Temple denial is the claim that the successive temples in Jerusalem either did not exist or they did exist but were not constructed in Jerusalem on the site of Haram al-Sharif, i.e. Temple Mount. This claim has been advanced by Islamic political leaders, religious figures, intellectuals, and authors.Yitzhak Reiter (2005), From Jerusalem to Mecca and Back: The Islamic Consolidation of Jerusalem, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. Among them was then-Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat, who made statements placing the Temple in Nablus.
This denial stands in contrast to accounts of the Temples in Jerusalem that appear in the Hebrew Bible, as well as accounts of Jesus in the New Testament, contemporaneous accounts by historian Josephus and documents published by the Supreme Muslim Council led by Amin al-Husseini, which place the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount.
Background
The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism. According to the Hebrew Bible, the First Temple was built by King Solomon, the son of King David, in 957 BCE, and was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. The Second Temple was constructed under the auspices of Zerubbabel in 516 BCE, was renovated by King Herod, and was destroyed by the Roman Empire in 70 CE. Scholars agree that the two temples existed on the Temple Mount during these time periods. While no scientific excavations have ever been conducted on the Temple Mount, extensive physical evidence for the Second Temple was found in excavations in its vicinity.
The Temple plays a major role in the Christian New Testament, including in the narrative of the Cleansing of the Temple, which tells of Jesus throwing out merchants and money changers from the Temple in Jerusalem so that it could serve its proper role as a "house of prayer".Jesus Cleanses the Temple, BibleGateway. Accessed July 7, 2026. "Mark 11:15-18 - Jesus Cleanses the Temple: 15 And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 16 And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.'"
Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, in the Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, documents the details of the location, design and the ultimate destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.The Courtyards of the House of the Lord, Brill Publishers, 2008. . Accessed July 7, 2026. "Studies on the descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple found in the works of Josephus have generally concerned the correspondence between those descriptions and the Second Temple as it stood in the last days before its destruction.1 Accordingly, such studies have usually attempted to establish a correspondence between Josephus’s accounts and the Temple plan found in Tractate Middot of the Mishnah."
Among Muslims, the whole plaza is revered and it is referred to as "the Noble Sanctuary" or the al-Aqsa Mosque, and it ranks as the third holiest site in Islam. Muslims believe that it is the place from which Muhammad began his Night Journey. The plaza is dominated by two monumental structures originally built during the Rashidun and early Umayyad caliphates after the city's capture in 661 CE:Nicolle, David (1994). Yarmuk AD 636: The Muslim Conquest of Syria. Osprey Publishing. the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, near the center of the hill, which was completed in 692 CE, making it one of the oldest extant Islamic structures in the world. It stands where past Jewish temples are commonly believed to have stood.
Early Islam regarded the Foundation Stone as the location of Solomon's Temple, and the construction of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount sought to glorify Jerusalem by presenting Islam as a continuation of Judaism and Christianity. Muslim interpretations of the Quran agree that the Mount is the site of the Temple originally built by Solomon, considered a prophet in Islam, that was later destroyed."The Farthest Mosque must refer to the site of the Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem on the hill of Moriah, at or near which stands the Dome of the Rock... it was a sacred place to both Jews and Christians... The chief dates in connection with the Temple in Jerusalem are: It was finished by Solomon about 1004 BCE; destroyed by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar about 586 BCE; rebuilt under Ezra and Nehemiah about 515 BCE; turned into a heathen idol temple by one of Alexander the Great's successors, Antiochus Epiphanes, 167 BCE; restored by Herod, 17 BCE to 29; and completely razed to the ground by the Emperor Titus in 70. These ups and downs are among the greater signs in religious history." (Yusuf Ali, Commentary on the Koran, 2168.)Khalek, N. (2011). Jerusalem in Medieval Islamic Tradition. Religion Compass, 5(10), 624–630. doi:10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00305.x. "One of the most pressing issues in both medieval and contemporary scholarship related to Jerusalem is whether the city is explicitly referenced in the text of the Qur'an. Sura 17, verse 1, which reads [...] has been variously interpreted as referring to the miraculous Night Journey and Ascension of Muhammad, events recorded in medieval sources and known as the isra and miraj. As we will see, this association is a rather late and even a contested one. [...] The earliest Muslim work on the Religious Merits of Jerusalem was the Fada'il Bayt al-Maqdis by al-Walid ibn Hammad al-Ramli (d. 912 CE), a text which is recoverable from later works. [...] He relates the significance of Jerusalem vis-a-vis the Jewish Temple, conflating 'a collage of biblical narratives' and comments pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a practice which was controversial in later Muslim periods." After the construction, Muslims believe, the temple was used for the worship of the one God by many prophets of Islam, including Jesus."The city of Jerusalem was chosen at the command of Allah by Prophet David in the tenth century BCE. After him his son, the Prophet Solomon built a mosque in Jerusalem according to the revelation that he received from Allah. For several centuries this mosque was used for the worship of Allah by many Prophets and Messengers of Allah. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in the year 586 BCE., but it was soon rebuilt and was rededicated to the worship of Allah in 516 BCE. It continued afterwards for several centuries until the time of Prophet Jesus. After he departed this world, it was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 CE." (Siddiqi, Dr. Muzammil. Status of Al-Aqsa Mosque , IslamOnline, May 21, 2007. Retrieved July 12, 2007.)"Early Muslims regarded the building and destruction of the Temple of Solomon as a major historical and religious event, and accounts of the Temple are offered by many of the early Muslim historians and geographers (including Ibn Qutayba, Ibn al-Faqih, Mas'udi, Muhallabi, and Biruni). Fantastic tales of Solomon's construction of the Temple also appear in the Qisas al-anbiya', the medieval compendia of Muslim legends about the pre-Islamic prophets." (Kramer, Martin. The Temples of Jerusalem in Islam, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 18, 2000. Retrieved November 21, 2007.)
