Masjid al-Aqsa, the Farthest Mosque, is the third holiest site in Islam, after the Sacred Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah. The name covers the whole walled sanctuary on the hill that Jews call the Temple Mount, with the Dome of the Rock and the congregational mosque at its southern end, the Qibli Mosque.
The Night Journey
The Qur’an names the mosque in the first verse of the chapter of the Night Journey:
سُبْحَـٰنَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَسْرَىٰ بِعَبْدِهِۦ لَيْلًا مِّنَ ٱلْمَسْجِدِ ٱلْحَرَامِ إِلَى ٱلْمَسْجِدِ ٱلْأَقْصَا ٱلَّذِى بَـٰرَكْنَا حَوْلَهُۥ لِنُرِيَهُۥ مِنْ ءَايَـٰتِنَآ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلسَّمِيعُ ٱلْبَصِيرُ ١
Exalted is He who took His Servant [i.e., Prophet Muḥammad (ﷺ)] by night from al-Masjid al-Ḥarām to al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him of Our signs. Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
Qur’an 17:11
Muslims hold that the Prophet was carried by night from Makkah to Jerusalem, led the earlier prophets in prayer there, and ascended through the heavens, the Miʿrāj (ٱلْمِعْرَاج, the ascension), where the five daily prayers were prescribed.
Masjid al-Aqsa, the first qibla
For sixteen or seventeen months after the emigration to Madinah, the Muslims prayed facing Jerusalem, before the Qur’an turned them toward the Kaaba.2 The Prophet named it among the three mosques to which a journey may be made for the sake of prayer: the Sacred Mosque, his own mosque and al-Aqsa.3
A history of the sanctuary
The caliph ʿUmar received the surrender of Jerusalem in 637 or 638 and had the site, then a ruin, cleared for prayer. The caliph ʿAbd al-Malik completed the Dome of the Rock in 691 or 692, and his son al-Walid built the first great congregational mosque on the southern side early in the eighth century.4 The Crusaders who took Jerusalem in 1099 turned the mosque into a palace and the headquarters of the Templars; Saladin restored it to Muslim worship in 1187.
The verse explains the place of Masjid al-Aqsa in Muslim hearts. God Himself named it, called its surroundings blessed, and made it the stage of the Prophet’s journey, so that the house of prayer of the earlier prophets is joined to the House that Abraham built in Makkah. Muslims who pray there pray where, on their belief, all the prophets once prayed together behind Muhammad.
Further reading: Jerusalem in three traditions, The Kaaba, Jerusalem.
Notes
- Qur’an 17:1, trans. Saheeh International; Arabic text from Quran.com. ↩
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 399; Qur’an 2:144. ↩
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1189. ↩
- Oleg Grabar, The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). ↩