Furthermore, Mad Mo is not stated to have so ascended from Jerusalem necessarily, but from a place of worship called "Al-Aqsa" that is, the furthest-away.
Since Jerusalem is only about 600 miles from Mecca, the Arabs were well aware of many places much further away than Jerusalem, such as Rome, India, Constantinople, Egypt, Spain, China, etc.
It is only when it became politically convenient to Muslims, to claim they had some right to Eretz Yisroel, that they decided the one-night stand or journey had taken place from Jerusalem rather than someplace else!
Also to previous post, it was Pompey at the original Roman conquest of the area, that called it "Syria Palestensis."
Later Roman administrations, in view of the very great cultural and economic importance it came to have, cut "Syria Palestensis" off from the larger Syria, naming it "Judaea"=land of the Jews, and naming Herod as petty-king there, then later making it a separate imperial province with co-capitals at Caesarea and Jerusalem...
Note that this means Rome FIRST called it "S.P" and then later changed it to Judaea. The article at head of thread says the opposite. That it was first called Judaea, then changed to SP.
I would think any good college class in classical Roman or Mediterranean, or Jewish or Biblical, history would do the author of that post a lot of good.