More Muslims visited the Temple Mount on this average Friday than ever did before 1967

Today, some 35,000 Muslims came for Friday prayers to the Al Aqsa Mosque and the surrounding courtyards of the Temple Mount.

This is pretty typical.

I think it is highly probable that when the Temple Mount was under Ottoman, British and Jordanian rule, the number of worshipers never or very rarely exceeded that number, even during major Muslim holidays.

When Israel recaptured Jerusalem in 1967, there were only 54,000 Muslims in the city - including the areas of Jerusalem that Israel expanded. In 1944, only 30,000 Muslims lived there - men, women and children.

While it is possible that on holidays there were tens of thousands who came from surrounding areas to visit, I still doubt that it reached 35,000. Accounts from newspapers in the first half of the 20th century would describe the crowds as being in the thousands, not tens or hundreds of thousands, for Muslim holidays, as in this April 1, 1934 NYT article. 

There is no doubt that during holidays nowadays, when the crowds can reach well over 100,000, there are more Muslims at the Temple Mount than at any time in history.

More Muslims have more opportunities to see their third holiest site under Jewish rule than they ever did under Muslim or British rule.

---

---