Al-Masjid al-Aqṣā

Al-Masjid al-Aqṣā — "the Farthest Mosque" — in Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis) is the third of the three mosques to which the Prophet ﷺ permitted setting out on a journey, alongside Masjid al-Ḥarām in Makkah and the Prophet's ﷺ Mosque in Madinah. It was the first qiblah of this ummah, the second mosque established on earth, and the destination of the Prophet's ﷺ Night Journey. Everything on this page rests on the Quran and authentic hadith alone — and, deliberately, on nothing else.

The third of the three mosques

Islam does not treat sacred places as a matter of local custom or later invention. The Prophet ﷺ fixed the list himself, and it is three — no more:

The hadith cuts both ways. It establishes al-Aqṣā's rank — a mosque worth crossing the earth to pray in — and at the same time closes the door on religious travel to every other site: no journeying to graves, shrines, or "blessed" locations the Sharīʿah never named. The three mosques stand together because revelation itself joined them, and nothing may be added to the list. See Visiting Graves and Bidʿah for how this principle guards the religion.

One clarification the Prophet ﷺ never left ambiguous: al-Masjid al-Aqṣā is the whole sacred compound — the entire walled sanctuary in Jerusalem, including all its courtyards, not any single building within it. The golden Dome of the Rock, built later in the Umayyad era over the rock within the compound, is inside al-Masjid al-Aqṣā but is not itself "the mosque" — a common confusion in photographs and headlines.

The second mosque established on earth

Abū Dharr (may Allah be pleased with him) asked the Prophet ﷺ directly which mosque came first:

Forty years separate the two — which tells us the two sanctuaries were founded in the same early era, long before the prophets later associated with building at each site. The scholars discussed openly who first laid al-Aqṣā's foundations: some held it was Ādam or his descendants, since forty years cannot fit between Ibrāhīm (who raised the Kaʿbah's foundations, Quran 2:127) and Sulaymān, who lived roughly a thousand years apart. On this understanding, later prophets — Yaʿqūb, then Dāwūd and Sulaymān — renewed and rebuilt a sanctuary that was already ancient, just as Ibrāhīm raised the Kaʿbah on foundations already laid (Quran 3:96). This is honest ikhtilāf over a detail revelation did not settle; what the sahih text itself fixes is the order — al-Ḥarām first, al-Aqṣā second — and the forty years.

Of Sulaymān's rebuilding, one authentic report has reached us:

The first qiblah

When the Prophet ﷺ arrived in Madinah, he and his Companions prayed facing Bayt al-Maqdis — for sixteen or seventeen months, as al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib reported (Sahih al-Bukhari 40). All the while the Prophet ﷺ longed for the qiblah of Ibrāhīm, turning his face toward the sky — until revelation came down in the middle of prayer itself:

From that moment the ummah has faced the Kaʿbah in every prayer, everywhere on earth — and al-Aqṣā's place in history as the first qiblah remains part of what revelation itself recorded (Quran 2:142–150 treats the whole episode, including the objections it provoked). The full story of the change — the mosque in Madinah where a congregation turned mid-prayer, and what the episode teaches about following revelation over habit — is told on Events That Shaped Practice.

The Isrāʾ — the night al-Aqṣā entered this ummah's story

Quran 17:1, quoted at the top of this page, records the journey: in a single night the Prophet ﷺ was taken from al-Masjid al-Ḥarām to al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, where he led the prophets in prayer, and from there was ascended through the heavens. The verse binds the two sanctuaries together in a single sentence of revelation — the journey began at one mosque of the three and passed through another, before any human being had called either one "holy" on his own authority. The full journey, its authentic details, and what was legislated that night — the five daily prayers — are covered on the dedicated Isrāʾ & Miʿrāj page.

Decades later, in the caliphate of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him), Jerusalem came peacefully under Muslim rule, and ʿUmar himself travelled to receive the city — history's confirmation of the rank the revelation had already given the place.

What this page deliberately leaves out

A large body of narrations circulates about the "virtues of Bayt al-Maqdis" — specific multiplied rewards for prayer there with varying figures, virtues of visiting at particular times, and stories drawn from isrāʾīliyyāt (transmitted lore of the People of the Book). Much of this material is weak or fabricated, and even the reward-figures found in some hadith collections carry gradings the scholars disputed. In keeping with this site's sourcing policy, none of it appears here. What is authentic is already more than enough: a mosque named in the Quran, joined by the Prophet ﷺ to the two Ḥarams for journeying, the first qiblah, and the second mosque on earth. See Not Authentic for how to treat the weak material when you meet it.

One further precision the verifying scholars insisted on: in the technical Sharīʿah sense of a ḥaram — a sanctuary with its own legal rulings, where game may not be hunted nor plants cut — there are two: Makkah and Madinah. Al-Aqṣā is sacred and its surroundings blessed by the Quran's own words, but the popular phrase "third of the two Ḥarams" (thālith al-ḥaramayn) has no basis in the revealed texts, and Ibn Taymiyyah and others cautioned against it. Honoring al-Aqṣā means honoring it as the texts do — neither diminishing what is authentic nor adding what is not.