The Children of Israel
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[17:1]
LIMITLESS in His glory is He who transported His servant by night from the Inviolable House of Worship [at Mecca] to the Remote House of Worship [at Jerusalem] – the environs of which We had blessed – so that We might show him some of Our symbols: for, verily, He alone is all-hearing, all-seeing.

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* v.1 : The above short reference to the Prophet’s mystic experience of the “Night Journey” (al-isrā’) to Jerusalem and the subsequent “Ascension” (mi‘rāj) to heaven is fully discussed in Appendix IV at the end of this work. – “The Inviolable House of Worship” (al-masjid al-harām) is one of the designations given in the Qur’ān to the Temple of the Ka‘bah, the prototype of which owed its origin to Abraham (see sūrah 2, note 102) and was “the first Temple set up for mankind” (3:96), i.e., the first ever built for the worship of the One God. “The Remote [lit., “farthest”] House of Worship,” on the other hand, denotes the ancient Temple of Solomon – or, rather, its site – which symbolizes here the long line of Hebrew prophets who preceded the advent of Muhammad and are alluded to by the phrase “the environs of which We had blessed.” The juxtaposition of these two sacred temples is meant to show that the Qur’ān does not inaugurate a “new” religion but represents a continuation and the ultimate development of the same divine message which was preached by the prophets of old.
* Although the term āyah is most frequently used in the Qur’ān in the sense of “[divine] message,” we must remember that, primarily, it denotes “a sign [or “token”] by which a thing is known” (Qāmūs). As defined by Rāghib, it signifies any perceivable phenomenon (irrespective of whether it is apparent to the senses or only to the intellect) connected with a thing that is not, by itself, similarly perceivable: in brief, a “symbol.” Hence, the expression min āyātinā may be suitably rendered as “some of Our symbols,” i.e., insight, through symbols, into some of the ultimate truths.