"While there is no scientific evidence that Solomon's Temple existed, all believers in any of the Abrahamic faiths perforce must accept that it did." (Khalidi, Rashid. Transforming the Face of the Holy City: Political Messages in the Built Topography of Jerusalem, Bir Zeit University, November 12, 1998.)A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif, a booklet published in 1925 (and earlier) by the "Supreme Moslem Council", a body established by the British government to administer waqfs and headed by Hajj Amin al-Husayni during the British Mandate period, states on page 4: "The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps from pre-historic) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which 'David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.'(2 Samuel 24:25)" Other Muslim scholars have used the Torah (called in Arabic) to expand on the details of the temple.* "The Rock was in the time of Solomon the son of David 12 cubits high and there was a dome over it...It is written in the Tawrat [Bible]: 'Be happy Jerusalem,' which is Bayt al-Maqdis and the Rock which is called Haykal." al-Wasati, Fada'il al Bayt al-Muqaddas, ed. Izhak Hasson (Jerusalem, 1979) pp. 72ff. The term Bayt al-Maqdis (or Bayt al-Muqaddas), which frequently appears as a name of Jerusalem in early Islamic sources, is a cognate of the Hebrew term bēt ha-miqdāsh (בית המקדש), the Temple in Jerusalem.Di Cesare, M. (2017). A Lost Inscription from the Dome of the Rock?: the Western Attitude Towards Islamic Epigraphy in 17th-Century Jerusalem. A Lost Inscription from the Dome of the Rock?: the Western Attitude Towards Islamic Epigraphy in 17th-Century Jerusalem, 77-86.Jacobson, D. M. The Enigma of the Name Īliyā (= Aelia) for Jerusalem in Early Islam. Dio, 69, 1.Carrol, James. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How The Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World", 2011. Retrieved on 24 May 2014. Mujir al-Din, a 15th century Jerusalemite chronicler, mentions an earlier tradition related by al-Wasti, according which "after David built many cities and the situation of the children of Israel was improved, he wanted to construct Bayt al-Maqdis and build a dome over the rock in the place that Allah sanctified in Aelia."
According to Yitzhak Reiter, "during the twentieth century, against the backdrop of the struggle between the Zionist and the Palestinian-Arab national movements, a new Arab-Muslim trend of denying Jewish attachment to the Temple Mount arose".
Denial efforts
Waqf guidebooks A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif, a booklet published in 1925 by the "Supreme Muslim Council", a body established by British authorities to administer waqfs and headed by Amin al-Husseini during the British Mandate period, states on page 4: "The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps from pre-historic) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which 'David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.'(2 Samuel 24:25)"Supreme Moslem Council. A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif (1925) . Jerusalem
According to the New York Times, after the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Waqf's guidebooks have been stripped of references to Solomon's Temple, whose location it had previously described as 'beyond dispute.'"
Remarks by Yasser Arafat According to Dennis Ross, at the 2000 Camp David Summit, then-Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat told then-American President Bill Clinton that "Solomon's Temple was not in Jerusalem, but Nablus."Brit Hume, Interview with Dennis Ross, Fox News Sunday, Fox News, April 21, 2002 In the recollection of then-Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, referring to a conversation he had with Clinton, Arafat said to the American President, "there is nothing there" (i.e., no trace of a temple on the Temple Mount).Benny Morris, "Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak)", The New York Review of Books, June 13, 2002