From the above list contains the most reliable Islamic classical exegetes clearly sums up the issue and refute all political propaganda raised by Muslim and Palestinian politicians. These exegetes acknowledge that it was well-known Muhammad had night dreams and visions, but as about the Jewish Temple Mount there are no evidence and proofs relating to his political and religious activities.
Muhammad did not know anything about Jerusalem, let alone visiting it, and moreover building a mosque there. It is of note that during most of Muhammad’s prophetic career, Jerusalem was under Persian control (614-628). Byzantines returned triumphantly to Jerusalem only in 629.
Indeed, all Palestinian-Islamic assertions are fabrications based on myths with the aim of gaining political targets. The formula is crystal clear: as long as Jerusalem is under Islamic control, it is neglected and comes under oblivion. However, when Jews and/or Christians take control of the city, Muslim raise its artificial fabricated sanctity.
Furthermore, there is also the geographical terminology. The name al-Aqşā means “the most distant,” “the furthest,” cannot be tied or related to Jerusalem or anywhere in the Land of Israel for that matter, because it contradicts the Qur’an’s statement which calls the Land of Israel “the nearest place,” termed Adna al-Ard.
The phenomenon of denying Jewish history in Jerusalem and the existence of its two Temples is particularly perplexing since this denial contradicts the Qur’an itself. The Qur’an specifically mentions the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and states that the Children of Israel enjoyed two periods of political autonomy in the Land of Israel, and that during those periods they built the First and Second Temples which were destroyed because of their sins.
And we gave Moses the Scripture, and made it a guide for the Children of Israel. Take none for protector other than me… And we conveyed to the Children of Israel in the Scripture: You will commit evil on earth twice, and you will rise to a great height. When the first of the two promises came true… It was a promise fulfilled. Then we gave you back your turn against them, and supplied you with wealth and children, and made you more numerous… Then, when the second promise comes true, they will make your faces filled with sorrow, and enter the Temple as they entered it the first time, and utterly destroy all that falls into their power.
The problem with these false claims is also that they expose an important Arab-Islamic cultural traits which reveal ethnocentric views and claims. It presumes that everything belongs to Islam and nothing will be shared with others. Jerusalem is only sacred to Islam, and since it isn’t sacred to the Jews, they don’t have any rights to it.
History, Religion, and Politics Refute Any Ties of Islam to Jerusalem
Muhammad and the Sahābah
If Jerusalem was so important to Islam religiously; and if Muhammad reached the city and established a mosque on the Temple Mount, called al-Aqşā; and if Jerusalem is indeed the third Ḥaram and the first Qiblah; then
How that is nobody knew of it among his friends (Sahābah), and even Muhammad himself did not know about it? He did not mention Jerusalem at all in his sermons and commandments; he did not tell his followers to worship Jerusalem, and above all, he did not send forces to conquer it from the infidels. He did nothing concerning Jerusalem. Is it possible?
The absence of Jerusalem is doubly surprising in light of the fact that in the 90 of 114 Meccan Sūwar the Qur’an frequently refers to stories from the Bible. Muhammad relates to many adventures of the Children of Israel, from Abraham and his sons in the Land of Israel and Egypt; continuing with Moses and the Children of Israel in Sinai, and the conquest of the Land of Israel; and ending with Kings David and Solomon and other Jewish prophets and figures. Kings David and Solomon resided in Jerusalem, the city of the Holy Temple. Nevertheless, Jerusalem is not mentioned, nor the Temple Mount in the Islamic Scriptures.
To comprehend how utterly strange is this phenomenon we must recall that the cities holy to Islam, Mecca and Medina, are described frequently, and these descriptions are accompanied by mention of historical events. Moreover, before Muhammad began his prophecy he engaged in commerce and once visited Damascus. Jerusalem was well known. Commercial caravans to Syria passed near Jerusalem. Still, total silence.
Moreover, one of his biographers, al-Wākidi, that his book, Kitāb al-Maghāzī details very carefully and authentically all of Muhammad’s wars and the places he visited and stayed. How that al-Wākidi does not mention this glorious event of Muhammad in Jerusalem and the mosque he erected there, if it was true? In two occasions the Hadīth mentions a city named Ilia, Madīnat Bayt al-Maqdis, but only in a geographic context and not in a political sense, and certainly not in a religious one concerning Islam.
He who is acquainted with Arab-Islamic political culture exactly knows this scenario is impossible. The admiration to Muhammad among the Muslims is total and absolute. If Jerusalem was important to Muhammad and if he had been there, his generation and later on all the believers would have known it and warship it.
