It Was Not a Dream

A few things need explaining here. This was not in sleep; this was not a dream. The Prophet (peace be upon him) has been all over in dreams — he has been to Paradise, he has seen a great many such things — and had it been only a dream that he was claiming, nobody would have made a great outcry of it. For when he came back, Abū Jahl tried to make sport of this, and tried to rally people against it, thinking it an absurdity.

Until at length the Prophet (peace be upon him) was set in one place, and there were some present who had visited Jerusalem, and they were told to ask him to describe it. And he said: I did not know, for I had visited it only at night, and did not go and inspect it, or review it, or take a survey of it. But Allah (swt) set before me a vision of Jerusalem — one may imagine something like a three-dimensional model nowadays — and, he says, I was able to answer every one of their questions. Remarkable.

So it was certainly done; and that is the belief of the Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah, that it was done physically, with his body, though it was a journey of considerable distance, of hundreds of miles. And all of it was done within a few hours. He was back in Makkah Mukarramah; by the morning he was back there already.

Ṣiddīq (may Allah be pleased with him) received his name at that time, for when Abū Jahl asked him about this he said: I absolutely believe it. If he said so, I believe it. He is called Ṣiddīq, which means the absolutely veracious one.

The point of it is that this is a miracle of the Prophet (peace be upon him), and it was a true honour for him, that he had been where none had been. Mūsā (peace be upon him) greatly wished to see Allah, and was not made to see Allah (swt) in this world; but the Prophet (peace be upon him) came to see Him, and to much else besides, of which there are many discussions. And it is of course from there that we have our ṣalāh, the fifty prayers. What a gift, and what an auspicious journey, from what an auspicious Lord, to an auspicious Prophet.