Centre for Islamic Studies at SOAS

Vision and Ascension: Srat al-Najm and its Relationship with Muḥammad's mirj / :‫ﺍﻟﺮﺅﻳﺔﻭﺍﻟﻤﻌﺮﺍﺝ‬
‫ﺳﻮﺭﺓﺍﻟﻨﺠﻤﻮﺻﻠﺘﻬﺎﺑﻤﻌﺮﺍﺟﺎﻟﻨﺒﻲ‬
Author(s): Josef van Ess and ‫ﻓﺎﻥ ٳﺱ ﺟﻮﺳﻒ‬
Source: Journal of Qur'anic Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1999), pp. 47-62
Published by: Edinburgh University Press on behalf of the Centre for Islamic Studies at SOAS
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 Vision and Ascension:
Surat al-Najm and itsRelationship with
Muhammad's 1
mfraj

Josefvan Ess
UNIVERSITY OF TUBINGEN

Ascension is something Jesus andMuhammad, or the religious imagery of

toHeaven

Christianity and Islam, have in common. But the differences are perhaps more
profound than the similarities. In Christianity, Jesus's ascension is the logical conse
quence of resurrection.The Qur'an, on the contrary,does not talk about resurrection;
Jesus is raised to Heaven immediately from the cross without having died upon it.
When Muhammad ascended toHeaven he did not abide there; he returned to earth.
Jesus had finished his earthlymission and he had apparently failed; when he went up
toHeaven thiswas to show that, in spite of his crucifixion, he belonged to the realm of
God. Muhammad's ascension, however, stood at the beginning of his career; he was,
on this occasion, initiated into his task, a task the success of which was evident to

everybody in his community.We should not forget thatonly inWestern languages is

the term 'ascension' applied to both events; inArabic there is a verbal difference
between Muhammad who experienced his mfrdj and Jesuswho was raised toHeaven,

rafacahu 'llahu ilayhi, as theQur'an says (4:158; cf.3:55). No Muslim ever compared
Muhammad to Jesus in this respect. This fact leaps all themore to the eye since com

parisons as such were not avoided, at least not during the earliest phase of Islam; they
are reflected in hadith. But they refer to other prophets and they are based on genu

inely Qur'anic ideas: Abraham, itwas said, was the friend of God (khalil Allah), Mo

ses was spoken toby God, atMount Sinai (he is dubbed kalim Allah) andMuhammad,

finally,was the one to ascend toHeaven and to see God inperson. This ismore than a
comparison, it is a climax: intimacywith God (Abraham), hearing Him (Moses), see
ingHim. A climax which presented the case in a new form, but also had its own
problems.

I do not want to discuss here themicrdj stories as such. One related aspect has to be
stressed, though.Muhammad does not abide inHeaven. He is not reunitedwith God
afterhaving temporarilybeen sent to earth by him; he only meets God, in an audience.
And thisaudience has a specific purpose: God tells him how many prayers his commu

nity should perform per day. In the beginning theAlmighty is quite demanding; he
mentions the number of fiftyprayers. Muhammad has to bargain with Him and he

manages to get the number down to five. This reminds us of the scene described in the
Old Testament where Abraham bargains, in a similar way, with respect to the few

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 48 Journal of Qur'anic Studies

righteous living at Sodom and Gomorrah whom God should spare when 'He rained'
on these towns 'stones of baked clay' as described in theQur'an (11:82). But it is
Moses who advises Muhammad to proceed in thisway, Moses whom he has met

during his journey through the spheres which he performs under Gabriel's guidance.
Moses and Abraham are the last two prophets whom he passes by, those who are
closest toGod in theircosmic relevance - and thosewho were compared with him in
the rhetorical climax mentioned above.

We can imagine how fascinating these storieswere for the audience of their time.But

theyhad one disadvantage: none of thiswas at firstglance to be found in the Scripture

itself. If anything, theQur'an offered only one vague allusion to it, in sura 70 where
God is called the 'Lord of theStairways (orLadder)', dhu yl-maQdrij and where the text
then continues: 'To Him the angels and the Spirit mount up in a day whereof the
measure is fiftythousand years'. But this did not fit;Muhammad was notmentioned
there.Therefore the exegetes had to pursue their search and in the course of time they
came up with two other passages which seemed to allude to the event. The firstone
was the beginning of sura 17, an isolated verse again which, devoid of any further

explanation, remained cryptic inmany respects: 'Glory be toHim, who carried His
servant (Muhammad as it seems) by night from theHoly Place ofWorship (probably
atMecca) to theFurther Place ofWorship theprecincts ofwhich we have blessed, that
we might show him some of Our signs.' 'Some of our signs': this could refer tomi
raculous experiences Muhammad had had on his journey inHeaven, possibly the en
counter with God Himself. The 'precincts' which had been blessed by God evoked,
because of other Qur'anic passages, the image of theHoly Land. Therefore many
started on whether the 'Further Place of Worship', which was
people speculating early

accompanied by this epithet,might possibly be Jerusalem. Already in the firstcentury

AH, Jerusalem was graced with a mosque on the precincts of the former Salomonic
Temple, a mosque which was identified with the 'Further Place ofWorship' and
- thiswas the result of all these
named after it: al-Masjid al-Aqsd. Muhammad had
combinations - miraculously traveled by night to Jerusalem. However, this could not

yet be called ascension. He remained on the surface of the earth; he had moved
horizontally, not vertically. It is true thathe had reached the place fromwhere Jesus
had ascended toHeaven. But theMuslims did notwant to compare him to Jesus in this

respect, as we have seen. Let us therefore look firstat the second passage.

