Yes, I'm afraid that's what this is. And at the outset, let me admit that I am a hack. Because, what I am about to do is offer my factual opinion, even though I do not have the facts. On this issue, no one really does. So it's hack against hack. And may the best hack win. (In light of Megan McArdle's Insta-linked post, I should add that I do think it's fair to allow that someone who asserts facts he does not have and are not known is a hack. And while I try to distinguish between facts and opinion, when the facts aren't there, even an opinion about the facts comes close to being some form of hackery -- maybe hackery of, say, the third degree....)

I'm often intrigued by hopeless debates over which even the bare facts can't be settled, and one of the most intriguing of these debates involves the history of a building. You might think that the history of a building ought to be verifiable, but such thinking is as is naive as it is logical.

The worst hacks are the ones who get in the way of attempts to establish historical facts.

And that certainly seems to be what has happened in the case of the al Aksa Mosque. When I posted about it before, it was in the context of hopeless debates over history, and I concluded that the mosque was a conversion of an earlier Byzantine Christian church - the Church of St. Mary, which had originally been a conversion of Hadrian's Temple of Jupiter (itself built over the Jewish Temple):

My personal opinion (based on hours and hours of studying this stuff) is that the al Aksa Mosque was most likely an early Islamic conversion of the Byzantine Church of St. Mary, itself a conversion of Hadrian's Temple of Jupiter -- which of course the Romans built on the site of the original temple, to deny Jews access to a holy site which had originally been theirs. Such a place is rich in history and archaeology -- Jewish, Pagan, Christian, Muslim.

Here's Wikipedia:

Umar (c. 581-644), the Muslim caliph who conquered Jerusalem in 637, wanted a place of prayer that does not infringe on nearby Christian and Jewish worship places. That place, to the south of the rock, was developed into a mosque. Sometime between 687-691, Caliph Abd al-Malik built a shrine over the sacred rock, and it was named Qubbat As-Sakhrah, which means "The Dome of the Rock." Some years later, in 709-715, Umayyad caliph al-Walid, son of Abd al-Malik, built, renovated, and expanded the mosque south of the Dome, and at this time called the mosque al-masjid al-aqsa, which means "the farthest mosque".

Here's one Christian view of the history of the site:

Justinian I (527-565) also added to the beauty of the city by many splendid buildings. Of these the most famous was a great basilica dedicated to the Blessed Virgin with a house for pilgrims attached. It stood in the middle of the city, but has now completely disappeared. He also built another great church of the Blessed Virgin at the southern end of the old Temple area (now the Al-aqsa Mosque). The famous mosaic map of Jerusalem discovered at Madaba (Guthe and Palmer, "Die Mosaikkarte von Madeba", 1906) gives an idea of the state of the city in Justinian's time. During this period the See of Jerusalem, like those of Alexandria and Antioch, was troubled continually by the Monophysite schism. Under Juvenal the great crowd of monks who had settled in Palestine broke out into a regular revolution against the government and against the patriarch, whose change of front at Chalcedon they bitterly resented. They set up one of their own number, Theodosius as anti-patriarch. For a short time (in 452) Juvenal had to give way to this person. So also in the other sees of the patriarchate orthodox bishops were expelled and Monophysites (such as Peter the Iberian at Majuma-Gaza) were set up in their place. The Empress Eudocia was at first an avowed Monophysite and helped that party nearly all the time she was in the city. Juvenal fled to Constantinople and implored the help of the emperor (Marcian, 450-457). He returned with a body of soldiers who reinstated him, killed a great number of the monks, and finally took Theodosius, who had fled, prisoner. Theodosius was then kept in prison at Constantinople almost till his death. The disturbance was not finally put down till 453. Eventually the orthodox Abbot Euthymius converted Eudocia, who died in the communion of the Church (c. 460).

[...]

The whole of the Temple area became to Moslems the "illustrious Sanctuary" (Haram-ash-sherif) and was gradually covered with colonnades, minbars (pulpits), and smaller domes. At the south end Justinian's basilica became the "most remote Mosque" (Al-Masjid-al-aqsa, Sura XVII, 1).

