Old Al-Aqsa Chapel
This mosque is located under the Al-Qibli Mosque. It is entered through a stone staircase located near the middle gallery on the northern side of the Al-Qibli Mosque. The double door (one of the doors of the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque that is closed today) and from there to the Umayyad palaces i.e. the Emirate House) which was located south of the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque outside its walls. There is a small room at the northern entrance of the chapel that was used for guards, and there is a larger room located at the remains of the double door at The southern entrance to the chapel, and this room was also used for the guards, and it contains a mihrab at its entrance, and there is a deep empty well that is now closed. water and use it to infiltrate Al-Aqsa. Among the most famous of those who infiltrated Al-Aqsa was the Zionist Minister of War in 1967, Moshe Dayan. Therefore, the Awqaf Department closed this well and lit it constantly to ensure that no one from the extremist Zionist elements would infiltrate Al-Aqsa through it.
Among the distinctive architectural elements in the old Al-Aqsa Mosque are two flat Umayyad domes that stand above its southern entrance, and at them there are huge stone columns that form the basis on which the dome of the Al-Qibli Mosque rests, and these columns are supported by concrete bridges that were added during The Supreme Islamic Council restored this place in 1927 2. Today, in the southwestern side of it is the Hattiniya Madrasah, which was built outside the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque after the closure of the double gate during the days of Sultan Al-Nasir Salah Al-Din Al-Ayyubi.
This chapel was closed and did not open except in cases of necessity until 1998 AD, when it was cleaned and prepared to be a permanent place for prayer by the Heritage Committee and the Al-Aqsa Foundation and under the auspices of the Islamic Endowments Department, and at that time the place was ventilated And the extension of electricity in it to fully and permanently illuminate and ventilate it, and then it was furnished with carpets brought to it from Turkey, and it was opened for prayer in the same year, and today it can accommodate about a thousand worshipers