The Qur’an contains exactly one ayah that names a specific mosque other than the Sacred Mosque in Mecca. It is the very first ayah of the 17th surah — Surah al-Isra — and the mosque it names is al-Masjid al-Aqsa, “the farthest mosque.” One ayah, one night journey — and from that single, almost pinpoint reference unfolded the entire Islamic tradition of relating to Jerusalem: the first qiblah, the third sanctuary, the destination of the Isra and the launch point of the Mi’raj.
This article is a survey of what al-Aqsa means in classical Islamic theology and history. Not modern politics — that’s not here. Only the Qur’an, hadith, early tafsirs, military and architectural history, and how Muslim scholars have understood the status of this mosque across fourteen centuries. Without idealization, without propaganda, and without modernist reconstructions.
A technical clarification right at the start, because Muslims themselves often get this wrong. Al-Masjid al-Aqsa in classical Islamic usage is not one specific building. It is the entire al-Haram ash-Sharif, the “Noble Sanctuary” — the vast walled platform in the southeastern part of the Old City of Jerusalem, roughly 144,000 square meters in area (about 14.4 hectares).
Within this platform stand:
Here’s the point: in classical fiqh and the consensus of scholars, the entire walled compound is al-Masjid al-Aqsa. Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Kathir, al-Qurtubi, an-Nawawi all reason about it as a single space. This matters because many Qur’anic and hadith references to “al-Aqsa” are referring to the whole sanctuary, not just the silver-domed building.
The silver-domed building that today is commonly called “Al-Aqsa Mosque” is al-Jami’ al-Qibli — the “Qibli Congregational Mosque” — because it sits on the southern (qibla-facing) side of the platform. Confusing it with the whole of al-Aqsa is widespread, but still a mistake.
Surah al-Isra (17:1) is the only direct mention of al-Aqsa in the Qur’an:
“Glory be to the One who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose surroundings We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs. Indeed, He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.”
This ayah is the foundation of everything Jerusalem means in Islam. It carries several key meanings that scholars unpacked over centuries:
First — “took by night” (asra). The verb implies miraculous transport. According to hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the Prophet ﷺ was carried from Mecca to Jerusalem in a single night on a creature called Buraq. This is the Isra.
Second — “from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque”. This is a direct theological linkage of two sanctuaries, Mecca and Jerusalem. Not Medina — at this point Medina did not yet have a place in Muslim sacred geography. Jerusalem.
Third — “whose surroundings We have blessed.” The verb “barakna” — the tafsirs (at-Tabari, al-Qurtubi, Ibn Kathir) read it this way: the entire Sham (the historical region of Greater Syria — modern Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria) is blessed because dozens of prophets lived there, from Ibrahim to Zakariyya and Yahya (Zechariah and John the Baptist), and because al-Aqsa itself is there.
Fourth — “that We might show him some of Our signs.” This is the bridge to the next stage — the Mi’raj, the ascent.
The Isra itself is the horizontal journey, from Mecca to Jerusalem. The Mi’raj is the vertical one, from al-Aqsa through the seven heavens up to Sidrat al-Muntaha, “the Lote-Tree of the Utmost Boundary,” where the Prophet ﷺ received the final revelation about the five daily prayers.
The hadith give a detailed account in a long narration from Malik ibn Sa’sa’a in Sahih al-Bukhari. According to it, the Prophet ﷺ:
It is on this very night, according to the majority of scholars, that the obligatory prayer (salah) became binding for Muslims. And this prayer was instituted not on earth, but at the moment of ascent, with al-Aqsa as the launch point.
This gives the mosque a very particular theological position: it is the point of contact between the earthly and the heavenly in Islamic cosmology. Not “another mosque,” but the place where the Prophet ﷺ crossed the boundary between worlds.
The question of whether the Isra and Mi’raj were bodily was discussed at length. The majority of Sunni scholars (at-Tabari, Ibn Kathir, an-Nawawi) held that the journey was physical, body and soul, while awake. A minority (including some early scholars like al-Hasan al-Basri in one transmission) allowed that it might have been a vision. The orthodox position is bodily.
One of the most overlooked details: for the first sixteen or seventeen months after the Prophet’s ﷺ migration to Medina, Muslims prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, not Mecca. The Qur’an speaks of this directly in Surah al-Baqarah (2:142–144).