This second Qur'anic testimonywas longer, though almost as equivocal as the first.Its
encoun
importance lay in the fact that it seemed togive a description ofMuhammad's
terwith God. For, at the beginning of sura 53, theQur'an reports two visions which
the Prophet had had at a certain time. These are quite unusual texts, since normally

according to theQur'an Muhammad does not see God, but listens to him. The Qur'an
- -
presents itself or is understood as the account of auditory experiences; this is how
the revelation normally takes place. In this instance the situation is different.We will

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 Vision and Ascension 49

begin by examining this passage fromArberry's translation, although itswording

contains certain preliminary decisions which I shall have to cancel afterwards: 'By the
Star when itplunges, your comrade (the person meant seems to be Muhammad him
self) is not astray, neither errs,nor speaks he out of caprice. This is naught but a revela
tion revealed, taughthim by one terrible inpower, very strong; he stood poised, being
on thehigher horizon, thendrew near and suspended hung, two bows'-length away, or
nearer, then revealed to his servant thathe revealed. His heart lies not of what he saw
...' and, immediately afterwards, the report concerning the second vision: 'Indeed, he
saw him come down another time by theLote-Tree of theBoundary nigh which is the
Garden of theRefuge, when therecovered theLote-Tree thatwhich covered; his eye
swerved not, nor swept astray. Indeed, he saw one of the greatest signs of his Lord.'

Again a 'sign of theLord', similar to the sign theProphet was promised to be shown at
the 'FurtherPlace ofWorship'; this iswhat may have brought both passages together.
The location remained even vaguer than in the firstcase. But the two visions them
selves are described in a thought-provokingway. Strangely enough the report ismade
in the thirdperson. People could think thatGod Himself was speaking; He seemed to
disclose a secretwhich, apart fromHimself, only theProphet could have known.

However, the wording of theQur'an did not make it sufficiently clear who itwas
whom the Prophet had seen. Whoever read or heard this passage had tomake the
decision himself.Modern Muslim exegesis normally insists that itwas Gabriel whom
the Prophet had seen on this occasion. But whenever these verses were incorporated
into the traditions pertaining toMuhammad's ascension we may be pretty sure that
thosewho were responsible for doing so included them into this context because they
believed in a vision of God. For this vision was the culminating point of the climax as
we saw; the audience which was granted toMuhammad by God was more than the

auditory event which had already been accorded toMoses on Mount Sinai. The only
problem was that the concept of God seen man soon came to constitute a
being by

theological scandal, or at least a problem to be addressed with utmost delicacy. For

vision implied anthropomorphism and anthropomorphism (tashbih) turnedout to be a

vexing issue for Islam as it did for Judaism once both religions started thinking in
theological terms. It never has been so forChristianity, for inChristianity anthropo
morphism became self-evident by reason of the Incarnation. Itwould be somewhat
audacious to pretend thatChristian theology made things easier by this dogmatic
device. Incarnation is a postulate rather than an argument.We are not surprised tohear
Tertullian say inhis treatiseDe came Christi 'On the flesh of Christ': Certum est quia

impossibile, '(the Incarnation) is a certitude because it is impossible'. A Muslim would

be shocked by such a statement; somethingwhich ismuhal, 'absurd', cannot be certain
or true.But to argue in favour of the vision of God would also
give rise to problems.
The contradiction emerges already in theQur'an itself.For in a laterpassage, in sura
81:23, one of the visions is alluded to again: 'Your companion is not possessed. He

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 50 Journal of Qur'anic Studies

trulysaw him on theclear horizon'. Again, simply 'him'. But here theperson who was
seen is called in a preceding verse a 'noble messenger, having power' and a 'messen

ger' is normally an angel, certainly not God himself. Does this solve our problem?
Perhaps forMuslims of our days, but not so for the interpretersof theQur'an we are
talking about. And apart from the approach of the believer, there is the historical di
mension. Avoiding anthropomorphism by interpretingstatements about God as state
ments about an angel was an old device of Jewish theology. The angel Metatron has to

play this role in certain places;2 theKabbala lateron followed the same line.The angel
could then take over the functions of the creator, as a kind of demiurge, 'somebody
who is obeyed', a mutof as theMuslims used to say;3 this is, as a matter of fact, the
termwhich comes up here in sura 81. The frame conditions of the statement have

visibly changed. The verse is certainly later than sura 53; for now the vision is not
described in detail, it is simplymentioned again as something previously known. The
audience may have lived inMedina, some Jews possibly being among them. In any
case, the secondary quotation does not exclude thatearlier on, in sura 53, itwas God
whom theProphet is thought to have seen, for there, in sura 53, the text says, in con
nection with the firstvision, when the person whom Muhammad saw in fact came

quite close tohim: 'He revealed toHis servant thathe revealed'. 'His servant' can only
be God's servant there,namely Muhammad. But then 'he' who revealed was not the
'noble messenger'; itwould have to be God Himself and God would also be theobject
of the vision. Accordingly we are forced back to our earlier assumption.