None had happened, because nothing should have happened. The Sīrah (Muhammad’s biography) and the Ḥadīth (stories associated with Muhammad or about him as related by his confidants), which are an integral part with the Qur’an to comprise the Sharī’ah, contain extensive descriptions of Muhammad stories, declarations and activities. Still, Jerusalem is not mentioned at all. How could Mecca and Medina be mentioned so many times, while Jerusalem, which Islamic propagators establish as the third holiest city to Islam, is not mentioned?
‘Umar bin al-Khattāb, the Conqueror of Jerusalem
If Jerusalem was so important to Islam religiously; and if Muhammad reached the city and established a mosque on the Temple Mount called al-Aqşā; and if Jerusalem is indeed the third Ḥaram and the first Qiblah; then
How that is the Land of Israel was conquered by ‘Umar bin al-Khattāb in 634, but the Muslims did not bother to conquer Jerusalem until four years later? That is certainly an indication of the unimportance of Jerusalem as far as Islam is concerned. Had Jerusalem been of any real religious significance for Islam, it certainly would have been conquered as first priority.
Is it possible that ‘Umar bin al-Khattab, one of Muhammad’s closest confidantes, did not know there was a mosque on the Temple Mount that allegedly erected by Muhammad? Moreover, he entered the Temple Mount with a Jewish convert, Ka’ab al-Akhbar, as an instructor. ‘Umar turned to him to find the direction to pray towards Mecca. If there was already a mosque there that Muhammad had ostensibly built, wouldn’t ‘Umar have known about it, and wouldn’t he have prayed there?
Sure, there was no mosque there whatsoever. When Ka’ab, the Jewish convert, took off his shoes [in deference to the holiness of the Jewish shrine], suggested to build a mosque on the place of the Jewish Temple, ‘Umar angrily responded that Ka’ab had never really left his Jewish faith. He insisted that the Muslims are required to pray solely toward the Ka’aba in Mecca, and did not even listen to the idea of building a mosque on the Temple Mount.
In addition to the absence of any real significance of Jerusalem in the eyes of Islam, immediately after it was conquered, the Muslims reached an agreement of surrender with the Christian leadership and thereupon proceeded to leave Jerusalem and ignore it, preserving its Christian character. Had Jerusalem occupied an important religious role in Islam, the Muslims would have not abandoned it to the Christians immediately following its conquest and granted the Christians far-reaching autonomy in it.
These facts bring the Islamic propagation concerning Jerusalem to absurd and ridicule. If the al-Aqşā mosque indeed was located on the Temple Mount, could we imagine that ‘Umar bin al-Khattāb would belittle it and, by so doing, deny the validity of its source in the Qur’an? Obviously not. The fact is that there is no reference in the Qur’an to al-Aqşā or to any particular sanctity of the Temple Mount.
Moreover, After ‘Umar left the Temple Mount and signed a treaty of protection with the Christians, called Dhimma, he decided to establish the Muslim capital in Caesarea. Later on the capital moved to Ramle, the only city the Muslims built in the Land of Israel. Does it sound logical from Islamic perspective that had al-Aqşā been located in Jerusalem built by Muhammad, could ‘Umar or any Muslim blatantly disregard it and erect the capital in other cities? Indeed, ‘Umar did so because there was nothing out there in Jerusalem sacred to Islam.
Jerusalem under the Umayyad Dynasty (al-Khilāfah al-Umawiyyah)
If Jerusalem was so important to Islam religiously; and if Muhammad reached the city and established a mosque on the Temple Mount called al-Aqşā; and if Jerusalem is indeed the third Ḥaram and the first Qiblah; then
How that is Jerusalem continued to be in oblivion and negligence, and that the Umayyad’s capital was established in Damascus, and that still there was no prayer toward Jerusalem and even no known mosque there?
However, the internal war between Muhammad’s family and the Mecca-oriented group against the Umayyad’s Damascus-oriented Dynasty, brought a change. Due to the circumstances the Umayyads had to choose an alternative to the Ḥājj in Mecca, and Jerusalem was chosen just because of its location.
For that reason, the Umayyad ruler, ‘Abd al-Malik (685-705) built the first mosque ever, only in 691, in Jerusalem, called the Dome of the Rock, Qubt al-Sakhra’, on the Temple Mount. There was no religious decree or orientation there but pure politics. Why the Temple Mount? Because Jerusalem at that time was only a small part of what is known today as ‘the Old City.’ Another reason, the Umayyads wished to act against the Christians, where there was a church on the foundations of the Jewish Temple.
Only in 715 a second mosque was built by Suleiman, al-Walid’s son, called Masjid al-Aqşā. It was built 83 years after Muhammad’s death. From the emergence of Islam until 691 the Muslims built many mosques in all the lands they have conquered but not in Jerusalem. Is it something to consider?
