To the Farthest Mosque
At the lowest ebb of his worldly fortunes came the mission's most exalted moment. On a night around the twelfth year of the call, the Prophet ﷺ was awakened, his heart washed with Zamzam water, and mounted on the Burāq — “a white beast, smaller than a mule and larger than a donkey, whose stride fell at the limit of its sight.” He was carried to Jerusalem, to the Farthest Mosque — al-Masjid al-Aqṣā — where the prophets from Ādam to ʿĪsā were gathered, and he led them in prayer. Offered vessels of wine and of milk, he chose the milk; Jibrīl said: “You have been guided to the fiṭrah — the primordial nature.”123
Through the Seven Heavens
From the rock of Jerusalem he was taken up — the Miʿrāj — through the seven heavens, greeted at each by its prophets: Ādam among the souls of his descendants; ʿĪsā and Yaḥyā; Yūsuf, given half of all beauty; Idrīs; Hārūn; Mūsā, who wept, as the ḥadīth honestly records, that a prophet sent after him would lead more of his community into Paradise than he; and in the seventh heaven Ibrāhīm, resting his back against al-Bayt al-Maʿmūr, the celestial House circled daily by seventy thousand angels.12
He was brought to the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary — Sidrat al-Muntahā — beyond which no created being passes, veiled in colours the reports decline to describe, and there received the ordinance of prayer: fifty in each day. Descending, he passed Mūsā, who sent him back — “your community will not bear it” — again and again, until fifty had become five: five in performance, fifty in reward, “for the word is not changed with Me.” The ḥadīth confesses the Prophet's ﷺ shame at asking yet again; the five daily prayers of a billion and a half people descend from that night.12
The Morning After
Told of the journey, Makkah exulted in disbelief: caravans took a month to Syria — one night! Some new believers wavered. Abū Jahl gleefully fetched the man himself to repeat the claim before the people. But when the mockers demanded a description of Jerusalem — which they, as caravan men, knew and he did not — “God raised it before my eyes,” the ḥadīth reports, “and I described it as I looked upon it.” And when they carried the story to Abū Bakr as proof of the claim's absurdity, his answer earned him his title for eternity: “If he said it, then he has spoken the truth. I already believe him concerning the revelation of heaven — in the morning or evening of every day.” From then on he was al-Ṣiddīq: the great affirmer of truth.34
The Qur'an itself is spare and majestic about that night: “The sight did not swerve, nor did it transgress. Truly he saw among the signs of his Lord the greatest.”5