The Aqsa is not at Jerusalem

Here's a twist: the Saudis are questioning where Aqsa's at.

A "mosque" is a masjid in Arabic, a place of sajjâd / sajda. That is prayer... toward something. The Aqsa, "furthest mosque", is mentioned at the start of sura 17. From my reading of sura 17 the whole text is Deuteronomic and Palaestinian, from start to finish (in that way that, as Nicolai Sinai noted, its followup sura 10 is Egyptian). That's a reading I've read since at least 2003 and have seen no reason to revise, unlike I admit I've had to revise other views.

Mind, this is sura 17 as it stands in the canon. As sura 10 (among others) cited sura 17; sura 17 may have cited other work. And as textual variants afflict other suwar, including sura 17 as you may read in Arthur Jeffery, a variant might have tweaked the beginning of sura 17. Robert Spencer among others wonders exactly when and how sura 17 got pinned down to its present state.

The Problematic in the opening chapters of sura 17 is that sobriquet it allows to its "mosque". Jerusalem did have masgida / mezgitha in very early decades, as the Georgians and as Anastasius tell us. For our purpose: if the qibla focus of worship is at Jerusalem, whatever masajid it has cannot be Furthest. Yerushalmi masajid are closest.

Say this sura's qibla is to Mecca - which I rule out, but if you like we can go with Dan Gibson's less-silly thesis that it was to the petra Rock of old Reqem. From either, there are assuredly places on this very Earth further than Jerusalem. Or is sura 17 theologically trying to promise that there will be no mosque erected beyond it?

I don't even know and, frankly, I don't think I will get to know in my lifetime. I think sura 17 although early, or maybe because it is so early, is too difficult to use as a proof-text for early Islamic geography. The earliest witnesses to sura 17's content, which are of course other suwar, do not touch the Aqsa. We will need more witnesses to that text. About all I can be assured of is that the Aqsa is not in Jerusalem.