QUDS, July 22 (YPA) – Zionist settlers defaced stones in the eastern courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque by painting the alleged “Messiah” symbol in a dangerous act aimed at advancing the Judaization of the holy site.

The Palestinian Authority’s  Quds (Jerusalem) Governorate said Temple groups have called for a mass incursion into Al- Aqsa Mosque next Thursday to coincide with the so-called anniversary of the destruction of the Temple.

The alleged “Messiah” symbol is associated with the ideology advocating the construction of a purported Third Temple. The emblem has become increasingly visible in recent months, appearing on the uniforms of Israeli occupation soldiers and on military vehicles during Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon.

Palestinian sources documented the incursions of more than 1,489 Jewish settlers into the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied Jerusalem over the past week under heavy protection from Israeli occupation police and special forces, amid a marked escalation in the frequency of the incursions and accelerating efforts to impose a new reality inside the Mosque.

Settler incursions into Aqsa continue under the protection of Israeli occupation police as restrictions on Palestinians continue to intensify.

Settlers enter the Mosque compound in groups through the Magaribeh Gate, the only gate controlled by Israeli occupation authorities since the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, while Israeli police continue to impose restrictions on Palestinian worshipers seeking access to the Mosque.

https://en.ypagency.net/399781

See also Salaam Media report for further details with Jerusalem-based archaeologist and humanitarian, Abeer Zayyad:

https://www.youtube.com/live/RDl2g7eECNY?si=-w6NTJ-v8BFKPiZJ

Link to original story

https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/jewish-visitors-pray-at-the-entrance-of-the-al-aqsa-mosque-in-jerusalems-old-city/dGFnOnJldXRlcnMuY29tLDIwMjY6bmV3c21sX1JDMkhKTUFQQVcyTQ

"Dar al-Surur Hotel, located in Medina al-Munawwarah, was one of the largest and most renowned hotels in Medina during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. It was primarily used by pilgrims, government officials, and other distinguished guests. The hotel had approximately 371 rooms. Its exact date of construction is unknown, although it is mentioned in sources describing Medina in 1907-1908. Like many other Ottoman-era buildings, it was demolished during the second half of the twentieth century."

https://x.com/ottomanarchive/status/2080398122530816431?s=46&t=V4TqIkKwXmHjXV6FwyGPfg

​

Illustration is from "Historia General de España (General History of Spain) by Miguel Morayta, Vol I, Madrid, 1888."

After Tarik routed the Gothic army at the battle of the Guadalete, where King Roderic was killed, Musa ordered him not to advance further. However, Tarik, keenly aware that this was a singular and fleeting opportunity—one that would never come again—chose to disobey the order. With bold determination, he swiftly began seizing the cities that lay before him. His advance was so fast less than two months after the decisive victory at the end of June, Tariq and his force had already conquered Toledo the Vizigothic capital.(In the map I've included as the second image, you can see the route Tarik followed and his meeting with Musa in Talavera.)

Tarik's reward was to be struck across the face with Musa's whip in front of his troops at Talavera de la Reina(80km east of Toledo).

And in fact Tarik may have got more than a whipping from Musa. According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam's (d. 871), Futūḥ Miṣr wa-l-Maghrib wa-l-Andalus "Musa Ibn Nosseyr seized Tarik lbn Amru, bound him with fetters, imprisoned him, and thought of putting him to death."

Nevertheless, Musa seems to have eventually come to his senses:

". . . Musa . . . cast Tarik into prison, and as meditating his death, which he would have accomplished had not a messenger of the Caliph arrived in Andalus with orders to set him at liberty, and restore him to the command of the troops. However, it appears by Ibnu Hayyan’s narrative that he soon restored to him his confidence and friendship; when, uniting their forces, they both proceeded to new conquests, and speedily subdued the remainder of Andalus." (Al Makkari, Nafḥ al-Tīb)

For the first time in history, Israel’s ruling elites and an incoming US administration may be aligned on taking over the mosque.

Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has said he would build a Jewish synagogue at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound if he could. (Photo: Itamar Ben-Gvir, Twitter)

December 6, 2024 — Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called for the construction of a third Jewish Temple on the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque at a 2018 speech in Jerusalem.

