The Burning of al-Aqsa

On 21 August 1969 a fire was set inside al-Aqsa Mosque on the Haram al-Sharif in occupied East Jerusalem by an arsonist, an Australian named Denis Michael Rohan acting on his own extremist religious convictions. The blaze gutted part of the mosque and destroyed its single greatest treasure, the carved and inlaid wooden minbar, the pulpit, that the Zengid ruler Nur al-Din had ordered built and that Salah al-Din (rahimahu Allah) had installed in al-Aqsa after he recovered Jerusalem in 1187, a masterpiece of medieval Islamic woodwork nearly eight centuries old. That the third holiest mosque in Islam, already under occupation since 1967, should be burned was felt across the Muslim world as a grievous violation, and the individual guilt of the arsonist did little to lessen the sense of danger to the sanctuary. The shock had a lasting political consequence: within weeks Muslim heads of state and government convened a summit at Rabat in September 1969 that founded the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, later the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the first enduring body of collective Muslim states, with the cause of Jerusalem and the protection of its sanctuaries written into its founding purpose. This scene depicts the fire-scarred interior of al-Aqsa in 1969, the blackened arcades, the destroyed minbar, and the restoration plans with which the community answered the loss.