Western Wall
holy site of Judaism in Jerusalem
The Western Wall (Hebrew: הַכּוֹתֶל הַמַּעֲרָבִי, romanized: HaKotel HaMa'aravi lit. 'the western wall'; Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: HaKosel HaMa'arovi) is an ancient retaining wall of the built-up hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount of Jerusalem. Its most famous section, known by the same name, often shortened by Jews to the Kotel or Kosel, is known in the West as the Wailing Wall, and in the Arab world and Islamic world as the Buraq Wall (Arabic: حَائِط ٱلْبُرَاق, romanized: Ḥā'iṭ al-Burāq; ['ħaːʔɪtˤ albʊ'raːq]). In a Jewish religious context, the term Western Wall and its variations is used in the narrow sense, for the section used for Jewish prayer; in its broader sense it refers to the entire 488-metre-long (1,601 ft) retaining wall on the western side of the Temple Mount.
At the prayer section, just over half the wall's total height, including its 17 courses located below street level, dates from the end of the Second Temple period, and is believed to have been begun by Herod the Great. The very large stone blocks of the lower courses are Herodian, the courses of medium-sized stones above them were added during the Umayyad period, while the small stones of the uppermost courses are of more recent date, especially from the Ottoman period.
The Western Wall plays an important role in Judaism due to it being part of the man-made "Temple Mount", an artificially expanded hilltop best known as the traditional site of the Jewish Temple. Because of the Temple Mount entry restrictions, the Wall is the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray outside the Temple Mount platform, because the presumed site of the Holy of Holies, the most sacred site in the Jewish faith, presumably lies just above and behind it. The original, natural, and irregular-shaped Temple Mount was gradually extended to allow for an ever-larger Temple compound to be built at its top. The earliest source possibly mentioning this specific site as a place of Jewish worship is from the 10th century.
The Western Wall, in the narrow sense, i.e.
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