Because of its nearness to the site of the Bet Mikdash, the Kotel has become the most hallowed spot in Jewish religious and national consciousness and tradition.
The Ottoman ruler Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the second half of the sixteenth century gave the Jews full exclusive rights to the Kotel as a Jewish holy place of worship. The prayer area was established along a twenty two metre section of the wall with a width of three metres which was closed off by a wall running parallel to the Kotel. The area was paved and this small enclosure became the sacred prayer site of the Jewish people, and a place to mourn the destruction of the Temples.
Up to 1967 a stone-paved alley three metres wide existed in front of the Kotel. It was bordered on its west side by a slum area, the Moghrabi Quarter, established in the 14th century. As it is seen today, it is about 50 metres long and 20 metres high. However the wall extends much deeper into the earth. Most of the western wall which was about 485 metres long, is hidden by the buildings adjoining it.
The tiers of large stones in the Kotel date from the second century BCE (over 2000 years ago), though its upper sections were added at a later date. Above ground, the Kotel has 24 rows/layers of stones of different dressing (chiselling and shaping) and decreasing in size and age.
Excavations in 1867 revealed that 19 more rows lay buried underground which reach down to a paved road which ran along the foot of the wall. Underneath this paved road are another nine layers which constituted the foundations of the wall and which have never been uncovered.
In 1968 the ground in front of the Kotel was excavated to reveal two of the buried rows of stone. Above ground there are seven layers of huge Herodian stones from the second Temple era. They are dressed at the edges only. Above these are four layers of smaller, plainly dressed stones from the Roman or Byzantine periods. The upper stones were constructed from the Arab period (seventh century) onward, and are probably Mamluk. The small stones in the upper section of the wall were added by Sir Moses Montefiore in an attempt to repair the wall. However it is not easy to distinguish exactly who added what to the original wall as a similar style of construction was used over many centuries.
The lower stones are of immense dimensions over one metre in height and about three metres long but some are as long as twelve metres and weighing over 100 tons They were probably quarried at the Cave of Zedekiah near the Damascus Gate. This wall has withstood repeated earthquakes over the centuries.
The wall became a permanent feature in Jewish tradition about 1520CE. From then on, all literary sources describe it as a place of assembly and prayer for Jews. Some people write notes or prayers and put them in the cracks between the stones. The lower area near the Kotel is the prayer area, where people pray 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
From December 1947 until the third day of the Six Day War, June 7th 1967, Jews were not able to approach the Kotel. After the Six day War the buildings placed against the Kotel were removed and the entire area in front of it was cleared, levelled and converted into a large paved open space. The area was partitioned off; one third is reserved for women and two thirds for men. The Kotel once more became a place of pilgrimage and prayer for Jews from all over the world.
On the first day of Shavuot after the Six Day War, a quarter of a million Jews swarmed to the Wall, for the first time in 20 years.