In ayah 2:144:
“We have certainly seen the turning of your face toward the heaven, and We will surely turn you to a qiblah with which you will be pleased. So turn your face toward the Sacred Mosque…”
This change of qiblah — an event of approximately the second year Hijri (around 624 CE) — established Mecca as the direction of prayer. Before that, al-Aqsa was the first qiblah for the Prophet ﷺ and his community. Scholars (Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani in Fath al-Bari, for instance) note that the change of qiblah didn’t lower al-Aqsa’s status; it simply established the Ka’bah’s particular role as the final point. Al-Aqsa retains the title ula al-qiblatayn — “the first of the two qiblahs” — and this title is preserved across the entire classical literature.
That short period matters symbolically: it links the early Muslim community to the long Abrahamic line, in which Jerusalem had already been the center of worship for Jews and Christians.
The hadith collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim record what is known as the hadith of the three mosques. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Do not set out on a journey [for worship] except to three mosques: the Sacred Mosque, my mosque, and al-Masjid al-Aqsa.”
In classical fiqh, this established al-Aqsa as the third sanctuary of Islam after Mecca and Medina. Scholars differed on details of ranking, but not on the fact of inclusion.
Another hadith, transmitted in several collections and frequently cited, speaks of the multiplied reward for prayer in the three primary mosques. Prayer in the Sacred Mosque of Mecca, in various transmissions, is valued as a hundred thousand ordinary prayers; in the Prophet’s ﷺ Mosque in Medina, as a thousand; in al-Aqsa, as five hundred (transmitted in Ibn Majah and others).
These numbers were treated by classical scholars (an-Nawawi, Ibn Hajar) on a hadith-by-hadith basis, with some chains stronger than others. The general hierarchy of the three mosques in fiqh, however, is firmly established.
What stood on this hill before the coming of Islam? It’s worth being sober here, because this subject has accumulated legends in every direction.
In the Islamic tradition, this hill was the site of the Temple of Sulayman (Solomon), and before him the place of prayer of Dawud (David) and earlier prophets. Surah Bani Isra’il (al-Isra) indirectly mentions the destructions of the “first” and “second” house of the Children of Israel, which Islamic tradition often correlates with the destructions of the Jerusalem Temple (586 BCE by the Babylonians and 70 CE by the Romans).
By the time Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab took Jerusalem in 637 (or 638), the platform was in ruin. The Byzantines had used the area as a city dump — partly deliberately, as a religious symbol of the desolation of the Jewish Temple. Early Islamic sources record this — at-Tabari in his Tarikh, al-Baladhuri in Futuh al-Buldan.
So when Umar arrived, he came not to a functioning sanctuary, but to ruins and a refuse heap.
The scene of Umar’s arrival in Jerusalem is among the best-documented events in early Islamic history. By at-Tabari’s account, the caliph arrived in plain clothes, on a camel, and entered the city by an agreement with Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Al-‘Uhda al-‘Umariyyah (“the Umari Covenant”) is the document confirming the safety of life, property, churches, and crosses of the city’s Christians. The text in various recensions is preserved by Ya’qubi, at-Tabari, and others.
When Umar reached al-Sakhrah (the Rock — the same Rock now beneath the Dome), he is said in various accounts to have personally taken part in clearing the area of debris. He then built a simple wooden mosque on the southern part of the platform — where al-Jami’ al-Qibli now stands. This was the first Muslim mosque on the site, and early literature called it Masjid Umar.
Umar’s mosque was modest. Bishop Arculf, who visited Jerusalem around 670, described it as a plain rectangular wooden building able to hold around three thousand worshippers.
About half a century after Umar, Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (Umayyads) built what would become the most recognizable symbol of Jerusalem — the Dome of the Rock (Qubbat as-Sakhrah), completed in 691–692.
A precision matters here: the Dome of the Rock is not, strictly speaking, a mosque. It is a maqam — a sacred structure built over the Rock itself, which tradition associates with the place of the Prophet’s ﷺ ascent during the Mi’raj. It has no minbar, and was not used as the congregational mosque for Friday prayers. It is a memorial sanctuary.
Architecturally, the Dome of the Rock is the earliest surviving monumental building in Islam, and one of the great Byzantine-Islamic synthetic structures. An octagonal plan, mosaics with vegetal ornament, the golden dome (originally the dome was sheathed in lead; the gilding came much later).
