- the Rock
- the rock the building stands upon, in the heart of the sanctuary
- Abd al-Malik
- the Umayyad caliph who raised it over the Rock in the year 691
- 691
- the building year under the fifth Umayyad caliph, Abd al-Malik
- the Noble Sanctuary
- the sanctuary it stands in with al-Aqsa, on the mount of Jerusalem
- the Umayyads
- the dynasty that built it in Islam's very first age
- the mosaics
- its ancient glass mosaics, which have survived since its building to this day
- the Kufic
- the early Arabic script its famous inscriptions were written in
- the Iznik
- its Ottoman tiles, which Sultan Suleiman the Lawgiver restored in his era
- Jerusalem
- its city, which has kept it since the Islamic conquest until today
- the golden dome
- its golden dome, seen from afar above the city's walls
- the octagon
- its unique eightfold shape, unlike anything else in Islamic architecture
- the inscription
- its Kufic text — the oldest surviving inscription in any Islamic building