However, according to sura 53, theProphet did not see God while he was inHeaven.
He saw him somewhere on earth, for he saw Him 'on the higher horizon' and then
'coming down another time' (nazlatan ukhra). It is thus not the Prophet who ascends

toGod, God ratherdescends to him. It is true that, immediately afterwards,we are told
thathe saw Him 'by theLote-Tree of theBoundary nigh which is theGarden of the

Refuge'; this sounds like a code for Paradise, the 'Garden of theRefuge' being the
abode where the blessed will find refuge during or after Judgment (cf.32:19) and the
'Lote-Tree' marking the boundary of the sanctissimum where God Himself resides.
But God could descend to it nevertheless, for in those early days Paradise was fre

quently imagined tobe on earth.We need thereforenot follow the suggestion of earlier
orientalists (startingwith Grimme and Caetani up toRichard Bell and Regis Blachere),
nearMecca and the
namely that the 'Garden of theRefuge' was simply a plantation
Lote-Tree some well-known treemarking the boundary of theMeccan Sanctuary.
Muslim exegesis never saw any reason to deny that the encounter took place inPara
dise, even if itwere somewhere on earth. The 'Lote-Tree of theBoundary' became
something like theemblem ofMuhammad's ascension; even when reportsof themfrdj
make no other reference to surat the sidrat al-muntahd remains as the thresh
al-Najm,

old leading toGod's own realm, the seventhHeaven; it is there that the four rivers of
Paradise originate. The tree existed in the reality of theArabian peninsula; it could

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 Vision and Ascension 51

grow up to height of twelvemetres.4 Whoever thuswanted to interprettheseQur'anic

passages was confronted with two sets of alternatives: God or an angel, Heaven or
earth. This meant altogether four possibilities. Moreover one had to keep inmind that
theQur'an spoke about two visions, not about one only. For an ascension one of them
would have been sufficient- although, if theProphet had to haggle about the number
of prayers, even two of themwere perhaps not enough.

The game of exegesis always implies theological decisions. But these theological
decisions do not grow out of unbridled imagination; theyusually follow patternswhich
are available in the religious environment. As iswell known, the idea of the heavenly

journey was widespread in theAncient World; I need not refer to the considerable
corpus of secondary literatureproduced on this topic. A large number of categories,
concepts, symbols,metaphors etc. had been developed in theOld and New Testaments
and could be taken up; Uri Rubin's book on the 'Eye of theBeholder' gives numerous

examples.5 The issue of 'influences' is not our central concern here; what mattered
was the existential decision, the vorentscheidung, thepre-judgment of the interpreter.
Those who were afraid of anthropomorphism soon came to imagine thatMuhammad
had merely seen an angel, namely Gabriel, and only on earth at that.The Prophet was
then initiatedbyGabriel intohis task and received fromhim his firstrevelation. This is
also, our exegete would continue to say, the reason why the event got into theQur'an;
forGabriel, at thismoment, appeared toMuhammad for the first time, and in his real

angelic nature at that.We may wonder whether those who interpreted the vision this
way had the biblical book of Revelation, chapter 10 inmind: T saw anothermighty
angel come down fromHeaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his
head, and his face was as itwere the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire'; after all, this
-
angel carries a littlebook, a writing, inhis hand which John theneats a metaphorical
way of expressing initiation and revelation. But this is a mere historical problem that
needs further investigation.What is important for our discussion is the observation
thatwhoever thoughtof an angel here had to solve theproblem ofwhy theProphet had
to see Gabriel twice; he could also not entirely ignore the grammatical problem

previously mentioned, namely what to do with the recalcitrant pronoun in 'His

servant'. Nevertheless this scenario was broadly accepted; we find it already in Ibn

Ishaq's biography of theProphet, a text composed inMedina, during the firsthalf of

the second hijrl century.

Such an approach gained littlefor the ascension argument; itsprotagonists would have
been better off isnoring the passage altogether. This however was again an
option
which most people were notwilling to accept. Therefore, the vision of God continued
to be considered a viable possibility. But then one could no longer avoid
speculating
about the exact nature of the vision, thusmaking the Qur'anic description more

explicit. How thiswas done comes out from the firsttestimonies of theological reflec

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 52 Journal of Qur'anic Studies

tionwe normally have, fromprophetic tradition.Hadith is frequentlynothing else but

exegesis indisguise. A chain of transmittersprecedes each tradition inorder to guaran

tee trustworthiness.The firstexample we will examine is interesting in so far as these

persons are incorporated into a kind of frame-story.

Yahya reports: I asked Abu Salama: Which part of theQur'an

was revealed first? He answered: Sura 74 (yd ayyuhd 7

muddaththir). I said: But I have been told it is sura 96 (iqra bismi

rabbika). Abu Salama answered: Long ago I put the same ques
tion to Jabir b. cAbdallah, and he also said: Sura 74. I reacted
then the same way you did now: But I have been told it is sura
96,1 said, and he replied: I can only tell (you) what I heard from
theMessenger ofGod himself, namely: I (this is nowMuhammad

speaking) had retreated toMount Hira for contemplation. When

I had finishedmy spiritual exercises I descended to thebottom of
thewadl. I heard a voice calling me, and I looked around, in front
ofme, behind me, tomy right, tomy left. (But then)Lo, thereHe
was, sittingupon His throne,between Heaven and earth. I went
toKhadija and said to her: 'Cover me with a mantle and pour
cold water onme!' Then the revelation came upon me: Yd ayyuhd
'l-muddaththir, 'O thou shrouded in thymantle, arise and warn!
Thy Lord magnify...'.6

What is revealed toMuhammad is thebeginning of sura 74, God's appeal by which he

becomes a prophet and the call tomagnify Him. This is also the gist of the story.The
scholars did not agree on which Qur'anic revelation had been the oldest and this
was resolved here in favour of sura 74. On such reference was made
quarrel questions
to authoritative opinions of the early community; therefore the controversy is

presented in the form of a prophetic tradition.The chain of informants shows that the
dispute took place atMedina; itwas there, in the townwhere theProphet had died, that
itwas thought that themost accurate informationaboutMuhammad's life and experi
ences was available.

The Prophet thus sees God in all His greatness and sovereignty, sittingon His throne.
This does not surprise us; we are familiar with such visions from the Bible and the
Ancient Near East. But taken as an interpretationof sura 53 it is unusual. For though it
is true that theQur'anic passage refers toMuhammad having seen God 'on the higher
horizon', 'between Heaven and earth' as the hadith says in its exegetical reformula
tion,we don't hear anything about God being seated. According to theQur'an he
rather 'stood poised, being on the higher horizon' as Arberry puts it.At thispoint we
have to resort to the tools of philology; translations are always interpretationsand in
the case of theQur'an they often still depend on medieval Muslim exegesis. For the

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 Vision and Ascension 53

Arabic verb behind 'He stood poised' (istawa) is equivocal; it only means 'he held
himself upright'. But this can also be done when sittingand whenever theword istawa
is used elsewhere in theQur'an with regard toGod itappears in the combination 'He
held Himself upright on His throne'. It could thereforealso be understood thisway in
our passage. On the other hand, whenever the vision was transferred toGabriel the
throne had to disappear; an angel does not sit on a throne,he stands. He is standing
then, as says Ibn Ishaq, with his feet juxtaposed,7 'on the higher horizon' and gradu
ally 'draws near'. In our hadith, on the contrary, it is clear that the throne 'drew near';
itthen 'hung suspended' or came down like a bucket (dalw) in a well (tadalla) until it
was only 'two bows'-length away, or nearer'. Itwas in this situation of intimacy,his
ear close to themouth of God, that the Prophet received his firstrevelation.

To be precise, we should admit that,according to the story,he received his revelation

only when he was back home, after having been shrouded in his mantle. But what he
was told then is nothing else but what he would have heard from themouth of God
Himself: 'Arise and warn! Thy Lord magnify!'. At this verymoment he was not yet
asked to transmita specific message; he simplywent through an initiation.From now
onward he was tomagnify theLord, and he seems to repeat thismandate to himself
-
having come home and covered himself with a mantle inorder to concentrate this at
least seems to be the significance of this strikingpractice. In themoment of his vision
he was not yet able to receive themessage; the voice which he heard seemed only to
call him, and then he was completely overwhelmed by what he saw.

At thispoint we should perhaps pause for a moment and look back. Our discussion so
farhas consisted mainly of hypotheses. The material we possess - and which I cannot,
of course, present indetail here - is contradictory because of itsaxiomatic bias and the
secondary literaturealso startsfromdivergent presuppositions. The firsthypothesis is
the easiest to corroborate: Muhammad saw, according to the report in sura 53, God
as
and notGabriel. This is, I said, not in agreement with the canonical biography of the

Prophet. Nor is it,properly speaking, my hypothesis; what Iwant to say is simply that
this interpretationwas favoured by a certain number of early mufassirun. We need

only consult Tabari's Tafsir inorder to access all the relevantmaterial. Tabari himself
was not particularly fond of anthropomorphism; he got into troublewith theHanbalites
of his time for this same reason. Consequently, he interpretedthe visions of siirat al

Najm as visions of an angel, ofGabriel at that.But in spite of thishe cites cAbdallah b.

cAbbas and Anas b. Malik as those among the Companions of the Prophet who
to
believed them be visions of God and then,with the same opinion, Tkrima, the slave
and disciple of Ibn cAbbas.8 He even mentions a statement by Kacb al-Ahbar who

carefully noted thatMuhammad had seen God twice and then added, with all the
authority of an expert in Judaism but not entirely in correspondence with the Old

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 54 Journal of Qur'anic Studies

Testament, that similarlyMoses had talked toGod twice.9 This reminds us again of
c
theold climax and inpoint of fact, itwas Ibn Abbas towhom itwas attributed:Abraham
- Moses -
Muhammad, the vision being the deepest experience of the divine,10 a
c
vision of God 'in his most beautiful shape' (fi ahsani suratin) as Ibn Abbas was

supposed to have said,11 i.e., in his form as a merciful and gracious God, not in the
terrifying,tremendous appearance He will assume as theLord of theLast Judgement.

But there existed also counter-traditions which stressed God's transcendence. They
were connected with cA'isha,Muhammad's favouritewife, towhom statements about
intimateexperiences of her husband are frequently attributed; she emphatically denies
his having ever seen God, under any circumstances.12 Apart from such traditionswe
are confronted with compromises of different sorts. People could say that the ascen
sion togetherwith the vision as well as thenight journey to Jerusalem had only been a
dream; this sounded especially convincing inArabic, where there is no special word
for 'dreaming' but where one simply says 'he saw in his sleep'. People could also

pretend that theProphet had not seen God in reality, 'with his eyes', but only spiritu
ally, 'in his heart'. This could also ultimately amount to a dream, a veracious dream of
course, for,as is said in theprophetic tradition, 'the eyes of theProphet may sleep, but
his heart does not.'13 One knew from 39:42 that the sleeper's soul ascends toGod
whereas his body remains in situ.And above all: the report about the firstvision in
sura 53 ended with the sentence 'His heart lies not of what he (Muhammad, or it: the

heart) saw.'14 Finally, anthropomorphism could be avoided by dematerializing the

object of the vision. Let me document this again by a hadith. The last informant says
there after the chain of transmittershas been reproduced:

T said toAbu Dharr al-Ghifari, thewell-known companion of

the Prophet: If I had met theProphet I would have asked him a

question.
?What question?
?I would have asked him whether he had seen God. Abu Dharr

replied: But this is exactly what Imyself once asked him.

?And what did he say?

?Light! How could I have seen Him?!'15

The last sentence is not easy. Moreover thereare variant readings. But the intentionof
the hadith is obvious: lightdoes not have a form;when God thereforereveals Himself
as lighthe does not appear in any specific shape and the vision results in theProphet

being literallydazzled. This seemed to be thephilosophers' stone: vision granted only

togetherwith transcendence.