Al-Jami’ al-Qibli — what is now commonly called “Al-Aqsa Mosque” — was built or substantially rebuilt by Abd al-Malik’s son, al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik, around 705–715. This was a true congregational mosque, with a minbar, and it joined al-Walid’s other great Umayyad projects alongside the Great Mosque of Damascus.
The history of the building is a history of repeated rebuilding. Palestine is a seismically active region, and al-Jami’ al-Qibli was destroyed or heavily damaged by earthquakes more than once: in 748 (the mosque was nearly destroyed and rebuilt under the Abbasids), and in 1033 (heavy damage, restored under the Fatimid caliph az-Zahir).
After az-Zahir, the mosque acquired roughly the plan we see today — seven naves leading toward the mihrab. Most of the decorative elements visible today (including the famous minbar) were added or replaced in later periods.
In 1099, Jerusalem was taken by the Crusaders during the First Crusade. It was one of the darkest episodes in the city’s history: by the accounts of Christian chroniclers (Raymond of Aguilers) and Muslim ones (Ibn al-Athir) alike, the slaughter of the city’s inhabitants — Muslims and Jews — was massive.
The Dome of the Rock was converted into a church and renamed Templum Domini (“Temple of the Lord”). Al-Jami’ al-Qibli became the headquarters of the Knights Templar — in fact, the very name “Templars” comes from their having been quartered in the “Temple” (Templum Salomonis, as they called the mosque). They built their stables, halls, and storerooms on the platform.
A cross was placed inside the Dome of the Rock, and the Rock itself was partially dismantled — the Crusaders sold pieces of it as relics.
In 1187, after the Battle of Hattin, Salah ad-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin) returned Jerusalem to Muslim control. The contrast with 1099 is instructive: Salah ad-Din did not order a massacre. The Crusader inhabitants were allowed to leave for ransom; many were freed without ransom. The city’s Eastern Christians, unaffiliated with the Latin Church, remained in their homes.
As for al-Aqsa:
Salah ad-Din’s conduct in Jerusalem became, in the Islamic tradition, an archetype of how a Muslim ruler should behave on returning to a sanctuary: with restraint, without vengeance, with protection for non-Muslims. This is not a softening of history — it’s a theological lesson the Muslim chroniclers themselves (Ibn Shaddad, Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani) emphasized.
After Salah ad-Din, Jerusalem remained under Muslim rule — with brief exceptions (a treaty return to the Crusaders under Frederick II in 1229–1244) — until the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1917.
Under the Mamluks (1260–1517) and then the Ottomans (1517–1917), al-Haram ash-Sharif accumulated many additions: new madrasas, mihrabs, ablution fountains, and sabils (public drinking-water stations). Most of what now stands on the platform beyond the two main buildings is Mamluk and Ottoman.
Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), a major restoration of the Dome of the Rock was undertaken: the exterior mosaics were replaced with the blue Iznik tiles that give the Dome its distinctive look today. At the same time, the city walls of Jerusalem we see today were rebuilt.
Al-Aqsa is named only once in the Qur’an. But that single ayah — describing the night the Prophet ﷺ made the Isra and the Mi’raj — is the point from which everything else flows: the first qiblah, the third sanctuary, the blessed surroundings, the place of ascent. Every prayer a Muslim performs today was instituted on that very night. This place isn’t merely a historical monument — it is a living link to the prophetic journey.
Peace and blessings be upon the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, his family, and his companions, and peace be upon all the messengers whose footsteps remain on this blessed land.
The history of al-Aqsa is fourteen centuries of rebuilding, sieges, restorations, and tradition. One ayah of the Qur’an, dozens of hadith, thousands of pages of tafsir and chronicle. When a Muslim stands in prayer and turns toward Mecca, he or she also remembers that the community once turned toward Jerusalem, and that on the night the prayer itself was instituted, the Prophet ﷺ prayed in al-Aqsa together with all the prophets before him.
Uravnitel is an AI assistant for Muslims that answers questions about Islam with sourced references to the Qur’an and hadith, helps you find ayahs, explains the positions of the madhhabs, and works in English and Russian. Tasbih, Qibla, and a calm interlocutor ready to engage any question of fiqh, tafsir, or Islamic history — without pressure and without oversimplification.
Get reliable answers to your questions about Islam, grounded in the Quran and Sunnah. Qibla finder, digital tasbih, and AI chat in 9 languages.
Download on the App Store