I say: The seeming inconsistency may be explained as follows. In the ḥadīth of Maymūnah cited earlier, one prayer in al-Masjid al-Aqṣā is worth one thousand prayers elsewhere. In the report of Abū’l-Dardāʾ—mentioned when documenting the first ḥadīth about the mosque—the reward is given as five hundred prayers. Yet in the present narration of Abū Dharr one prayer in the Prophet’s Mosque ﷺ is said to be better than four prayers in al-Masjid al-Aqṣā. This yields the understanding that a single prayer in the Prophet’s Mosque is equal to four prayers in al-Aqṣā, and thus a prayer in al-Aqṣā would equate to one quarter of a prayer in the Prophet’s Mosque, that is, two hundred and fifty prayers. Such a figure clashes with the many earlier reports that place the reward for praying in al-Aqṣā at either one thousand or five hundred.

One may reply that Allah initially assigned the merit of a prayer in al-Aqṣā as two hundred and fifty, then raised it to five hundred, and finally to one thousand, out of His grace and mercy toward His servants. Allah alone knows the true reality.

Among the distinctions of these three mosques is that it is not lawful to undertake a purposeful journey to any mosque or revered site for prayer except to them, owing to the Prophet’s ﷺ statement: “Mounts are not to be saddled—(in another wording: do not saddle your mounts), or, ‘Travel is undertaken only—to three mosques: this mosque of mine, al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, and al-Masjid al-Aqṣā.’”

This ḥadīth has reached us through a number of Companions: