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The verse refers to the "farther" mosque.

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What is the earliest reference you know of to Jerusalem being the third holiest city in Islam?

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I expect half the world agrees with you on that. But that is not what you you claimed. Would you like to try answering the question that was actually asked?

What is the earliest reference you know of to Jerusalem being the third holiest city in Islam?

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Your argument changes with every post, when you realise how full of crap you are and decide to make up something else.

A couple of centuries ago a local Muslim decided he could make money out of it by talking up its significance in Islam. It worked. That's how a city that is not even named in the Quran came to be the third holiest in the religion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Mount

The Qur'an does not mention the exact location of "the furthest place of prayer", and the city of Jerusalem is not mentioned by any of its names in the Qur'an.[154][140] According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the phrase was originally understood as a reference to a site in the heavens.[155]

Some scholars point to the political motives of the Umayyad dynasty which led to the sanctification of Jerusalem in Islam. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Night Journey was associated with Jerusalem by the Umayyads as a political means to advance the glory of Jerusalem to compete with the glory of the sanctuary in Mecca then controlled by Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr.[155][160] The construction of the Dome of the Rock was interpreted by Ya'qubi, a 9th-century Abbasid historian, as an Umayyad attempt to redirect the Hajj from Mecca to Jerusalem by creating a rival to the Ka'aba.

Other academics attribute the holiness of Jerusalem to the rise and expansion of a certain type of literary genre, known as al-Fadhail or history of cities. The Fadhail of Jerusalem inspired Muslims, especially during the Umayyad period, to embellish the sanctity of the city beyond its status in the holy texts.[162] Based on the writings of the eighth century historians Al-Waqidi[163] and al-Azraqi, some scholars have suggested that al-Aqsa Mosque mentioned in the Qur'an is not in Jerusalem but in the village of al-Ju'ranah, 18 miles northeast of Mecca.[157][164][165]

Later medieval scripts, as well as modern-day political tracts, tend to classify al-Aqsa Mosque as the third holiest site in Islam.

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Again, not the same thing.

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Perhaps they are interested in the truth.

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Start by acknowledging the real cause. You have named many, most rather fanciful, but you seem to be tiptoeing around the most obvious.

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Cause. Not solution. You cannot hope to find a solution to a problem while you are afraid to acknowledge the cause. That is why we see so many hopelessly naive solutions trotted out.

thegreatdivide wrote on May 7^th, 2023 at 2:08pm:


Ah, so you think we should skip straight to the solution and not worry about what the cause of the problem is? So that we can bring peace to the middle east overnight?