south this pavement extends to another wall, which shuts the pavement off at right angles to the Wailing Wall from a few private houses and from the Mosque of Buraq site to the south.

In the year 1929 a door was made at the southern end of the wall last mentioned, and it gives access to the private houses and the Mosque. At the northern end of the pavement a third wall, with a door in it, shuts off the area from the courtyard in front of the Grand Mufti’s offices.

The pavement in front of the Wall has a width of about 4 metres. Its boundaries of three sides have already been indicated; on the fourth side, i.e., the one opposite to the Wailing Wall, the pavement is bounded by the exterior wall and houses of so-called Moghrabi Quarter. On that side there are two doors which led to the Moghrabi houses.

It is this Pavement running at the base of the part of the Wall just referred to that the Jews are in the habit of resorting to for purposes of devotion.

At a short distance from it, in the southern direction and within the Wall itself, there is a chamber or niche in which according to tradition Mohammed’s steed, Buraq, was tethered when the Prophet during the course of his celestial journey (as to which see below) visited the Haram-el-Sherif. It is for this reason that the Wall is known to Moslems as Al-Buraq.

Before proceeding further we desire to state that at the date of our sojourn in Jerusalem, the Wall and its environs were not exactly in the same state as before the War, for as already stated by the Shaw Commission certain innovations had been introduced, viz:

–         The erection of a new structure above the northern end of the Wall.

–         The conversion of a house at the southern end of the Pavement into a “Zawiyah” ( literally to be translated, Moslem   “sacred corner”).

–         The construction of the above-mentioned door giving access from the “Zawiyah” to  the Pavement in front of the Wall, and constituting a through connection from the

Haram area (through the Moghrabi Gate) to the Pavement in front of the Wall.