The Dome of the Prophet also known as the Dome of Gabriel (Qubbat Jibril) is a free-standing dome

Dome

A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....

 in the northern Temple Mount

Temple Mount

The Temple Mount, known in Hebrew as , and in Arabic as the Haram Ash-Sharif , is one of the most important religious sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It has been used as a religious site for thousands of years...

 (Haram ash-Sharif) in Jerusalem that serves as a symbolic monument rather than a religious building. It is a part of the terrace of the Dome of the Rock

Dome of the Rock

The Dome of the Rock is a shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. The structure has been refurbished many times since its initial completion in 691 CE at the order of Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik...

 and is one of three Ottoman-built free-standing domes in the Temple Mount vicinity.

History

Originally, the Dome of the Prophet was built in 1538 by Muhammad Bey, Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 Governor of Jerusalem. However, it was restored in 1620 on the orders of Farruk Bey, the succeeding Governor of Jerusalem and completed during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman II

Suleiman II

Suleiman II was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1687 to 1691...

. The dome today mostly reflects the 1620 restoration. The dome is a commemoration of the Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic prophet Muhammad

Muhammad

Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

. Further additions were made to the dome in 1845.

Several Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 writers, most notably al-Suyuti

Al-Suyuti

Jalaluddin Al-Suyuti also known as Ibn al-Kutub was an Egyptian writer, religious scholar, juristic expert and teacher whose works deal with a wide variety of subjects in Islamic theology. He was precocious and was already a teacher in 1462. In 1486, he was appointed to a chair in the mosque of...

, claimed that the site of the dome is where Muhammad led the prophet

Prophet

In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...

s and angel

Angel

Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...

s in prayer on the night of Isra and Mir'aj before ascending to Heaven

Jannah

Jannah , is the Islamic conception of paradise. The Arabic word Jannah is a shortened version meaning simply "Garden". According to Islamic eschatology, after death, one will reside in the grave until the appointed resurrection on . Muslims believe that the treatment of the individual in the life...

. Endowment documents from the Ottoman period indicate that a portion of the endowment of the al-Aqsa Mosque

Al-Aqsa Mosque

Al-Aqsa Mosque also known as al-Aqsa, is the third holiest site in Sunni Islam and is located in the Old City of Jerusalem...

 was dedicated to maintain the lighting of an oil-lamp in the Dome of the Prophet each night.

Architecture

The Dome of the Prophet's octagonal structure is built atop eight gray marble columns. The dome is hemispherical and is supported by pointed arches decorated with red, black and white stones. The ancient mihrab

Mihrab

A mihrab is semicircular niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the qibla; that is, the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca and hence the direction that Muslims should face when praying...

is made of a white marble slab embedded in the floor and surrounded by red-colored stones and subsequently delimited by a low wall, that traditionally opened in the north to allow entrance of Muslim worshipers heading southward to Mecca

Mecca

Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...

 for the Hajj

Hajj

The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...

.

The dome is much smaller than the other free-standing domes in the vicinity, being no larger than the entrance to the Dome of the Rock structure.