The Prophet's Night Journey; To Where?

In "The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem," I argued that over the course of fourteen centuries, Muslim interest in Jerusalem has tended to be more political than religious in nature. One of my points concerned the complicated sleight-of-hand carried off by the Umayyads in the seventh century A.D., when, to aggrandize the importance of a town under their control, the caliph built a mosque in Jerusalem and called it Al-Aqsa. By doing this, he fulfilled a verse in the Qur'an which tells of the prophet going by night to a place called Al-Aqsa. The trick worked, generating the now-ancient belief that Muhammad's night journey took him to Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Logically, of course, a mosque built 65 years after the Qur'an was delivered cannot tell us where Muhammad went on the night journey described in the Qur'an. My article notes two places on the Arabian peninsula that are seen as an alternative for Al-Aqsa's location, being Medina and Ji‘rana.

I shall here collect references to identifications of Al-Aqsa outside of Jerusalem as they occur:

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Ahmad Muhammad ‘Arafa, a columnist, argues in an article published in the weekly Al-Qahira (and translated by MEMRI) against the dogma that Muhammad traveled to Jerusalem. Recalling earlier interpretations, such as that of fellow Egyptian Muhammad Abu Zayd in the 1930s, ‘Arafa instead argues that the miraculous journey took him to Medina. (September 3, 2002)

The mostmerciful.com website, in an undated entry, argues that Muhammad went to "the highest part of Horizon, near the Lote-tree." (June 26, 2008)

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