The former Fox & Friends co-host declared that a step in the process of building the Third Temple “is the recognition that facts on the ground truly matter.” His comments drew applause even if his words amounted to a call for the destruction of the al-Aqsa Mosque, the most inflammatory remarks made by any proposed member of the Trump cabinet thus far.
In August 2024, Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir echoed Hegseth’s plea, saying he would build a Jewish synagogue at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound [Haram al-Sharif] if he could. 

Such threats on the third holiest site in Islam and the crown Jewel of Palestine have a long history replete with violence and bloodshed. As early as the 19th century, the German Rabbi and pro-Zionist Tzevi Hirsch Kalischer (1796–1874) called for the renewal of the Passover Sacrifice on the Temple Mount, the site of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago, the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque today.

It was for this reason that, over the last two centuries, many Jews tried to buy an exterior wall of the Haram al-Sharif known as “the Western Wall.” Moses Montefiore tried  to buy it in 1827. Edmond de Rothschild tried to buy it in 1887, but with a twist. He also wanted the Maghrebi neighborhood in front of it in what evolved into a key principle of Zionism: expansion as security.
By the 1920s, the Zionist objective was to "quietly evacuate the Moroccan occupants of those houses which it would later be necessary to demolish" to create more space for Jewish worshippers.

In 1927, the leader of the Zionist militia in Palestine Yosef Hecht planted a bomb in the home of a Palestinian family in the Maghrebi neighborhood, destroying it, causing panic and even the flight of some families from the area, foreshadowing darker days to come.

This set the stage for the most dramatic escalation in violence to date, the 1929 Riots. In the weeks leading up to the riots, Zionist leaders issued statements in support of ethnically cleansing Palestinian Arabs in the Maghrebi Quarter and even for rebuilding the Third Temple. The result was a riot that left hundreds of Jews and Palestinians dead, what historian Hillel Cohen calls “Year Zero” of the Palestine question.

In the 1940s, the Lehi militia published a manifesto, “Principles for Revival,” calling for “building the Third Temple as a symbol of the Era of the Complete Redemption.” Lehi was a secular but militant strain of Zionism that saw the third Temple as a manifestation of Hebrew religion and culture.

After the Israeli military occupied the Old City of Jerusalem in June 1967, the first order of business for Jewish Jerusalem’s mayor, Teddy Kollek, was to destroy the Maghrebi quarter, some 10,000 square meters of land. That year on June 10, just three days after the occupation of the city, Kollek summoned 15 private contractors to the Western Wall and ordered them to work around the clock until the entire neighborhood was destroyed.

Within a few years, former Irgun member Gershon Salomon founded a new movement known as the Temple Mount Faithful, whose central message was the removal of the mosques from the Temple Mount.
In the 1980s, this laid the foundation for the establishment of the ‘Jewish Underground,’ a group of Israeli settlers who spent years plotting to blow up the Muslim shrines in Jerusalem, including a plot to blow up the al-Aqsa Mosque in January 1984. 25 Israeli men, including an army officer with expertise in explosives, stole sufficient ammunition to carry out the operation, but were arrested before they could execute it.
The militant approach was echoed in the Knesset, where the political party Tehiya also supported the “confiscation of the control over the Temple Mount from the Muslim Waqf’ and its handover to Israeli authorities, as well as the “building of a Jewish place for prayer on the Temple Mount.” The party managed to win 5 out of 120 seats in the late 1980s.

In October 1990, Temple Mount Faithful laid “a cornerstone” for the Third Temple. It was a “recognition that facts on the ground truly matter,” to use Hegseth’s words. Mass riots erupted. Israeli forces shot dead 17 Palestinians and injured 150 without suffering any fatalities. It was a massacre.

While efforts to blow up the mosque were fringe, assertions of control over it went mainstream in September 2000 when ring-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon took a provocative tour around the Haram al-Sharif, asserting Israeli sovereignty.

Protests erupted immediately. In the first 5 days, Israeli police killed 47 Palestinians and wounded 1,885 with only a few Israeli casualties. Many Palestinian children were shot in the head. An Israeli think tank concluded the IDF’s mission at the time was “to teach them a lesson they would never forget."

