Thread by @MichaelDPress

I think headlines like this from yesterday caused a lot of confusion.
(No, the famous building built at the beginning of the 8th century was not on fire.)
It might be helpful to clarify some terminology, and a possible source of the confusion:
newsweek.com/notre-dame-fir…

Here is a plan of the Temple Mount; the historic Arabic name that scholarly & journalistic sources in the West generally give for it is al-Ḥaram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary.
Note the Dome of the Rock is near the center
(from Guy Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, 1890)

The building that scholarly and news sources in the West generally call al-Aqṣa mosque is close to the center of the south wall, at point O (called "Aksa" here in transliteration typical of the 19th century).

What was actually on fire yesterday (as specified even in the Newsweek article above) is a guard room adjacent to what was historically called Solomon's Stables and today known as the Marwani Mosque or Marwani Prayer Room (at point W)

For those unfamiliar, or as a reminder: "Solomon's Stables" is a very old (medieval?) underground structure at the southeast corner of the Temple Mount compound.
Here is an early 20th-century view
(Matson Collection via Library of Congress)
loc.gov/pictures/item/…

Two decades ago the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf renovated this building to open it as an additional prayer space in the compound.
This involved highly controversial removal of dirt by bulldozer to create a new entrance -- the stairway seen here in 2006:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marw…

This dirt removal is the basis for the later creation of the Temple Mount Sifting Project.
For some background on this it might be worth looking at a post I wrote in 2015 here:
textualcultures.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-king…

The confusion: While we scholars & journalists in the West use the Arabic al-Haram al-Sharif for the Temple Mount, Palestinians today tend to refer to the entire compound as al-Aqsa, even as "al-Aqsa Mosque" (since they consider the entire compound a giant mosque).

The specific building *in* that compound that we scholars & journalists call "al-Aqsa" is widely called by Palestinians today the "Qibli" mosque
"Qibla" refers to the direction of prayer for Muslims (that is, Mecca) -- south of Jerusalem, so "qibli" means southern.

So, to recap:
Common Palestinian (and broader Arab/Muslim?) usage today refers to this entire compound, the Temple Mount, as al-Aqsa.
They call the building marked "Aksa" at point O al-Qibli mosque.
The building on fire was a guard room at the Marwani mosque, at point W.

I've sensed a potential problem here for a while -- I've tried to avoid confusion by using the standard Western terms since that's who I'm usually talking to.
But it's important to be clear about terms, including current usage.
This may be behind some of yesterday's confusion.