A number of factors contributed to the decision to choose Jerusalem: First, the rebel forces of ‘Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr controlled the Ḥijaz (Arabia) and prevented the Umayyad from taking part in the Ḥājj (pilgrimage to Mecca). Furthermore, the Umayyad Dynasty sought to legitimize their control of Syria: they had competitors in Arabia as well as in Iraq for the control of Mecca. Finally, in the absence of a spiritual center, the Umayyad needed a location like Jerusalem.
The power struggle within Islam itself has brought Jerusalem to the core. The Damascus-based Umayyad Caliphs who controlled Jerusalem wanted to establish an alternative holy site if their rivals blocked access to Mecca. That was important because the Ḥajj to Mecca was one of the Five Pillars of Islam. As a result, they built what became known as the Dome of the Rock shrine and the adjacent mosque. Indeed, all Umayyad’s sources reveal that Jerusalem was chosen for its geographical location and not for any Islamic reason connected to Muhammad.
Ya’qubi, the 9th century historian describes the issue: at that time ‘Abd al-Malik forbade the people of Syria to make a pilgrimage to Mecca because Ibn Zubeir, in Mecca revolted against him and forced the pilgrims the swear allegiance to him. Therefore, he built a dome over the Rock on Bayt al-Maqdis. Indeed, on the place of Jerusalem in Islamic tradition, S. D. Goitein takes issue about the role of the Umayyads in promoting the sanctity of Jerusalem.
It was not easy to change the Muslims’ consciousness concerning Jerusalem and Ḥājj. That is why a new religious-educational orientation was established, called Fadā’il al-Quds literature. The target was clear: to make Jerusalem a place of sanctity for the masses under the Umayyads. However, when reading the material written on Fadā’il al-Quds the conclusion is clear: it does not say anything about Muhammad in Jerusalem and the erection of mosque there during Muhammad’s life. There was only a new invention of Jerusalem as a holy city deserves to serve the Ḥājj ritual.
In this context, and for obvious political reasons, several clerics active during the period of the Umayyad dynasty set this holiness rating for Bayt al-Maqdis. They stated as follows: “prayer in Mecca is like one hundred thousand prayers, prayer in Medina is like one thousand prayers, and prayer in Bayt al-Maqdis is like five hundred prayers.”
According to al-Muqaddasi (985), an historian in Jerusalem (as his name testifies, referring to the Jewish name of Jerusalem), the Dome of the Rock sought to elevate and sanctify Jerusalem, thus serving as a counterweight to the Christian churches that dominated the city, such as the Church of the Sepulcher. That is why there sprung up an entire literature about the “praise of Jerusalem” (Fadā’il al-Quds). Still it was of note that the region’s capital was al-Ramlah and not Jerusalem. Moreover, this sanctity remained for only 60 years. When the Umayyad dynasty fell in 750, Jerusalem also fell into near obscurity for 350 years, until the Crusades.
Jerusalem Under the Abbasid Dynasty (al-Khilāfah al-‘Abāssīyah)
The House of Umayyad fell in 750, and the entire ruling family were slaughtered by the Abbasids. For 350 years, up to the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, no Islamic entity displayed any interest in the city. The “Praise of Jerusalem” literature, that emerged for political reasons during the Umayyad dynasty and lasted at most 60 years, disappeared, and a new contradictory literature appeared that belittled the importance of Jerusalem.
If Jerusalem was so important to Islam religiously; and if Muhammad reached the city and established a mosque on the Temple Mount, called al-Aqşā; and if Jerusalem is indeed the third Ḥaram and the first Qiblah; then
How that is a new Islamic literature considered Jerusalem a source of heresy and rejection of Islamic sacred writings? How that is in 1033 the Dome of the Rock, most symbolically, collapsed and no one bothered to restore it as a holy site of worship? In 1173 Benjamin of Tudela visited Jerusalem. He described it as a small city full of Christian groups with two hundred Jews dwelt under the Tower of David. No Muslim community was mentioned.
The Fatimid control of Jerusalem ended when it was captured by the Crusaders in July 1099. The capture was accompanied by a massacre of the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. Jerusalem became the capital of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was rebuilt, and Muslim mosques on the Jewish Temple Mount were converted for Christian purposes.
At the beginning, even the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders failed to arouse any sense of shock or cultural-religious humiliation around the Islamic world. The Christian Crusaders destroyed mosques and synagogues, and built churches on those sites. Most of all, they pointed to Jerusalem as the pinnacle of their religious campaign. Moreover, the Ayyubid Dynasty destroyed the walls in expectation of ceding the city to the Crusaders as part of a peace treaty.
The Muslims did not refer to the conquest of Jerusalem as a goal. Only a few voices mentioned the city, and only few sources can be cited in the reports of travelers of that period who barely mention Jerusalem in a religious context and certainly not as an important site for tourism. The religious side was much less even mentioned let alone practiced. It was pure politics. Infidels occupying a Muslim land, and from social-economic perspective impoverishment and misery of Jerusalem were at their peak.
