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The Western Wall, Wailing Wall or Kotel (Hebrew: , translit.: '; Ashkenazic pronunciation: ''Kosel''; (アラビア語:حائط البراق), translit.: ''Ḥā'iṭ Al-Burāq'', translat.: the Buraq Wall, or ''al-Mabka'': the Place of Weeping) is located in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a relatively small segment of the structure which originally composed the western retaining wall of the Second Jewish Temple atop the hill known as the Temple Mount to Jews and Christians, originating in its biblical Hebrew name, Har HaBáyit (הַר הַבַּיִת), lit. "Mount of the House (God )", and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, al-Haram ash-Sharīf (الحرم الشريف). The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism and is the place to which Jews turn during prayer, and the Western Wall is considered holy due to its connection to the Temple. Due to the rabbinic ban on praying on the Mount, the Wall is the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray. The original, natural and irregular-shaped Temple Mount was gradually extended to allow for an ever larger Temple compound to be built at its top. This process was finalised by Herod the Great, who enclosed the Mount with an almost rectangular set of retaining walls, built to support extensive substructures and earth fills needed to give the natural hill a geometrically regular shape. On top of this box-like structure Herod built a vast paved esplanade which surrounded the Temple. Of the four retaining walls, the western one is considered to be closest to the former Temple, which makes it the most sacred site recognised by Judaism outside the former Temple Mount esplanade. Just over half the wall's total height, including its 17 courses located below street level, dates from the end of the Second Temple period, and is commonly believed to have been built around 19 BCE by Herod the Great, although recent excavations indicate that the work was not finished by the time Herod died in 4 BCE. The very large stone blocks of the lower courses are Herodian, the courses of medium-sized stones above them were added during the Umayyad era, while the small stones of the uppermost courses are of more recent date, especially from the Ottoman Period. The term Western Wall and its variations is mostly used in a narrow sense for the section traditionally used by Jews for prayer, and it has also been called the "Wailing Wall", referring to the practice of Jews weeping at the site over the Destruction of the Temples. During the period of Christian Roman Rule over Jerusalem, Jews were completely barred from Jerusalem except to attend Tish Ba'av, the day of national mourning for the Temples, and on this day the Jews would weep at their holy places. The term "Wailing Wall" was thus almost exclusively used by Christians, and was revived in the period of non-Jewish sovereignty between the establishment of British Rule in 1920 and the Six-Day War in 1967. The term "Wailing Wall" is not used by Jews and increasingly many others who consider it derogatory. In a broader sense, the Western Wall can refer to the entire 488 meter-long retaining wall on the western side of the Temple Mount. The classic portion now faces a large plaza in the Jewish Quarter, near the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount, while the rest of the wall is concealed behind structures in the Muslim Quarter, with the small exception of a 25 ft (8 m) section, the so-called Little Western Wall. The segment of the Western retaining wall traditionally used for Jewish liturgy known as the "Western Wall" derives its particular importance to it having never been fully obscured by medieval buildings, and displaying much more of the original Herodian stonework than the "Little Western Wall". In religious terms, the "Little Western Wall" is presumed to be even closer to the Holy of Holies and thus to the "presence of God" (Shechina), and the underground Warren's Gate, which has been out of reach since the 12th century, even more so. The wall has been a site for Jewish prayer and pilgrimage for centuries; the earliest source mentioning this specific site as a place of worship is from the 16th century.〔 The previous sites used by Jews for mourning the destruction of the Temple, during periods when access to the city was prohibited to them, lay to the east, on the Mount of Olives〔 and in the Kidron Valley below it. From the mid-19th century onwards, attempts to purchase rights to the wall and its immediate area were made by various Jews, but none was successful. With the rise of the Zionist movement in the early 20th century, the wall became a source of friction between the Jewish and Muslim communities, the latter being worried that the wall could be used to further Jewish claims to the Temple Mount and thus Jerusalem. During this period outbreaks of violence at the foot of the wall became commonplace, with a particularly deadly riot occurring in 1929 in which 133 Jews were killed and 339 injured. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War the Eastern portion of Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan. Under Jordanian control Jews were completely expelled from the Old City including the Jewish quarter, and Jews were barred from entering the Old City for 19 years, effectively banning Jewish prayer at the site of the Western Wall. This period ended on June 10, 1967, when Israel established sovereignty over the site. Three days after establishing control over the Western Wall site the Moroccan Quarter was bulldozed by Israeli authorities to create space for what is now the Western Wall plaza. ==Etymology== Early Jewish texts referred to a "western wall of the Temple",〔Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah, ch. 2–8〕 but there is doubt whether the texts were referring to the outer, retaining wall called today "the Western Wall", or to the western wall of the actual Temple.〔 The earliest Jewish use of the Hebrew term "ha-kotel ha-ma'aravi", "the Western Wall", as referring to the wall visible today, was by the 11th-century poet Ahimaaz ben Paltiel.〔 The name "Wailing Wall", and descriptions such as "wailing place", appeared regularly in English literature during the 19th century.〔"Wailing Wall" appears, for example, in J.J. Reynolds, ''Jewish Advocate for the Young'' (1859). H. Bonar, ''Days and Nights in the East'' (1866) and J.R. Macduff, ''Memories of Olivet'' (1868), and many later works.〕 The name ''Mur des Lamentations'' was used in French and ''Klagemauer'' in German. This term itself was a translation of the Arabic ''el-Mabka'', or "Place of Weeping", the traditional Arabic term for the wall. This description stemmed from the Jewish practice of coming to the site to mourn and bemoan the destruction of the Temple. At some time in the 19th century, the Arabs began referring to the wall as the al-Buraq Wall. This was based on the tradition that inside the wall was the place where Muhammad tethered his miraculous winged steed, al-Buraq. The tradition on which this is based only states that the Prophet, or the angel Jibra'il (Gabriel), tethered the steed at the gate of the mosque, meaning: at the gate of the Temple Mount. The location of the entry gate identified as the one used by Muhammad varied throughout the centuries, from the eastern and southern walls, to the southwest corner, and finally at the western wall, and specifically at Barclay's Gate immediately adjacent to the "Wailing Place" of the Jews.〔 In Arabic Barclay's Gate is called the Prophet's Gate, Bab an-Nabi, but so is the southern Triple Gate, while the eastern gate located near the Golden Gate was even called Bab al-Buraq, the Gate of al-Buraq (with a second name, Bab al-Jana'iz, meaning Gate of the Funerals).〔Guy Le Strange, ''History of Jerusalem under the Moslems from A.D. 650 to 1500'', Houghton and Mifflin, Boston 1890〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Western Wall」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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