The Temple Mount, a holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem, also known as the al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf or Al-Aqsa, contains twelve gates. One of the gates, Bab as-Sarai, is currently closed to the public but was open under Ottoman rule. There are also six other sealed gates. This does not include the Gates of the Old City of Jerusalem which circumscribe the external walls except on the east side.
The Temple Mount (Biblical Hebrew: הַר הַבַּיִת, romanized: Har hab-Bayiṯ, (Arabic: الأَقْصَى, romanized: al-Aqṣā)) is a hill in the Old City of Jerusalem. Once the site of two successive Temples in Jerusalem, it is now home to the Islamic compound known as al-Aqsa, which includes the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. It has been venerated as a holy site for thousands of years, including in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The present site is a flat plaza surrounded by retaining walls (including the Western Wall), which were originally built by Herod the Great in the first century BCE to expand the Second Temple. The plaza is dominated by two monumental structures originally built during the Rashidun and early Umayyad caliphates after the 637 first Muslim conquest of Jerusalem: the Qibli Mosque of al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, near the center of the hill, which was completed in 692, making it one of the oldest extant Muslim structures in the world. The Herodian walls and gates, with additions from the late Byzantine, early Muslim, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods, flank the site, which can be reached through eleven gates, ten reserved for Muslims and one for non-Muslims, with guard posts of the Israel Police in the vicinity of each. The courtyard is surrounded on the north and west by two Mamluk-era porticos or arcades (arwiqa) and four minarets.
The history of Jerusalem during the Early Muslim period covers the period between the capture of the city from the Byzantines by the Arab Muslim armies of the nascent Caliphate in 637–638 CE, and its conquest by the European Catholic armies of the First Crusade in 1099. Throughout this period, Jerusalem remained a largely Christian city with smaller Muslim and Jewish communities. It was successively part of several Muslim states, beginning with the Rashidun caliphs of Medina, the Umayyads of Syria, the Abbasids of Baghdad and their nominal Turkish vassals in Egypt, and the Fatimid caliphs of Cairo, who struggled over it with the Turkic Seljuks and different other regional powers, only to finally lose it to the Crusaders.
The second caliph, Umar (r. 634–644), secured Muslim control of the city from the Patriarch of Jerusalem. During his rule Muslim prayer was likely established on the Temple Mount and limited numbers of Jews were allowed to reside in the city after a five centuries-long ban by the Romans/Byzantines. Beginning with Caliph Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680), the early Umayyad caliphs devoted special attention to the city as a result of its sanctity and several obtained their oaths of allegiance there. The Umayyads Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) and al-Walid I (r. 705–715) invested considerably in constructing Muslim edifices on the Temple Mount, namely the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, as well other religious and administrative structures, gates, and roadworks. Their successor Sulayman (r. 715–717) likely resided in Jerusalem at the beginning of his reign, but his founding of the nearby city of Ramla came at the political and economic expense of Jerusalem in the long term.