The Problem of the Return to the First Qibla

Quran has not been cited in the sense of a particular mosque. ‘Holy is He who took His servant by night from the sacred place of worship [at Makkah] to the remote house of worship [at Jerusalem]—the precincts of which We have blessed.’ (17:1 ) The above verse means a place of worship situated at a distance. It is called the farthest place of worship because it is located at a distance of 765 miles from Makkah. In this context, Al-Masjid al-Aqsa refers to the Jewish place of worship, the Haykal Synagogue. This Jewish synagogue, built by Solomon in 957 BC, was razed to the ground in 586 BC by the king of Babylonia, Nebuchadnezzar II. After a long period, the Jews rebuilt their place of worship. This was again reduced to ruins in AD 70 by the Romans. At present, only one wall of the building is left. This is called the ‘wailing wall’ or the ‘western wall.’ At the time of the revelation of the Quran, there was no building; it was only a vacant site. In AD 638, in the time of the second caliph, Umar Farooq, the Muslims entered Jerusalem. Caliph Umar did not have any structure erected on this site. During the Umayyad rule, Caliph Abdul Malik bin Marwan (d. 705) had the present al-Masjid al-Aqsa built in AD 688. Another building on the campus of al-Masjid al-Aqsa is called the Dome of the Rock (Qubbat al-Sakhra). The sacred