History, then expectation

Abraham is told to go 'to the land of Moriah'. Chronicles later names the Temple's mountain 'Mount Moriah'; Rambam records the tradition that the altar stands where Isaac was bound.

'Let them make Me a sanctuary.' A portable sanctuary built to a revealed pattern, filled with the cloud of glory.

The Mishkan stood fourteen years at Gilgal, then in a stone structure roofed with its curtains at Shiloh. Hannah prayed there.

After Shiloh was destroyed, sanctuaries at Nov and Givon for fifty-seven years.

David buys the threshing floor of Araunah and builds an altar: 'This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of burnt-offering for Israel.'

Begun 'in the four hundred and eightieth year' after the Exodus. At its dedication the cloud fills the House, and Solomon prays that even the foreigner be heard.

Nebuchadnezzar's army burns the House. Modern chronology and the traditional rabbinic reckoning differ by about 165 years for the Persian period; the site shows both.

Returnees rebuild. Elders who had seen the First House weep; others shout for joy. It is finished in Adar, in Darius's sixth year.

After Greek rule desecrates the altar, the Hasmoneans store its defiled stones in a chamber and repair thirteen breaches in the soreg.

Herod rebuilds on a vast expanded platform. The Talmud remembers its beauty; Jewish tradition does not centre Temple identity on him.

The Temple burns. The Arch of Titus in Rome shows its Menorah carried in triumph.

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai enacts practices 'in memory of the Temple', such as taking the lulav all seven days everywhere.

The Bar Kochba revolt ends. The Mishnah adds these to the calamities of the ninth of Av.

In every land, synagogues face Jerusalem; the Amidah asks for the return of the service; Tisha B'Av is kept as a day of mourning.

The Dome of the Rock and, later, the al-Aqsa mosque are built on the platform, which Muslims call the Haram al-Sharif. They remain sacred to Muslims today.

The Ottoman walls that surround the Old City today are built.

Since 1967 Israel has controlled the Old City. The Temple Mount is administered by the Islamic Waqf under long-standing arrangements known as the status quo. Its status is politically sensitive; this site explains Jewish texts and does not advocate action there.