Ruins of mosque from Islam’s earliest decades found in Israel: Archaeologists

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologists claim to have found the remnants of an early mosque believed to date to the earliest decades of Islam during an excavation in the northern city of Tiberias in Israel.

The mosque’s foundations point to its construction roughly a generation after the death of Prophet Muhammad. The mosque was built around 670 AD.

Katia Cytryn-Silverman, a specialist in Islamic archaeology at Hebrew University who heads the dig, “We know about many early mosques that were founded right in the beginning of the Islamic period. Excavating the Tiberian mosque allows a rare chance to study the architecture of Muslim prayer houses in their infancy and indicates a tolerance for other faiths by early Islamic leaders. ”

As reported by AP news, Other mosques dating from around the same time, such as the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, the Great Mosque of Damascus, and Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, are still in use today and cannot be tampered with by archaeologists.