But it also shows, of course, thatpeople did not want to deny the event as such; an
find
angel was not enough. This was not just a transitoryor isolated phenomenon. We
evidence for iteverywhere. Let me adduce only one example, a testimonywhich may

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 Vision and Ascension 55

look exotic but shows, as in a mirror, the broad consensus which supported the idea.
About AH 160 a strangeperson, a 'heretic' according to theperspective of ourMuslim
sources, started a rebellion against the cAbbasid government in Eastern Iran and
Central Asia. This was theMuqanna, a man who veiled himself and was said to have

performed miracles; Jorge Luis Borges has written a short essay about him.16He
believed thatGod incarnatedHimself in the prophets, first inAdam when he created
him according toHis image, also in Jesus and finally inMuhammad. The moment He

slipped intoMuhammad coincided with the latter's vision, fornever was God so close
to him, 'two bows'-length or nearer' as is said in sura 53, or Tike an arrow to itsbow'
as the heresiographer formulates with regard to theMuqanna's own pretension to be
another - and probably the last- incarnation ofGod. The only new idea inhis doctrine
was the concept of incarnation (hulul); inorder tomake itpalatable to his audience he

proceeded from an exegesis of sura 53 which he cannot have invented himself. It

seems rather to have been common knowledge among those whom he wanted towin
over. This brings me tomy second hypothesis:

II - Muhammad saw God sitting on His throne.This is now an assumption which

contradicts not only thecommunis opinio of theMuslims but also ofWestern Islamicists,
for althoughWestern reasons normally take the visions of
scholars for philological
sura 53 to have been visions ofGod,17 theynevertheless believe Muhammad to have
seen God standing 'on thehigher horizon', like a figure projected against the sky.The

Muqanna, however, thoughtdifferently,forwe are told in the same heresiographical

passage thatGod, aftereach manifestation or incarnation, returned tohis throne.18The
Muqanna thusunderstoodMuhammad's vision in the sense thatwhen God 'drew near'
to theProphet in order to unite Himself with him He lefthis throne.

Again itwould be easy to produce more texts in support of this.But we do not need
them, for we can refer to a testimony which mentions this concept in immediate
connection with Muhammad's micrdj. It is a hadith, an apocryphal one which, in its
entire length (about twentypages inprint), is only quoted inSuyuti's La 'all al-masnita

fi'l-ahddith al-mawduca. However, Tabari quotes part of it,19forthe isndd startsagain

c
with Ibn Abbas; he is followed by Dahhak b.Muzahim who represented the exegeti
cal tradition connected with Ibn 'Abbas' name inEastern Iran. IbnMuzahim lived in
the town of Balkh, i.e., in the area of the ancient Bactrian Empire, a melting-pot of

religions and civilizations, where a small Arabic aristocracy controlled the trade route
towards Central Asia. The hadith says when the heavenly journey reaches its culmi

nating point:

T looked atHim (i.e., God) with my heart until Iwas sure thatHe
was present and that I really saw Him. For suddenly He removed
the curtain and thereHe was, sitting on His throne in all His

dignity and glory ... He bent over a little bit in His dignity

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 56 Journal of Qur'anic Studies

towardsme and bade me draw nearer. For this is theword of the

Scripture where He reports how He treatedme and glorified me

(53:5-10): '... He who is terrible inpower, very strong.He held
himself upright which, in this context, can only mean: on the
throne,being on thehigher horizon. Then he drew near and hung
two bows'-length or nearer ... And he revealed
suspended, away,
toHis servant thatHe revealed', namely the taskHe had decided
to impose on me.20

The 'task' referredtohere is obviously Muhammad's propheticmission. Anas b.Malik

- or those who referred to him - had
put it inmore concrete terms:God reveals to
Muhammad the fiftyprayers which He wants to impose on his community.21 Dahhak
b.Muzahim was less precise; he wanted to describe Muhammad's vision. And he does
so with some caution: Muhammad has to close his eyes; even Gabriel (who knew, of
course, the effect of this sight) covers themwith his hands. But for themoment the
prophet has been struckby the insupportable power of the lightand this iswhat he sees
now in his heart: God sittingon His throne,coming near to him in order to touch him
and to transferhis revelation in a trulycorporeal way: 'He put one of his hands be
tweenmy shoulder-blades, and for some time I felt the coolness of his fingers coming

through tomy heart...' This bringsme tomy thirdhypothesis:

III - The thronevision was the point where the literarymotif of the ascension, which
was originally foreign to the Qur'an, could sneak in. If the Scripture seemed to
confirm theProphet's having seen God sittingon His throne therewas no obstacle to

imagining thathe had ascended toHeaven in order to see Him where the thronewas
located. However, the new context implied differentemphasis. All of a sudden there
was the possibility of, even the urge to, combining the two visions mentioned in sura
53 into a single event where Muhammad would have seen God 'on thehigher horizon'
and then again - or at the same time- in the 'Garden of theRefuge', 'by theLote-Tree
of theBoundary'. Moreover, the direction had changed; itwas now the Prophet who
- or the
moved and notGod and theProphet moved upward, not downward as did God
- in the
angel Qur'an. Muslim theologywas on thepoint of discovering thatGod does
not move at all; He is immutable. This was a transcendentalist axiom and for the
transcendentalists itcould be the firststep in overcoming theirrepugnance against the
motif of the ascension as such. Finally, Muhammad's miraculous movement fromone

place to another facilitated the introductionof theotherQur'anic motif where he seemed

to travel or to be carried off in a miraculous way: namely his Night Journey to
Jerusalem.