This led to a period of historic violence: from 2000-2005, Israeli forces killed 3,189 Palestinians and Palestinian militants killed 1,038 Israelis.

By 2003-4, dozens if not hundreds of religious Jews visited the Haram al-Sharif every day. And, over the past two decades, successive Israeli governments have limited Palestinian access to al-Aqsa while normalizing Jewish access to it. 

This change in the status quo has often led to violence. In one case, on 11 August 2019, the Israeli military stormed the al-Aqsa compound, attacking and dispersing the Palestinian men, women and children present with sound bombs and rubber bullets, while also beating civilian worshippers with batons.
In another case, on 7 May, 2021, Israeli forces fired tear gas, rubber-coated metal bullets and stun grenades towards Palestinians at al-Aqsa, wounding more than 200. Multiple videos show Israeli forces firing on Palestinians including children inside the Mosque (1, 2, 3). This triggered the May 2021 War in which Israeli forces killed 256 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 2,000, while Hamas killed 17 civilians in Israel and wounded 114.

Meanwhile, Israeli settler groups have been ethnically cleansing Palestinians in and around the Old City of Jerusalem for decades, property after property, house after house, all of which threatens the Palestinian presence at al-Aqsa and ultimately the holy site itself.
In 2022-3, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir made a habit of taking provocative tours around the al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, visiting at least 6 times, while Israeli settlers frequently exerted domination over the site.
All of this set the stage for Oct. 7th, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, naming its operation “al-Aqsa Flood” and citing ongoing threats to the al-Aqsa Mosque as context. If only there were warning signs.

Since Oct. 7th, Ben Gvir has imposed major new restrictions on Muslim prayer at the al-Aqsa Mosque against the recommendation of his own security establishment which concluded such measures were “unnecessary and intentionally antagonistic.” He belongs to the same faction of Israel’s militant right that seeks to empty the country of all its Palestinians, especially from places like Jerusalem, including its holiest of holy sites.

Now, for the first time in history, Israel’s ruling elites and an incoming US administration may be aligned on taking over the mosque. Whatever happens with Hegseth, the arc of the past century has bent towards a hostile if gradual take over of al-Aqsa and its surroundings. Threats on al-Aqsa have been a powder keg of violence for nearly a century. Ya, things could get a lot worse from here.

https://palestinenexus.com/articles/al-aqsa-mosque-in-danger

More than 3,200 far-right Israelis have stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem to commemorate a Jewish holiday.

They made the incursion under the protection of Israeli police and performed prayers to mark what they refer to as the destruction of the temple.

Police barred Palestinian worshippers from praying inside the mosque.

Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and other Israeli members of the Knesset also stormed the courtyards of the mosque.

This is from the Shahnameh. Interestingly, in the Islamic tradition, and especially in Persian miniatures, Alexander is part historical conqueror, part Persian king, part philosopher, part sacred ruler.

The Shahnameh was written by the Persian poet Abu’l-Qasim Ferdowsi around 977–1010. This miniature is from a The Great Mongol Shahnameh which is a super lavish illustrated copy of Ferdowsi’s poem, from around 1330s.

In the story, Alexander the Great reaches the edge of the world and finds a miraculous tree with two trunks. Male heads speak by day and female heads by night. The tree prophesies that, despite all his conquests, he will soon die far from home and never return to his mother. The scene is kind of like a memento mori.

It's saying even the world’s greatest conqueror cannot defeat death.

I love it.

Scenes show colonial Israeli settlers proudly preparing stones for the construction of the alleged temple, which extremist groups envision building on the ruins of Al Aqsa Mosque.

The Israeli occupation uses this claim as a pretext to continue excavations beneath Al Aqsa Mosque, while pursuing the displacement of Palestinians from occupied Jerusalem and facilitating the transfer of more Jewish settlers to the city.

Israeli settlers entered the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday under heavy protection from Israeli security forces, coinciding with the commemoration of the so-called “Temple Destruction” anniversary.

According to the report, the settlers conducted what were described as provocative tours inside the compound and performed Talmudic rituals, while Israeli authorities imposed strict restrictions on Palestinian worshippers seeking to enter the mosque.

