MIʿRĀJ. The belief that Muḥammad ascended to heaven in the course of his life and beheld the secrets of the otherworld as no other person had ever beheld them is shared by all factions of Islam. In Muslim religious literature, the idea of the Miʿrāj, Muḥammad's ascension to heaven, is closely associated with that of the Isrāʾ, his nocturnal journey. Neither term appears as such in the Qurʾān, yet both developed in close connection with crucial, though ambiguous, Qurʾanic passages.

Qurʾanic Associations

The term isrāʾ is taken from surah 17:1, "Glory be to him who carried his servant by night from the Holy Mosque to the Further Mosque, the precincts of which we have blessed, that we might show him some of our signs." It is reasonably certain that "his...