Al-Ji'rana () is a village in Mecca Province, in western Saudi Arabia.National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. GeoNames database entry. (search ) Accessed 12 May 2011. A boundary of the Haram, it is located northeast of Mecca.

Description

It was here in the 7th century that the Islamic prophet Muhammad distributed spoils of war among his allies, after the battles of Hunain and Autas, and before the siege of Ta'if.

Al-Ji'rana was mentioned by the 8th-century Arab historian Al-Waqidi. In his Kitab al-Tarikh wa al-Maghazi ("Book of History and Campaigns"), Al-Waqidi describes two ancient sanctuaries in al-Ji'rana visited by Muhammad on his journey on dhu al-qa'da of the eighth year after the Hijrah: ("the farthest mosque") and ("the closest mosque"). This was also mentioned by Al-Azraqi, a 9th-century Islamic commentator and historian.

According to the Qur'an, Muhammad was transported to a site named ("the furthest place of prayer") during his Night Journey. The Qur'an does not mention the exact location of "the furthest place of prayer".Khalek, N. (2011). Jerusalem in Medieval Islamic Tradition. Religion Compass, 5(10), 624–630. doi:10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00305.x. "One of the most pressing issues in both medieval and contemporary scholarship related to Jerusalem is weather the city is explicitly referenced in the text of the Qur'an. Sura 17, verse 1, which reads [...] has been variously interpreted as referring to the miraculous Night Journey and Ascension of Muhammad, events recorded in medieval sources and known as the isra and miraj. As we will see, this association is a rather late and even a contested one. [...] The earliest Muslim work on the Religious Merits of Jerusalem was the Fada'il Bayt al-Maqdis by al-Walid ibn Hammad al-Ramli (d. 912 CE), a text which is recoverable from later works. [...] He relates the significance of Jerusalem vis-a-vis the Jewish Temple, conflating 'a collage of biblical narratives' and comments pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a practice which was controversial in later Muslim periods." The actual meaning of the phrase is debated in both early Islamic and contemporary sources. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the term was originally understood as a reference to a site in the heavens. Another group of Islamic scholars understood the story of Muhammad's ascension from Al-Aqsa Mosque as relating to Jerusalem. Eventually, a consensus emerged around the identification of the "furthest place of prayer" with Jerusalem, and by implication the Temple Mount.Busse, H. (1968). The sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam. Judaism, 17(4), 441. "Tradition varies as to the location of the Ascension; Syrian local tradition was able to prevail, by maintaining that the Ascension started in Jerusalem rather than in Mecca, directly following the Night Journey".

In 1953, British Islamic scholar Alfred Guillaume suggested that Al-Ju'ranah was the location of Al-Aqsa described in the Qur'an as the destination of Muhammad's Night Journey.A. Guillaume, Where was al-masjid al-Aqsa?, al-Andalus, Vol. 18 (1953) He based his theory on the writings of Al-Waqidi and Al-Azraqi. In 1959, French art historian Oleg Grabar wrote this theory was convincing. This theory has received backing from Youssef Ziedan, Mordechai Kedar, Yitzhak Reiter, and Suleiman al-Tarawneh in recent years. These historians also support the view according which the Umayyad dynasty's political objectives contributed to the sanctification of Jerusalem in Islam, as they sought to compete with the religious importance of Mecca, which was then ruled by their rival, Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr. The theory has been criticized as a "claim [which] merely consists of subjective interpretations".İsmail Altun, 2017, Müsteşrik Alfred Guillaume’nin Mescid-i Aksâ’nın Yerine Dair Görüşlerine Eleştirel Bir Yaklaşım [A Critical Approach to the Views of Orientalist Alfred Guillame Regarding the Location of al-Masjid al-Aqṣā]: "There is a consensus among classical Sunnī scholars that it is located in the Jerusalem region. It could be said that - excluding the Shiites - there has been no debate among Muslims regarding the place of al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, until the second half of twentieth century. However after that, various claims have been set forth regarding its place; whether it is located in Jerusalem, based on diverse reasons. As far as we could find out, the first person to launch these debates is the British orientalist Alfred Guillaume, with his article published in 1953 regarding the issue... Con- sidering the presented data and evaluations altogether, we come to the conclusion that, Guillaume's claim stating that al-Masjid al-Aqsā is not in Jerusalem but in Ci‘rāne, completely lacks sound evidence and also he attributed false meanings to the texts and this claim merely consists of subjective interpretations put forward by him with a view to proving his theory."

In November 2020, Saudi lawyer Osama Yamani promoted this theory in an opinion article in the Saudi newspaper Okaz. The article sparked outrage from Muslims around the world, with some writers claiming it was fabricated to justify the decision of some Gulf countries to normalize ties with Israel.

See also Arabian Peninsula Regions of Saudi Arabia Hunain Valley Awtas

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