the night journey

The Night Jour­ney : The Mir­a­cle of Isra’ and Mi’raj

The verse of Isra’ in the Qur’an is clear not liable to hes­i­ta­tion or reluc­tance in say­ing that Allah had caused His ser­vant to trav­el by night from Al-Masjid Al-Haram to Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa like you say ; I trav­eled by night from such and such place to such and such place. So, there is no room for hes­i­ta­tion and ask­ing whether this was with body or spir­it, or awake or dur­ing sleep. Also, it is inap­pro­pri­ate to dis­agree regard­ing the mean­ing of this night jour­ney or regard­ing the word Abd, i.e., ser­vant, and whether it refers to the spir­it, to the body or to both, as it has hap­pened between those claim­ing bod­i­ly Isra and oth­ers claim­ing spir­i­tu­al Isra.

Yes, it comes to one’s mind how come a night jour­ney, i.e., in a part of the night, could take place back and forth from a mosque to anoth­er mosque while it usu­al­ly takes two months trav­el­ing ? How­ev­er, if one pon­ders upon the Qur’an­ic expres­sions and notices that it (i.e., the Qur’an does not say that Muham­mad per­formed a night jour­ney, but it says Allah caused him to per­form the night jour­ney with glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the One Who caused him to do and exalt­ing Him above lying and inabil­i­ty, then any sus­pi­cion and hes­i­ta­tion will rad­i­cal­ly dis­ap­pear. Con­se­quent­ly, the event of Isra which Allah declares to be of His, glo­ri­fies Him­self for per­form­ing it, refers to the one caused to trav­el as His ser­vant and men­tions the pur­pose of this act that “.……”, must be an extreme­ly seri­ous and impor­tant event and must be kept away from any inter­pre­ta­tion that belit­tle its impor­tance and seriousness.

Beside this glo­ri­ous dec­la­ra­tion, what­ev­er was — or is — said to inter­pret it is dis­solved. For exam­ple, the reports of Mu’awiyah and Aishah (may Allah be pleased with them both) relat­ed by Ibn Hisham in his Sir­ah and Ibn Jarir in his Tafsir that Muham­mad Ibn Ishaq said : Ya’qoub Ibn Utbah ibn Al-Mughi­ra told me that Mu’awiyah used to say about the Mi’raj that it was a truth­ful vision, and that Ibn Hamid said : Salmah relat­ed on author­i­ty of Muham­mad (Ibn Ishaq that he said : some mem­bers of Abu Bakr’s fam­i­ly told me that Aishah used to say : The body of Allah’s Mes­sen­ger was nev­er missed” although the report on author­i­ty of Mu’awiyah is inter­rupt­ed because the trans­mit­ter of the report to Ibn Ishaq did not hear it direct­ly from Mu’awiyah due to the fact that they did not co-exist in the same time, and in the report of Aisha the name of the reporter among her rel­a­tives is not men­tioned but referred to as some mem­bers of Abu Bakr’s fam­i­ly”. More­over, Aisha at the time of Isra was not in a sit­u­a­tion that enables her to say so because the event of Isra took place one year or more before Hijra and the Prophet mar­ried her in Mad­i­nah while she were — accord­ing to the famous report — nine years old, so she was at time of Isra is a sev­en years’ old child. In addi­tion, Allah’s Mes­sen­ger (peace be upon him) did not spend his night under obser­va­tion of Aishah who has not yet become his wife or any oth­er mem­ber of Abu Bakr’s fam­i­ly to the extent that he or she could say The body of Allah’s Mes­sen­ger was nev­er missed.”

Al-Qadi Iyyad said :

The truth regard­ing this (i.e., the nature of Isra and the cor­rect view, insha’Al­lah, is that Isra was with body and spir­it dur­ing the whole event ; this is indi­cat­ed by the verse and authen­tic reports and con­sid­er­a­tion. The explic­it mean­ing is not shift­ed to inter­pre­ta­tion except in case of impos­si­bil­i­ty and there is no impos­si­bil­i­ty in the Isra with body dur­ing awak­en­ing.1Endmark

Excerpt from his book, Al-Qawl Al-Fasl, Dar-us-Salam for Print­ing, Pub­lish­ing and Dis­tri­b­u­tion, Cairo, Egypt. pp. 161 – 162
Cite this arti­cle as : Grand Imam Mustafa Sabri, Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Ottoman State, The Night Jour­ney : The Mir­a­cle of Isra’ and Mi’raj,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Novem­ber 2, 2005, last accessed March 28, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​/​t​h​e​-​m​i​r​a​c​l​e​-​o​f​-​i​s​r​a​-​a​n​d​-​m​i​r​aj/
  1. Al-Qadi Iyyad, Ash-Shi­fa, Vol. 1, p. 172[]

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