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.