Jerusalem: The Biography

MUHAMMAD: THE NIGHT JOURNEY

Muhammad’s father died before he was born and his mother died when he was just six. But he was adopted by his uncle, who took him on trading trips to Bosra in Syria. There he was taught about Christianity by a monk, studied the Jewish and Christian scriptures, coming to venerate Jerusalem as one of the noblest of sanctuaries. In his twenties, a wealthy widow named Khadija, much older than he, employed him to manage her caravan trading and then married him. They lived in Mecca, the home of the Kaaba and its black stone, the sanctuary of a pagan god. The city thrived on the pilgrims attracted by this cult and by caravan trading. Muhammad was a member of the Quraysh tribe, who provided its leading merchants and custodians of the sanctuary, but his Hashemite clan was not one of the more powerful.

Muhammad, described as handsome with curly hair and beard, possessed both an all-conquering geniality – it was said that when he shook someone’s hand he never liked to be the one to let go first – and a charismatic spirituality. He was admired for his integrity and intelligence – as his warriors later put it, ‘He was the best among us’ – and he was known as al-Amin, the Reliable.

As with Moses, David or Jesus, it is impossible now for us to divine the personal essence of his success, but like them, he came at the time he was needed. In the Jahiliya, the Time of Ignorance before his revelation, ‘there was nobody more destitute than we were,’ wrote one of his soldiers later. ‘Our religion was to kill one another and raid. There were those among us who would bury their daughters alive not wanting them to eat our food. Then God sent us a well-known man.’

Outside Mecca was the Cave of Hira where Muhammad liked to meditate. In 610, according to tradition, the Archangel Gabriel visited him there with his first revelation from the one God who had chosen him to be his Messenger and Prophet. When the Prophet received God’s revelations, his face was said to become flushed, he fell silent, his body lying limp on the ground, sweat poured down his face; he was engulfed by humming sounds and visions – and then he would recite his poetical, divine revelations. Initially he was terrified by this, but Khadija believed in his vocation and he started to preach.

In this rough military society where every boy and man bore arms, the literary tradition was not written but consisted of a rich spoken poetry that celebrated the deeds of honourable warriors, passionate lovers, fearless hunters. The Prophet was to harness this poetical tradition: his 114 sura –

chapters – were initially recited before they were collated into the Koran, ‘The Recitation’, a compendium of exquisite poetry, sacred obscurity, clear instruction and bewildering contradiction.

Muhammad was an inspirational visionary who preached submission – Islam – to the one God in return for universal salvation, the values of equality and justice, and the virtues of pure living, with easily learned rituals and rules for life and death. He welcomed converts. He revered the Bible, and regarded David and Solomon, Moses and Jesus as prophets, but his revelation superseded the earlier ones. Importantly for the fate of Jerusalem, the Prophet stressed the coming of the Apocalypse that he called the Judgement, the Last Day or just the Hour, and this urgency inspired the dynamism of early Islam. ‘The knowledge of it is only with God,’ says the Koran, ‘but what will make you realize the Hour is near?’ All the Judaeo-Christian scriptures stressed that this could take place only in Jerusalem.

One night, his followers believed that, as he slept beside the Kaaba, Muhammad had a vision. The Archangel Gabriel awoke him and together they embarked on a Night Journey mounted on Buraq, a winged steed with a human face, to the unnamed ‘Furthest Sanctuary’. There Muhammad met his ‘fathers’ (Adam and Abraham) and his ‘brothers’ Moses, Joseph and Jesus, before ascending by a ladder to heaven. Unlike Jesus, he just called himself the Messenger or Apostle of God, claiming no magical powers. Indeed the Isra – Night Journey – and the Miraj – Ascension – were his only miraculous exploits. Jerusalem and the Temple are never actually mentioned but Muslims came to believe that the Furthest Sanctuary was the Temple Mount.