Muhammad's Night Journey to the Jewish Temple Mount

Part 1 – Muhammad’s Night Journey to the Jewish Temple Mount

Muhammad's Flight Plan

Twelve years after Muhammad became a prophet he said that he was physically transported through the sky 775 miles from Mecca to Jerusalem and back again in one night on his winged steed, Al-Borak. [Likewise, when I was a child, I believed that there was a man with a beard who could travel right around the world in one night on a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer.]

This particular story of Muhammad’s Night Journey (Lailat-al-Miraj) is taken from The Life of Mohamet written in 1697 by Humphrey Prideaux and reprinted in 1808. Undeniably the older a book written about Islam the more clear the information since it would have been written closer in time to actual events and during an era when no political correctness existed. This book was typeset in old English therefore the following is “translated” into more readable English for ease of understanding.

Santa's Flight Plan

Humphrey Prideaux begins, “To this period [twelve years after Muhammad became a prophet] when visions of a journey northward flitted before his imagination belongs the story of the celebrated Night Journey (Lailat-al-Miraj) of the prophet from Mecca to Jerusalem, on the winged steed Al-Borak and thence by a ladder of light above the seven heavens to the very presence of God, whom ‘he saw by the Lote Tree, beyond which there is no passing’ (Sura Liii, 13,14).

“The people were calling on him for miracles to prove his mission, and he being able to work none, solved the matter by inventing the story of his journey to heaven. The Night Journey is believed by all that profess the Mahometan religion as a main article of their faith, and as such set down in all the books of their authentic traditions. How absurd forever it be, therefore my design is to give as full an account as I can of this man’s imposture which obliges me to relate it.

Al-Borak

“At night as Muhammad lay in his bed with his best beloved wife Ayesha [nine years old], he heard a knocking at his door. Upon arising, he found there the angel Gabriel with seventy pair of wings expanded from his sides, whiter than snow, and clearer than crystal, and the beast Al Borak standing by him, which they say is the beast on which the prophets used to ride when they were carried from one place to another upon the execution of a divine plan. Muhammad describes it to be a beautiful faced winged creature, a beast who had two wings on his thighs which lent strength to his legs. He was white as milk, smaller than a mule but bigger than a donkey and of such extraordinary swiftness that his passing from one place to another was as quick as lightning; from hence it is that he had the name of Al Borak, a word signifying lightning in the Arab tongue.

“As soon as Muhammad appeared at the door, the angel Gabriel kindly embraced him. With a sweet and pleasing expression he greeted him in the name of God, and told him that he was sent to bring him to God (Allah) in heaven, where he should see strange mysteries, which were not lawful to be seen by any other man, and then bid him to get upon Al Borak. 

“However Al Borak, having lain long idle from the time of Christ until Muhammad - there having been no prophet in all that interval to employ him - had grown so restive and skittish that he would not stand still for Muhammad to get up upon him. Eventually Muhammad was forced to bribe Al Borak to behave by promising him a place in paradise. After the promise of paradise, Al Borak quieted down and let Muhammed on his back and with the angel Gabriel leading the way with the bridle of the beast in his hand, Al Borak carried Muhammad through the sky from Mecca to Jerusalem in the twinkling of an eye.

There was not a single mosque in Jerusalem when 

Muhammed said he made his Night Journey to "the 

farthest mosque".

When the three arrived in Jerusalem all the departed prophets and saints appeared at the gate of the temple [the Jewish Temple Mount] to greet Muhammad, and from there they joined him in the chief oratory, asked him to pray for them, then left. Immediately after, Muhammad and the angel Gabriel went out of the temple and found a ladder of light ready for them to use to ascend their way up to Heaven. Meanwhile Al Borak was left on the Temple Mount tied to a rock until their return."

...to be continued with Part II - Muhammad's Ascent to the Seven Heavens