Today, while the fire at Notre Dame in Paris raged, there was also a fire on the Temple Mount.
Arabic media reports of a fire in the Marwani Mosque, known as Solomon's Stables, on Monday evening.
Sputnik reports:
Part of the Haram ash-Sharif, the huge Jerusalem mosque built where a pivotal event in the prophet Muhammad's life is believed to have occurred, caught fire, damaging a part of the structure dating to Judean King Herod the Great's reign.Well, they play soccer every day there, why should they think it is a sacred area to begin with?
The fire broke out in the guard room outside the al-Marwani Prayer Room Monday evening, according to a statement by the mosque's Islamic Waqf (Endowments) Department. According to The New Arab, a guard reported a short gap in guard rotations between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. local time.
The waqf department praised the responsiveness of staff firefighters, who quickly put out the blaze. The fire seems to have been started by children fooling around, and the waqf's statement urged worshipers "who live around the mosque and in the Old City to educate their children not to tamper with fire, especially inside al-Aqsa mosque."
We don't know the extent of the damage. Tons of debris that contained priceless artifacts from the Second Temple period were removed when the Muslims illegally built the huge Marwani Mosque underground. This fire may have damaged even more irreplaceable relics.