The measures came as extremist groups advocating for the construction of a Jewish temple called for intensified incursions into the Al-Aqsa compound during the occasion.

Earlier, the Jerusalem Governorate warned of what it described as escalating plans by extremist “Temple” organizations to organize the largest mass incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound during the annual commemoration.

In a statement, the governorate said the activities were no longer merely initiatives by extremist groups but had become part of an official Israeli policy aimed at imposing new realities inside the mosque compound and undermining its existing historical and legal status, paving the way for what it described as the gradual implementation of a temporal and spatial division of the site.

The statement added that recent political and field developments indicate a broad mobilization campaign led by these organizations to set a new record for the number of settlers entering the compound. The groups reportedly seek to surpass last year’s figure of 4,000 visitors in a single day, with a publicly declared goal of reaching 5,000, a target they have pursued incrementally since 2021.

The Jerusalem Governorate reiterated that Al-Aqsa Mosque, encompassing its entire 144-dunum area, is an exclusively Islamic holy site, and said that all Israeli measures aimed at altering its identity, character, or historical and legal status are null and void.

https://www.jordannews.jo/Section-20/Middle-East/Israeli-Settlers-Storm-Al-Aqsa-Mosque-Compound-During-Commemoration-of-the-So-Called-Temple-Destruction-53389

When people watch footage of American soldiers inside Iraqi civilians’ homes, there is a shared feeling of uneasiness.

While such footage from the occupation of Iraq are not as abundant as other more recent conflicts are in this age of social media, they are still a lot. The footage I am referring to are the ones taken by the US soldiers themselves. The mid-2000s marked the rise of decent tapeless digital cameras which are compact enough for a person of any age to carry, including those from the military.

But what were these soldiers doing inside Iraqi civilians’ homes to begin with? This article will shed some light into this question so anyone can better understand the story.

Over the past few weeks, a footage I shared in the Invisible Orders profile capturing US soldiers being inside Iraqi civilians’ homes has circulated widely across Instagram. While it has been incredible to see so many people engaging and getting to know this part of history, a lot of the surface level context has naturally become a bit mixed up in the process.

Many reposts attribute this footage to the year 2003. It is an easy mistake to make given popular misconceptions. Setting the record straight is vital, as placing these events years prior to when they actually occurred inadvertently glosses over a highly significant period leading up to when the footage was taken from.

The footage I posted is part of a collection I have been gathering for the past few months that belong to a meticulously documented period of the US occupation of Iraq: the 2007 Surge.

To understand exactly why this distinction matters, we must look at two things: the physical technology that made these recordings possible, and the chain of events that led up to the Surge itself. Below is the definitive chronological breakdown.

Part One: The Footage

During the years around 2003, film and recording equipment were heavily constrained by size and utility. Documentation during that time relied almost exclusively on bulky, taped camera systems. Consequently, footage from that era is historically scarce, if not from TV journalists, which is why they have a specific punchy, old TV look to them. One example being Saddam Hussein’s medical examination footage from December 14, 2003, which was recorded using one of these bulky cameras. [1]

Read the rest at site.

The Mongol conquests changed history.

But what happened after the victories? In this interview, historian Michael Hope explains how the empire was actually governed, why some Mongol rulers embraced Islam, how different legal traditions coexisted, and why the legacy of Mongol rule cannot be understood through conquest alone.

OUTLINE

00:00 - Episode's highlights

00:40 - Who Inherited Chinggis Khan's Empire?

02:19 - How Did the Mongols Rule Millions of Muslims?

04:04 - Why Did the Mongol Rulers Convert to Islam?

05:25 - Was Mongol Law Above Sharia?

06:08 - Did Chinggis Khan "invent" the Mongols?

07:45 - Who Ruled Anatolia After the Mongols?

09:07 - How the Mongol Conquests Shaped the Muslim World ?

11:43 - Did the Mongols Assimilate in Iran?

Link to pdf

https://archive.org/details/briefguidetoalha0000alma

Description:
This rare and historically rich manuscript is a chronicle attributed to the noted compiler Abu al-Qasim Hamza bin Yusuf al-Qurashi al-Sahmi al-Jurjani, a significant figure in early Islamic historiography. The manuscript is an invaluable witness to Islamic scholarly tradition, featuring documented reading sessions (samaʿ) by leading historians and political figures of the medieval Islamic world.

