page_title: Buraq
section_title: Western Wall
hierarchical_section_title: Buraq / Western Wall
caption_attribution_description: English: The Buraq Wall viewed from the Western Plaza, circled in orange
context_page_description: The Burāq is a mythical creature in Islamic tradition that was said to be a transport for certain prophets.
  Most notably hadith accounts about the Isra and Mi'raj recounts that the Buraq carried the Islamic prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and up in the heavens and back by night.
context_section_description: Various scholars and writers, such as ibn al-Faqih, ibn Abd Rabbih, and Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, have suggested places where Buraq was supposedly tethered in stories, mostly locations near the southwest corner of the Haram. However, for several centuries the preferred location has been the al-Buraq Mosque, just inside the wall at the south end of the Western Wall Plaza. The mosque sits above an ancient passageway that once came out through the long-sealed Barclay's Gate whose huge lintel remains visible below the Maghrebi gate. Because of the proximity to the Western Wall, the area next to the wall has been associated with Buraq at least since the 19th century.
  When a British Jew asked the Egyptian authorities in 1840 for permission to re-pave the ground in front of the Western Wall, the governor of Syria wrote:
  It is evident from the copy of the record of the deliberations of the Consultative Council in Jerusalem that the place the Jews asked for permission to pave adjoins the wall of the Haram al-Sharif and also the spot where the Buraq was tethered, and is included in the endowment charter of Abu Madyan, may God bless his memory; that the Jews never carried out any repairs in that place in the past. ... Therefore the Jews must not be enabled to pave the place.
  Carl Sandreczki, charged with compiling a list of place names for Charles William Wilson's Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem in 1865, reported that the street leading to the Western Wall, including the part alongside the wall, belonged to the Hosh (court/enclosure) of al Burâk, "not Obrâk, nor Obrat". In 1866, the Prussian Consul and Orientalist Georg Rosen wrote: "The Arabs call Obrâk the entire length of the wall at the wailing place of the Jews, southwards down to the house of Abu Su'ud and northwards up to the substructure of the Mechkemeh [Shariah court]. Obrâk is not, as was formerly claimed, a corruption of the word Ibri (Hebrews), but simply the neo-Arabic pronunciation of Bōrâk, ... which, whilst (Muhammad) was at prayer at the holy rock, is said to have been tethered by him inside the wall location mentioned above."
  The name Hosh al Buraq appeared on the maps of Wilson's 1865 survey, its revised editions in 1876 and 1900, and other maps in the early 20th century. In 1922, the official Pro-Jerusalem Council specified it as a street name.
  The association of the Western Wall area with Buraq has played an important role in disputes over the holy places since the British mandate.
  For Muslims, the Wailing Wall (or Western Wall) is known as "al-Ḥā’iṭu ’l-Burāq" (Arabic: الْحَائِطُ ٱلْبُرَاق) - "the Buraq Wall", for on the other side (the Muslim side of the Wailing Wall on the Temple Mount) is where Muhammad tied the Buraq, the riding animal upon which he rode during the Night of Ascension (Arabic: Mi‘rāj - مِعْرَاج). The wall links to the structure of the Al-Buraq Mosque.
caption: The Buraq Wall (circled in orange) facing the Al-Buraq Mosque
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