The Rock the Ascension Is Said to Have Begun From

Islamic tradition associates the Mi'raj specifically with a rock now enshrined beneath the Dome of the Rock on the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, identified as the point from which the Prophet ascended through the heavens, making the Dome, completed in 691 and one of the oldest surviving Islamic monumental buildings, a direct architectural expression of the Isra and Mi'raj narrative rather than only a general commemoration of the Prophet's connection to the city.

The same Haram al-Sharif compound is also the Temple Mount of Jewish and Christian tradition, and its status is one of the most sensitive and long-running points of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with access, administration and sovereignty over the site subject to ongoing dispute between Israeli authorities, the Jordanian-administered Islamic waqf that manages the Muslim holy places there, and Palestinian claims to the city; this entry describes the religious tradition behind the site's significance in Islam without taking a position on the political dispute, which is a distinct question from the theological one and is treated at length in the specialist literature on the conflict rather than in an account of the holiday itself.