Dome of the Chain
Freestanding dome located adjacently east of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem
Dome of the Chain (Arabic: قبة السلسلة, romanized: Qubbat al-Silsilah) is an Islamic free-standing domed building located adjacently east of the Dome of the Rock in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is one of many small buildings that can be found scattered around the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Its exact historical use and significance are under scholarly debate. Erected in 691–92 CE, the Dome of the Chain is one of the oldest surviving structures at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
It was built by the Umayyads, became a Christian chapel under the Crusaders, was restored as an Islamic prayer house by the Ayyubids, and has been renovated by the Mamluks, Ottomans and the Jordanian-based waqf.
Architecture
The building consists of a domed structure with two concentric open arcades, that is: with no lateral walls closing it in. The dome, resting on a hexagonal drum, is made of timber and is supported by six columns which together create the inner arcade. The second, outer row of eleven columns creates an eleven-sided outer arcade. The qibla wall contains the mihrab or prayer niche and is flanked by two smaller columns. There are a total of seventeen columns in the structure, excluding the mihrab.
The public source identifies “Dome of the Chain” as freestanding dome located adjacently east of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dome, Chain and Freestanding.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2141548. VIAF identifies the subject as 157541729. The Library of Congress control number is nr00029206. Authority coordinates are 31.778, 35.236. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dome of the Chain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.