This second miraculous event does not have to occupy us here. It originally belonged
to a different setting, in spite of the indissoluble bond with themotif of the ascension
which was created afterwards. In Ibn Ishaq's biography of theProphet both reports are

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 Vision and Ascension 57

still isolated from each other; Ibn Sacd even assigns them to different dates. There
were, however, two thingswhich paved theway for the attempt to combine them: a)
According to religious imagery,God's throne could also be located in Jerusalem, his
terrestrial throne to be precise, the throne fromwhich He created theworld and to
which He will returnat the end of times in order to sit in judgement on all mankind,
and b) In the beginning the night journey was sometimes understood as a nocturnal
translation to a heavenly place of worship, namely to the hayt mamur, the 'House
inhabited'of 52:4 which, in scholarly speculation, was interpretedas the equivalent of
the terrestrialkacba atMecca, a celestial Jerusalem as itwere. This brings us to an

entirely new dimension of our topic; we cannot deal with ithere.22 But let us note at
least that,under these circumstances, the isrd' could also end with a vision ofGod and
that this vision was then described in the same way as was done with respect to the

mfraj: theProphet meets God in a garden on theHaram al-Sharif, the ancient Temple
Mount, in a hortus conclusus as it is said (fthazlra), i.e., amidst the enclosure formed
- -
by thewalls of theHerodian or, as people believed at that time, Salomonic temple.
He sees Him there sitting on a throne, in the shape of a youth bearing a crown of

light,23and thenGod touches him as a proof of intimacy.

Let me conclude now and, in summarizing, bring in a last factor: chronology. There is
one thingwe have to be clear about rightaway: I have been talking about exegesis and
not about reality.We shall never know what Muhammad really saw, and even he
himself before talking about the event had to interpretit.The formulation in sura 81 is
clear: he had seen a 'venerable messenger', i.e., an angel (which does not necessarily
mean Gabriel). The statements in surat al-Najm are certainly earlier, and they are also
more explicit; butwith regard to thequestion we asked theyremain ambiguous. Moreo
ver, in spite of being early they do not seem to be the immediate expression of the
event as such, for in thiscase we would not expect two apparitions to be mentioned at
once. On the other hand, the text is obviously homogeneous; the rhyme remains the
same throughout the entire sura, with exception of the last six verses (57-62). We can
thereforenot explain thecombination of the two visions as theoutcome of laterredaction,
under TJthman or before. The hypothesis which suggests itself in this situation is: The

beginning of surat al-Najm does not describe one event which happened immediately
before, but rather refers to two of them in order to underline, by their singularity, the
veracity of something else. Where is then the 'Sitz imLeberi of the sural

This is not a question towhich we can give a definite answer. But going back toTabari

again, to his Tafsir24 as well as his Tdrikh,25we are leftwith the impression that,for
'
him, surat al-Najm was connected, in itsfirsthalf,with the affairof the satanic verses'.
As iswell known, the threepagan goddesses are mentioned in verses 19-20, immedi

ately after the report about the second vision and they are mentioned there and no

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 58 Journal of Qur'anic Studies

where else in theQur'an. We need not assume that the 'satanic verses' ever formed
-
part of the sura on the contrary, they are refuted there.But their rhyme is the same.
When theQur'an says thatLat, TJzza, and Manat cannot be of any relevance for the
new religion, the audience is supposed to connect thiswith the false revelation which
had been spread. This is at least how we may be allowed to interpretTabari - and the
sources he used. The consequences forour topic are enormous. Thematically, the em

phasis would shiftfrom thevisions to the refutationof the ill-advised theologoumenon;

the instrumentby which the three goddesses were supposed to exert their influence,
i.e. intercession (shafaca), is still the topic of verse 26. The beginning of surat al-Najm,
however, would thenbe nothing else but a solemn start,the introductionof a speech, a
sermon perhaps, held by theProphet when, as is also suggested by the reportswe find
inTabari,26 those who had emigrated to Ethiopia came back, people who had heard
what had happened inMecca only through rumours and who were eager toknow what
the Prophet really thought about the subject. The greatest possible authority and

persuasion would have been needed in order to invalidate the inculpations; in order to
reach this goal the Prophet could have referred to his encounters with the heavenly

power, the 'numinous' as we say today.4Your comrade is not astray, neither errs, nor

speaks he out of caprice. This is nought but a revelation revealed, taught him by one
terrible inpower, very strong', ifwe follow Arberry's translation.What was important
was the encounter as such; the question who itwas whom he had encountered could

remain, for themoment, unanswered. I leave this hypothesis as it is; my concern is

exegesis and not reality.

On the exegetical level we are confrontedwith a totally different situation.When the

their work the Qur'an had become a the canonized collec
mufassirun began Scripture,

tion of all the texts revealed toMuhammad. It is true that,during the firstgenerations,
one did not forget that surat al-Najm had some connection with the 'satanic verses'.
But thiswas not relevant, for even if the event had ever occurred ithad remained an

episode; the 'satanic verses' never had a chance to formpart of the final redaction of
theQur'an. The two visions of surat al-Najm, instead of being an allusion made by the
a
prophet to something previously known, as a proof of his veracity in delicate
moment, were now taken to be an immediate testimonyof his firstcontact with God or
his messenger. In the same time, the second reference to the event, in sura 81, came to
the fore. Being part of the 'Book' this sentence was now on the same level as sura 53;
a 'Book' had to be consistent. In a way the scholars continued to be aware of the fact
that revelations had been reactions to specific situations; this iswhy they talked about
asbab al-nuzul. But as far as the contents were concerned the passages had to be
balanced against each other. The jurists soon elaborated the category of abrogation
(naskh) in order to solve the ensuing difficulties. But in our case this device did not
work; theological statements could not be assumed to have been made in a different

way at different times.

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 Vision and Ascension 59

Under these circumstances we cannot but be struckby the high degree of acceptance
which the anthropomorphic interpretationof surat al-Najm found in the early commu

nity.We can, of course, not be sure whether the discussion really goes back to the
generation of the sahaba; much of what was related about the urgemeinde is projec
c
tion rather than reality. Ibn Abbas has been treated as a kind ofmythological figure in
recent scholarship.27 cA'isha may have witnessed how the statements concerning her
husband's visions inwhat was to become a Holy Scripture afterwards became less

equivocal, or how theProphet himself became increasinglymore cautious in interpret

ing them,but her statements are sometimes phrased in a way as to contain polemical
remarks against later theological currents,especially of a Shiite type.At the timewhen
the visions occurred she was not yet born.We may be pretty sure that the question
became a matter of serious dispute only lateron, perhaps not before the end of the first

century.During Hisham b. cAbdalmalik's caliphate, some time between AH 105 and

120, Jad b. Dirham was executed in Iraq, allegedly for having denied thatAbraham
was God's friend and thatMoses had been addressed by God Himself onMount Sinai;
c
Jad had obviously rejected the climax attributed to Ibn Abbas and consequently also
Muhammad's vision of God.28 His was, however not so 'new' a bidca as the
'heresy'

heresiographers pretend.He stood in a tradition,and there seems to have been a certain

continuity between sura 81, cA'isha's statement and his rejection of anthropomor
phism, although he himself may have already been influenced by Neoplatonism in
Harran where he had lived.

As to the stories about Muhammad's ascension, they also seem to have flourished
mainly in Iraq; there the idea of theheavenly journey was deeply rooted inHellenistic
gnosticism and apocalyptic or mystical Judaism. InMecca and Medina the scholars
remained cautious; Ibn Ishaq who did not believe theProphet to have seen God Him
self did not grantMuhammad's ascension a prominent place inhis narrative either and
accepted itonly in an attenuated version. In Syria people apparently preferred to think
rather in termsof thenight journey; Jerusalem was what theywere interested in.They
did not object toMuhammad's having seen God and even having been touched by
Him, but theydid not have any need for themotif of the ascension. Yet this lattermotif
turnedout tobe the strongerone, probably simply due to the fact that,with the event of
theAbbasids, Iraq became the political and intellectual center of the Islamic world.
From there it spread toEastern Iran; already in theUmayyad period Iraqi troups had
settled there.Our most extensive report came, as we saw, from Balkh; Dahhak b.
c
Muzahim, towhom itwas attributed, claimed to have got it from Ibn Abbas. Even
here we are, as far as authenticity is concerned, not yet on safe ground. However, the
oldest testimonywhich can be reliably dated is found again in Iraq. The only problem
is that in this case themotif is not connected with Muhammad; it is used by - or with
-
respect to a heretic who pretended to be a prophet himself: a Shiite by the name of
Abu Mansur al-Ijl.

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 60 Journal of Qur'anic Studies

I cannot deal with him here; suffice it to say thathe belonged to theghuldt, the lunatic

fringeof early Shiism. He was executed in the twenties of the second hijri century; he
had started a rebellion. His adherents justified his claim by pretending that he had
ascended toHeaven. God had talked tohim inPersian, they said, and addressed him by
the title 'my son' (yd pasar); afterward He had sent him back to earth in order to

proclaim His word. Abu Mansur apparently considered himself tobe a son ofGod; his
adherents called him theLogos (al-kalima) and took theoath by that term.They looked

upon him as theMessiah since God had touched his head with His hand. The verb for
touching a person's head, patting itas one does with a child, ismasaha inArabic, and
mash, theArabic equivalent toHebrew meshah, theMessiah, is simply the passive
participle to thisverb. The word itselfdoes not primarilymean 'to anoint' likeHebrew
mashah orAramaic meshah; Abu Mansur's adherents - and possibly he himself - thus
understood theMessiah in theirown, Arabic way. This was a very imaginativemanner
of taking up themotif. We may be pretty sure thatAbu Mansur wanted to vie with
Muhammad in this respect, but themodel he followed was Jesus.

What is importantfor us is thathe failed; the outcome of his preaching was simply a
riot, the occupation of a mosque perhaps. Whoever arrogated themotif of the ascen
sion to himself no longer remained unpunished. Only a prophet could pay a visit to
God and meanwhile the vast majority had decided Muhammad to have been the last

prophet, the 'seal of theProphets'. The Shiites did, in a certainway, not belong to this
majority; this iswhy they still retained early views for some time.This also applies to
anthropomorphism; they adhered to iteven after they had calmed down, so to speak,
and stopped producing new prophets. But in the long run they, too, changed their
mind; not only did theydissociate themselves from people likeAbu Mansur, but they
also became transcendentalists as most of theSunnis had already become. All of them,
Sunnis and Shiis alike, have remained so until today; they owe this common outlook

mainly to the impact ofMuctazilite theology.When in the period of theMamluks,

during theninthhijri century, somebody inCairo pretended tohave ascended toheaven
in order to see God and to talk toHim, he was simply put into a lunatic asylum.

Muhammad's ascension, however, had a long and triumphanthistory, in art and in

literature,even in a Latin text like theLiber Scalae Machometi which may have influ
enced Dante in his Divine Comedy. Normally the Prophet was no longer believed to
have seen God during his encounter; he only heard His voice, preferably frombehind
a veil. But the event was not understood as being mere dream either; itwas a reality, a
miracle. And even thevision of God was not completely ruled out, though in a differ
ent context. Sunni Islam went througha protracted discussion about whether the ru 'yd
bVl-absar, the beatific vision after theLast Judgment, should be part of the creed; it
was finally decided that in Paradise all Muslims will see God, albeit only intermit

tently,as in a theatrewhen the curtain, the veil, rises as a token of divine grace. But

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 Vision and Ascension 61

then theworld will have come to an end and vision is part of eternal bliss. The Prophet,
on the contrary, had a task to accomplish; therefore he had to return to earth. His

glorification marked the beginning, not the end of his career. He became a symbol of
Muslim identityand in this respect his uniqueness ismore stronglyfelt today than ever
before. But his uniqueness is nowadays mainly defined in this-worldly categories,

especially in connection with his achievements as a leader of his community. His

supernatural encounter with thedivine remained an isolated event; the Scripture itself,
though evoked in its support, prevented its full deployment. In this respect Islamic
theological thinking, ifcompared toChristian speculations and perhaps to its advan
tage, stopped half-way.

