Solomon's Stables

Solomon's Stables (Hebrew: אורוות שלמה‎‎) was an underground vaulted space now used as a Muslim prayer hall, some 600 square yards (500 square metres) in area, at the bottom of stairs which lead down from the al-Aqsa Mosque, under the Temple Mount, to the base of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Solomon's Stables are located under the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount, 12½ metres below the courtyard and feature twelve rows of pillars and arches. In December 1996 the Marwani Prayer Hall (Arabic: المصلى المرواني‎‎) was officially inaugurated. The Solomon's Stables no longer exist as such.

The structure is most widely said to have been built by King Herod as part of his extension of the platform of the Temple Mount southward onto the Ophel. The Herodian engineers constructed the enormous platform as a series of vaulted arches in order to reduce pressure on the retaining walls. These vaults, "supported by eighty-eight pillars resting on massive Herodian blocks and divided into twelve rows of galleries", were originally storage areas of the Second Temple. A great deal of the original interior survives in the area of the Herodian staircases, although not in the area now renovated for use as a mosque. Visitors are rarely permitted to enter the areas with Herodian finishes.

The underground space for the most part remained empty except for the Crusaders period. The Crusaders converted it in 1099 into a stable for the cavalry. The rings for tethering horses can still be seen on some of the pillars. The structure has been called Solomon's Stables since Crusader times as a historical composite. 'Solomon's' refers to the First Temple built on the site, while the 'stables' refers to the functional usage of the space by the Crusaders in the time of Baldwin II (King of Jerusalem 1118-1131 CE).

In the winter of 1996 the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf acquired a permit to use Solomon's Stables as an alternative place of worship for occasional rainy days of the holy month of Ramadan. RIvjka Gonen, however, suggested that the real reason was that Palestinians feared that once a final arrangement with Israel is reached, Israel would create there a place of prayer. Later the waqf declared that it aimed to create a mosque for 10,000 worshippers, making it the largest mosque in the country. This move was designed to strengthen the Muslim claim over the Temple Mount.

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Wikipedia