This view is echoed by WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah who contends that the Church of Saint Mary was simply remodeled:

Mohammed died in 632 AD. At the time, Jerusalem was a Christian city. It was captured by Khalif Omar six years after Mohammed's death. Prior to the capture, the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian stood on the Temple Mount. There was no mosque in the entire city.

The Dome of the Rock was built in 691. Twenty years later, the Church of Saint Mary was converted into a mosque with the familiar dome on top. It was named Al Aqsa, so it would sound like the "furthest mosque" mentioned in the Koran.

That's the basis of the Islamic claim to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Yet, even some top Israeli officials, if ever so briefly, flirted with the idea of compromising on the Jewish claim to this historic and spiritual epicenter of Judaism in a fanciful bid for peace through appeasement.

Of course, another site provides a timeline which states that the Church of Saint Mary may have been there, but had already been destroyed:

660 CE-Rule of Ummyyads
The Umayyad caliphs, who resided in Damascus and in other towns and townlets of Syria and Erez Israel, shows a keen interest in Jerusalem.
In 684 CE the Ummayyad caliph Abd-al-Malik began to build the Dome of the Rock. Jerusalem extended and rebuilding of the walls and roads during rule of Abd el-Malik. Old wooden El Aksa Mosque constructed in 700 CE and Dome of the Rock built in 684-690 CE. The mosque may have been built on the site of the Byzantine church of Mary, which had been destroyed by the Persians in 614.
746 CE-Earthquake destroys El Aksa mosque

Then there's Dr. Manfred R. Lehmann, deceased. Writing for the Algemeiner Journal, he also contended that the Byzantine church was converted into a mosque:

The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. The name "Omar Mosque" is therefore false. In or around 711, or about 80 years after Mohammed died, Malik's son, Abd El-Wahd - who ruled from 705-715 - reconstructed the Christian- Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the structure as it was, a typical Byzantine "basilica" structure with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular "ship" in the center. All he added was an onion-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He then named it El-Aksa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran.

But are all hacks equal? I'd hate to think that hack archaeologists are busily digging the hell out of whatever might be under al Aksa but this organization protests they are, and that irreparable harm has been done. Meanwhile, the PLO and the PA accuse Israel of tunnelling under al Aksa. Their outrageously false claim is that no Jewish temple ever existed on the site.

Far be it from me to do something as wicked as to call it the al Hacksa Mosque... But I'm almost tempted, because I think the place and its history have been so hacked for so long that we may never, ever know its history.

One thing is clear: it wasn't there (at least, not in mosque form) when Mohammad supposedly flew there and then flew on to heaven atop the flying horse in his dreams.

This kind of stuff makes me hate blogging almost as much as I love it.

(And if I can't hack history, I might as well blog about historical hacks.)

MORE: I hate to make light of serious issues lest I be, um, hack-saud to death, but I think I can stick out my neck and say that this kind of big hack attack goes just a hair too far. (Via Glenn Reynolds, who expressed grammatical concern.)

AND MORE: More here on the invention of Jerusalem's role as "The Third Holiest Site in Islam" by the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini. Plus, an interesting analysis by Emanuel A. Winston called "The Greatest Lie Ever Told About Jerusalem":

Goebbels said that "If the lie is big enough and told often enough, it will be believed."

Yassir Arafat and the Arabs claimed the Holy Jewish Temple Mount and Jerusalem based upon one extraordinarily huge lie told over and over again. Here then is a brief history of the religious war against the Jewish people, the Jewish State of Israel and her 3000 year old Eternal Capital, Jerusalem.

Would be conquerors invariably issue false claims to provide justification for their march to conquest. The more recent call to "Jihad" against the Jews of Israel was first called in 1947 after the U.N. partition in a "Fatwa" (religious ruling) by the Saudis - supposedly to save the Al-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount from the Jews. Thus, Yassir Arafat, with the full support of the Arab Nations, later claimed the Jewish Temple Mount as the third holiest site for Islam - including all of Jerusalem. Therefore, as in the past, this claim has its root in a classic religious war - in addition to other spurious reasons offered.