The Night Journey: Body and Spirit
بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ سُبْحَـٰنَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَسْرَىٰ بِعَبْدِهِۦ لَيْلًا مِّنَ ٱلْمَسْجِدِ ٱلْحَرَامِ إِلَى ٱلْمَسْجِدِ ٱلْأَقْصَا ٱلَّذِى بَـٰرَكْنَا حَوْلَهُۥ لِنُرِيَهُۥ مِنْ ءَايَـٰتِنَآ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلسَّمِيعُ ٱلْبَصِيرُ
(17:1) Immaculate is He who carried His servant on a journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque whose environs We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs. Indeed, He is the All-hearing, the All-seeing.
The question
Was the Prophet's night journey (isrāʾ) and ascension (miʿrāj) made in body and spirit, or was it a dream or a journey of the spirit alone?
Views answered: the report from Muʿāwiya that it was “a true dream”, the report from ʿĀʾishah that only his spirit was taken, exegetes who say it was in a dream or of the spirit only
Al-Mizan's argument
In the narrations al-Mizan examines a report that the ascension happened in a dream before the mission, Muʿāwiya's statement that it was “a true dream from God”, and ʿĀʾishah's report that only the Prophet's spirit was taken. He answers that the verse — “Glory be to Him Who made His servant to go on a night … that We may show him some of Our signs” — and the verses at the beginning of Sūrat al-Najm refute them, and that ʿĀʾishah's report conflicts with the agreed fact that the night journey took place before the migration, while she came to the Prophet after it. In his summary of the narrations he sets out the disagreements over the year, the place it began, and how it took place, and concludes that the journey from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque was in both spirit and body, and that the ascension to the heavens is likewise evident from Sūrat al-Najm and numerous narrations. Those who deny a bodily ascension and call it a dream do so, he explains, because they treat the immaterial realities the Qur'an describes as material ones.
Reading guide
Each part opens the commentary at that point.
- A report that it was in a dream, before the mission
- Muʿāwiya: “a true dream from God”
- Why the verse refutes this
- ʿĀʾishah: “only his spirit”
- Why that report cannot be right
- Two night journeys?
- A summary of the narrations
- The disagreement over the year
- Where the journey began
- How it took place: the exegetes' views
- In body and spirit
- Why some made it a dream