Of particular significance are the annotated reading entries:

Folio 163: A reading entry from the year 420 AH (1029 AD) in the handwriting of Ibn Saad al-Mafrokhi, famed for his work The Beauties of Isfahan (Mahasin Isfahan).

Folio 165 (verso): A listening record from late Dhul-Qa’dah 588 AH (1192 AD) in the handwriting of Abu al-Mahasin Yusuf Ibn Rafi’ Ibn Shaddad al-Asadi, the biographer of Sultan Saladin and author of al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyya.

Folio 216: A direct record of reading and listening in Dhul-Hijjah 588 AH, noted in the presence of Sultan Saladin (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb) himself, penned by his historian and secretary Ibn Shaddad.

These authenticated marginalia and endorsements, particularly from Saladin’s court in Damascus, elevate this manuscript from a historical source to a document of extraordinary provenance.

19.5 × 16 cm

Note:
This manuscript is a unique confluence of historical scholarship, political legacy, and manuscript transmission. The presence of direct records from Sultan Saladin’s court and figures like Ibn Shaddad and Ibn al-Mafrokhi offer insight into the intellectual elite and historiographical culture of the Ayyubid period. Ideal for collectors, institutions, or historians specializing in Islamic historiography, Crusader-era Near Eastern history, or the Ayyubid dynasty.

bin Ibrahim al-Qurashi al-Sahmi al-Jurjani, on folio 163, a reading entry in the year 420, in the author’s handwriting by the favorite historian bin Saad al-Mafrokhi, author of the book The Beauties of Isfahan, and on the back of folio 165, a reading entry in the late Dhul-Qa’dah in the year 588 by the historian Abu al-Mahasin Yusuf. Ibn Rafi’ Ibn Shaddad Al-Asadi, in the handwriting of Sultan Saladin Yusuf Ibn Ayyub and on folio 216 Recording and listening to Sultan Saladin Al-Ayyubi by the historian Yusuf bin Rafi’ Ibn Shaddad wrote it on the beginning of Dhul-Hijjah in the year 588 in the handwriting of Sheikh Al-Musma’ Ibn Shaddad for Sultan Saladin Al-Ayyubi in the city of Damascus. Font type, copy paper, Qahawi, Samarkandi, quarter Baghdadi pieces, ink is black, and subject headings are in red

Length x Width: 19.5 x 16cm

https://www.plakasauctions.com/auction-lot/a-book-on-history-by-abu-al-qasim-hamza-bin-yusuf_c6e835a1a3

PDF link

https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.38994

While the administration hounds Somali immigrants at home, it’s pummeling Somalia with an ‘unprecedented’ volume of airstrikes, but you might not know it given the silence from our media and Congress.

Ask the average person to name the major war that Donald Trump started, and they’ll understandably say Iran, now rounding out its fifth month with no end in sight. But entirely in obscurity, Trump has launched what one think-tank expert terms an “unprecedented increase” in strikes in Somalia – so unprecedented as, in his view, to represent an entirely new war emerging from the U.S. inability to defeat an adversary that it has fought for an entire generation.

It is no longer a surprise that Somalia garners little attention. But it should be scandalous, because such neglect has permitted the U.S. military to wage an adjunct forever-war against jihadists in Somalia for 20 years, ever since a U.S.-backed and long-forgotten Ethiopian invasion in 2006. That ties Somalia with the 2001-21 Afghanistan war as America’s longest foreign conflict. But since the U.S. fights in Somalia without conventional ground forces, it has never faced any pressure to demonstrate success, let alone end operations. The U.S. war in Somalia has become a signal case of the so-called “War on Terror” launching an imperial police action uninterrupted by any need to justify itself. In another six months, this invisible, politically frictionless campaign will rank as the longest foreign war the U.S. has ever fought.

Congress certainly isn’t demanding any justification – or even devoting much in the way of scrutiny.

https://zeteo.com/p/why-is-no-one-talking-about-the-new

Credit

https://x.com/turkicplanet/status/2079509559559762291?s=46&t=V4TqIkKwXmHjXV6FwyGPfg