It is the western wall of Al‑Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. It received its name because the Prophet ﷺ tied his mount to it on the night of the Isra and Mi‘raj. The wall is considered part of the mosque’s outer structure, and directly beside it is the gate known as Bab al‑Maghariba (the Moroccan Gate).
The Buraq Wall forms the southern section of the western wall of the Noble Al‑Aqsa Mosque. It extends northward from Bab al‑Maghariba to the Tankiziyya School, which the Israeli occupation converted into a synagogue and police facilities. The wall is about fifty meters long and around twenty meters high.
Jews call the place the “Wailing Wall” because their prayers there take the form of crying and lamentation.
Historical documents held by Palestinian Jerusalemites—according to a 2010 study on the Buraq Wall by Palestinian researcher Mutawakkil Taha—prove that the city of Jerusalem has been Arab in origin for thousands of years, and Islamic in history and civilization.
Since the Islamic conquest, the Buraq Wall has remained an Islamic waqf (endowment). It is an exclusive right of Muslims, and it contains no stones dating back to the era of King Solomon, as Jews claim.
Jerusalemites state that the passageway beside the wall is not a public road, but was created solely for the residents of the Moroccan Quarter and other Muslims to reach the Buraq Mosque and then the Noble Sanctuary. Jewish access to the wall was permitted only as an act of tolerance under a decree issued by the Egyptian governor of the region, Ibrahim Pasha, in 1840—and not for performing prayers.
Jews did not use the Buraq Wall as a place of worship until after the issuance of the British Balfour Declaration in 1917. The wall was not part of the alleged “Jewish Temple,” but Islamic tolerance allowed Jews to stand before it and weep over the destruction of their claimed temple. Over time, they began to assert that the Buraq Wall was a remnant of that “temple.”
Jerusalemites affirm that Palestine was not Jewish in the 7th century CE when Muslims conquered it; it was under Roman rule, and there were no Jews in Jerusalem at that time. Jews had never claimed any right to the Buraq Wall, and the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was the reason behind the dispute and the Jewish demand to pray there.
Muslims argue that Britain—the mandatory power in Palestine—explicitly acknowledged in its White Paper of November 1928 that the western wall and the area adjacent to it belong exclusively to Muslims.
Jews attempted to seize the Buraq Wall by purchasing nearby properties during the 19th century but failed. Under the British Mandate, Jewish visits to the wall increased, raising Muslim concerns. This led to the Buraq Uprising on August 23, 1929, in which dozens of Muslims were martyred and many Jews were killed.
After Britain brutally regained control, it prosecuted more than a thousand Palestinian Arabs, sentencing 26 to death—including one Jewish policeman who had entered an Arab family’s home in Jaffa and killed all seven members. However, only three Palestinians were executed: Fuad Hijazi, Muhammad Jamjoum, and Atta al‑Zir.
These events led to the establishment of the Committee for the Protection of Al‑Aqsa Mosque and the formation of an international commission to resolve the dispute over the Buraq Wall,