Isrāʾ and Miʿrāj

The story behind the day

Isrāʾ and Miʿrāj commemorates the night on which, Muslims believe, God carried the Prophet Muhammad from the Sacred Mosque in Mecca to the Further Mosque in Jerusalem, the Isrāʾ, and from there raised him through the heavens, the Miʿrāj. Many Muslims remember it on 27 Rajab, spending the night in prayer. Tradition links it with the five daily prayers.^[1–5]

Origins

The Qur'an opens one chapter with the words that God took His servant on a journey in the night, from the Sacred Mosque to the Furthest Mosque. Muslims read these words as a reference to Muhammad's journey from the Kaʿba to Jerusalem, where both Egypt's Dar al-Ifta and Diyanet place the Further Mosque, the al-Aqsa mosque. Turkey's Diyanet notes that the Qur'an names the night journey explicitly, whereas the ascension that followed is told in the hadith, and the encyclopedias treat the two as closely associated.^{[2–3, 6–7]}

What it marks

In the story as it is told, the Prophet is carried on a mount called Buraq to Jerusalem, where he prays. Then he is led up through the seven heavens, and in the course of the ascent the number of obligatory daily prayers is reduced to five. Diyanet speaks of the establishment of the five daily prayers as linked with this event, and Muslims therefore connect the night with the gift of prayer.^{[4, 8–9]}

How it came to be

Jerusalem night, the Dome of the Rock under starsIllustration · AI-generated

Scholars have long asked whether the journey was of the body or of the spirit. Some held that it was a dream or a journey of the spirit, but the majority view, which Dar al-Ifta states and the Encyclopedia of Religion reports, is that it was a literal journey of body and soul, undertaken while the Prophet was awake. Muslims began to commemorate the night in the month of Rajab, and the occasion has become an important popular holiday. Muslims commemorate the night on 27 Rajab, although the report giving that date is weakly transmitted, as the medieval scholar Ibn Rajab observed, and a fatwa on Islam Q&A says that no authentic hadith fixes the month. Diyanet says that spending the night in prayer brings great reward, and Egypt's Dar al-Ifta rules that celebrating the Night Journey and Ascension is permissible, so long as nothing forbidden is involved.^{[1, 5, 10–12]}

Sources

Each statement above was checked against published sources; the verdict says whether it stood as written, was corrected or was hedged.