However, through time there emerged some different voices, such as that of Ali the son of Tahir al-Sulami, a cleric who resided in Damascus, who preached the need for Jihad against the Crusaders. The 12th century Nur al-Din, the ruler of Aleppo and Mosul pressed hard for a Jihad against the infidels. For that he employed the religious motifs used by the Umayyads such as Fadā’il al-Quds. The Praises of Jerusalem literature had returned, and a new slogan flourished, to be used extensively later on against the State of Israel: “liberating al-Aqsa” from the infidels.
A genuine change in the attitude toward Jerusalem emerged only when Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi was dubbed the “liberator of al-Quds” in 1187, a cornerstone event founded in religious belief. The main motifs defined on the basis of the city’s sanctity deriving from the mosques found on the Temple Mount, and the fact that Jerusalem was the first Qiblah and the third Haram in Islam.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted until 1291, however, Jerusalem itself was recaptured by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi in 1187. Yet, Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi made no real efforts to make Jerusalem a religious center. No significant religious institutions were built in Jerusalem during his reign, and very soon he called on the Jews to return to their holy city. His success was more political than religious: he invested efforts in the struggle against the infidels, to gain sovereignty over what was called Islamic territory.
Upon termination of the Crusader era, Jerusalem again sank into relative oblivion and negligence. The rise of puritanical trends within Islam also contributed to the neglect of Jerusalem. The Ḥanbali exegete, Ibn Taymiyah (1263-1328) is identified with this trend more than anyone else. He was active in abolishing Jerusalem’s elevated status. He strenuously asserted that Jerusalem occupied no important religious role in Islam, and that the city’s prominence derived exclusively from Judaism and Christianity. In his Great Compilation of Letters, he stated that directing prayer toward Bayt al-Maqdis (the Jewish Holy Temple) was nullified, and whoever does so is a heretic, becoming an apostate (Murtad). If he doesn’t retract, he is to be executed. No later scholar could disagree with this rule nor with the traditions did he observe.
In fact, beginning with the 12th century, Islam became increasingly rigid and ceased absorbing new ideas. The gates of innovation (Ijtihād) were closed, and the era of Muhammad and the four Righteous Caliphs became the perfect way of life Muslims must follow and imitate. First and foremost among these was the notion that Jerusalem was not sacred. In any way it has become null and void, even heresy.
Though the short-period change of Jerusalem as being religious in Islamic conceptions was raised during the Umayyad’s rule and the Ayyubi’s, it was solely political, targeted against their enemies than religious feelings. It reappeared in the 20th century in the political struggle against the Jews and the State of Israel. It was not and still is not the mixture between religion and politics, but the political use of religion for political ends.
Jerusalem under the Ottoman Empire (Osmanlī Devletī)
If Jerusalem was so important to Islam religiously; and if Muhammad reached the city and established a mosque on the Temple Mount, called al-Aqşā; and if Jerusalem is indeed the third Ḥaram and the first Qiblah; then
How that is the trends revealed during the Abbasid rule became apparent during the reign of the Mamlūks who came from Egypt and secured their control over the Land of Israel and Syria after their victory over the Mongols in 1260? That fact is that Jerusalem once more fell into awe-full neglect and poverty with no economic or political support. Many public buildings constructed during the reign of the Mamlūks fell into disrepair or were closed. Even Safed and Gaza, small cities at that time, were granted status as independent provinces but not Jerusalem.
The rule of Suleiman and the earlier subsequent Ottoman Sultans brought an age of religious peace, were Jew, Christian and Muslim enjoyed the freedom of religion in Jerusalem. However, from Muslim perspective the four hundred years of the Ottoman rule, 1517-1917, Jerusalem remained in its inferior and impoverished status under the regional rule of Damascus (Villayet-province).
Though Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and reinforced public structures, soon after its conquest, these steps were taken merely because Jerusalem serviced the pilgrims on their way to Mecca. Cairo (Fustāt), Damascus (as-Shām), Constantinople (Istanbul), and other metropolitan centers were considered to be of religious significance and places of warship. Jerusalem was not part in this list. Jerusalem was certainly not on the same status as Mecca and Medina.
By the 19th century, Jerusalem had been so neglected by Islamic rulers that several prominent Western writers who visited Jerusalem were moved to write about it. French writer Gustav Flaubert, for example, found “ruins everywhere” during his visit in 1850. In Innocents Abroad, 1869, chapter LIII, Mark Twain described the condition of Jerusalem under Ottoman Muslim rule: “Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound… Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless… In chapter LVI: “Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur … the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the Holy Cross.”
