Quran 17:1 Glory to (Allah) Who did take His Servant for a Journey by night
from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque,
whose precincts We did bless,
- in order that We might show him some of Our Signs:
for He is the One Who heareth and seeth (all things)
Prophet Muhammed prayed at the place known as the Farthest Mosque during his Night Journey.
That a building was later erected on the site is irrelevant.
It is one of the 3 major holy places in Islam and that fact isn't up for debate by muslims. ........
And yet the farthest mosque of the time was on the road between Mecca and Medina. So he could have walked it in one night from the sacred mosque.
The history of the al aqsa mosque is well known and was written down by muslim scholars as follows
The earliest mosque that was certainly built here was constructed by the Umayyads around
710 AD, only a few decades after the
Dome of the Rock. Under Abbasid rule, it reached its greatest extent by the end of the 8th century with 15 aisles.
Unfortunately nothing of the ancient mosque survives today: it was destroyed by earthquakes twice in its first 60 years of existence and has been rebuilt at least five times. The last major rebuild was in
1035 by Caliph az-Zahir.
Al-Aqsa Mosque - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The mosque was originally a small prayer house built by the
Rashidun caliph
Umar, but was rebuilt and expanded by the
Umayyad caliph
Abd al-Malik and finished by his son
al-Walid in 705 CE. After an earthquake in 746, the mosque was completely destroyed and rebuilt by the
Abbasid caliph
al-Mansur in 754, and again rebuilt by his successor
al-Mahdi in 780. Another earthquake destroyed most of al-Aqsa in 1033, but two years later the
Fatimid caliph
Ali az-Zahir built another mosque which has stood to the present day.
And even the muslims say that the al aqsa mosque was not holy in islam
Religious significance in Islam[edit]
In Islam, the term "al-Aqsa Mosque" refers to the entire Noble Sanctuary. The mosque is believed to be the second house of prayer constructed after the
Masjid al-Haram in
Mecca. Post-Rashidun-era Islamic scholars traditionally identified the mosque as the site referred to in the
sura (Quranic chapter)
al-Isra ("the Night Journey"). This specific verse in the Quran cemented the significant religious importance of al-Aqsa in Islam.
[60] The specific passage reads "Praise be to Him who made His servant journey in the night from the sacred sanctuary to the remotest sanctuary." Muslims traditionally identify the "sacred sanctuary" as the Masjid al-Haram and the "remotest sanctuary" as the al-Aqsa Mosque,
even though initially, Rashidun and Umayyad-era scholars were in disagreement about the location of the "remotest sanctuary" with some[who?] arguing it was actually located near Mecca.[citation needed] Eventually scholarly consensus determined that its location was indeed in Jerusalem.
[61][
clarification needed]