NOTES

1 I have treated the topic at length in an article which appeared in:M. A. Amir-Moezzi (ed.), Le
voyage initiatique en terre dIslam: ascensions celestes et itineraires spirituels, Bibliotheque de
L'Ecole des hautes etudes: section des sciences religieuses, 103 (Louvain, Peeters, 1996), pp.
27-56. I refer the reader to it for further documentation. Endnotes are added here only where
new material has been used or where it seemed necessary.
absolutely
2 For this figure cf. now Steven M. Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of
Symbiosis under Early Islam (Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 181 ff.

3 Cf. the role the mutac plays inGhazalfs Mishkat al-anwdr.

4 Cf. now EI 2, IX, pp. 549 fs. v. sidr (R. Kruk).

5 Uri Rubin, The Eye of theBeholder: The Life ofMuhammad as Viewed by theEarlyMuslims:
a textual analysis, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 5 (Princeton, Darwin Press, 1995).
6 Al-Bukhari, Sahlh, Kitab al-Tafslr 65 (surat al-Muddaththir).
7 Ibn Hisham, cAbd al-Malik, al-Slra al-nabawiyya; trans. F. Wustenfeld as Das Leben
Muhammed's nach Muhammed Ibn Ishak (2 vols., Gottingen, Dieterichsche Universitats

Buchhandlung, 1858-60), pp. 153-6.

8 Al-Tabari,7am/c al-baydn can ta'wll ay al-Qur'an Cairo, 1373/1954), 27:48,5 ff. (cIkrima);
c
45,4 ff. (Anas b. Malik); 48, pu. f. (Ibn Abbas); cf. also al-Baladhuri, Ahmad b. Yahya, Ansdb

al-ashraf, ed. M. Hamidullah, Dhakha'ir al-carab, 27 (Cairo, Machad al-Makhtutat bi-Jamicat al

Duwal al-cArabiyya and Dar al-Macarif, 1959), 1:256, no. 591.
9 Al-Tabari, Jdmic al-baydn, 27:51, 17 ff.

10 Ibid., 48,7 f.

11 Ibid., 48, 12 f., in the context of a well-known hadith which again alludes to the climax.

12 Ibid., 50, 14 ff.

13 A. J.Wensinck and J. P. Mensing, Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane (8

vols., Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1936-88), 7:48a.
14 Ibn cAbbas allegedly already pointed to this fact (al-Tabari, Jdmic al-baydn, 27:48, 3 f.).

15 IbnKhuzayma, Kitdb al-Tawhid (Cairo, 1354/1935),p. 134,4 ff.

16 Jorge Luis Borges, 'El tintorero enmascarado Hakim de Merv' in Carlos V. Frias (ed.),
Obras completas (1923-1972) (Buenos Aires, Emece Editores, 1974), pp. 324 ff.
17 Cf. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1953), pp. 42 f.
18 It is now to be found
inW. Madelung and P. E. Walker, An Ismaili Heresiography: The
'Bab al-shay tan from Abu Tammdm's Kitab Islamic History and Civilization, 23
al-shajara,
(Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1998), p. 76,4 ff. of the Arabic text; cf. P. E. Walker, 'An Isma'ili version of

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 62 Journal of Qur'anic Studies

the heresiography of the seventy-two erring sects' in F. Daftary (ed.), Mediaeval Isma 'Hi history
and thought(CambridgeUniversityPress, 1996), p. 171.
19 Al-Tabari, Jdmf al-baydn, 27:48, 18 ff. and before.

20 Al-Suyutl, Lac,dll al-masnuca fi'l-ahddith al-mawdiica, 1:74, 14 ff.

21 Al-Tabari, Jamic al-baydn, 27:45, 7 f.

22 For a more detailed treatment cf. my article <cAbd al-Malik and the Dome of the Rock. An

Analysis of some Texts' in J.Raby and J. Johns (eds.), Bayt al-Maqdis: cAbd al-Malik fsJerusa

lem,Oxford Studies in IslamicArt, 9 (OxfordUniversityPress, 1992), pp. 89-103.

23 For the motif as such cf. now D. Gimaret, Dieu a Vimage de Vhomme. Les anthropo
morphismes de la sunna et leur interpretation par les theologiens (Paris, les Editions du Cerf,

1997), p. 158 f.
24 Al-Tabari, Jdmf al-baydn, 27:186 ff., i.e., not in connection with surat al-Najm but with
surat al-Hajj, v. 52.

25 1:1192, 3 ff.; cf.Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, pp. 101 ff.

26 Al-Tabari, Jdmf al-baydn, 17:187, -5 etc.; cf. the story as told by cUrwa b. al-Zubayr in

Rubin, The Eye of theBeholder, pp. 160 f.

27 Cf. Claude Gilliot, 'Portrait ?mythique? dTbn cAbbas', Arabica, 32:2 (1985) p. 62.

28 Cf. my Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: eine Geschichte des

religiosenDenkens imfriihen Islam (6 vols., Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1991-5), 2:452 ff. Ibn
c
Abbas' opinionsmay here been propagatedby his pupil Tkrimawho traveledwidely and lived
until 105/723-4.

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