One of the earliest mosques unearthed in Israel

TEL AVIV: One of the earliest mosques has been unearthed beside the Sea of Galilee. It was built around a generation after Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), making it one of the oldest mosques.

The remains of the ancient mosque have been unearthed in Israel in a find that archaeologists say indicates historically harmonious relations among Muslims, Christians, Jews and Samaritans.

Dr Katia Cytryn-Silverman, a specialist with the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, oversees the dig site in the city of Tiberias, just south of the Sea of Galilee, also called Lake Tiberias, Kinneret, or Kinnereth.

Scholars previously thought the area centered on an old marketplace, according to Haaretz. But investigating further, Cytryn-Silverman's team found it to be the remains of an 8th-century mosque - and then, below that, an even older one dating back to the 7th century, the newspaper reported. Researchers figured out the time in which the mosque was in use by examining detritus like coins and pottery fragments on-site, it reported.

Other similarly-aged ancient mosques such as the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah or the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem are in present-day use and cannot be excavated for archeological study. The Tiberias Mosque was built during a time when the Islamic empire was spreading across the Levant and Mesopotamia, roughly akin to what is today referred to as the Middle East.