The Familiar and the Fantastic in Narratives of Mu[hdot]ammad's Ascension to the Heavenly Spheres

Abstract

The story of Mu[hdot]ammad's Night Journey and Ascension to the Heavenly Spheres is perhaps the most fantastic episode in the Prophet's biography, and its fantastic aspects became widely accepted as historical facts notwithstanding the misgivings of early Muslim scholars. This paper investigates the narrative function of the fantastic in Ibn Kathīr's extensive accounts of the story within a comparative framework. By examining his version of Mu[hdot]ammad's Journey against narratives of utopia in western literature, it is possible to see the striking similarity in their narratives' patterns, always beginning with the ‘familiar’ departure, then moving into the ‘remarkable’ journey, and ending in the ‘fantastic’ arrival, where the traveller comes into contact with the source of special knowledge. This paper proposes that Muslim al-Isrā’ wa-l-Mi‘rāj and western narratives of utopia follow a fairly universal structure, what I would call ‘utopian travel rubric’, which blends the ‘familiar’, ‘remarkable’ and ‘fantastic’ to engender a sense of plausibility for both the Heavenly and Utopian journeys.

Notes

¹This response is clearly espoused by most Muslim scholars since the 4th/10th century; see al-[Tdot]a[hdot]āwī (d. 321/933): ‘The Mi‘rāj is a true event ([hdot]aqq) … God corporealy raised [Mu[hdot]ammad] while he was awake to the Sky … and God bestowed honours upon him.’ Ibn Abī al-‘Izz Al-[Hdot]anafī, Shar[hdot] al-‘Aqīdat al-[Tdot]a[hdot]āwiyya (Cairo: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 2005), 223.

²A number of western scholars since the early 20th centiury have sought ‘the historical lines of connection between Islam and the older religious ideas of the Near East.’ Geo Windengren, Mu[hdot]ammad, the Apostle of God and His Ascension (Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksells, 1955), 207. Most focused on Judeo-Christian prototyles, which they proposed as the origins of the Muslim story. See A. A. Bevan, ‘Mu[hdot]ammad's Ascension to Heaven’, in Bieheft zur Zeitschrift fur die attestamentliche Wissenschaft XXIV (New York: De Grayter, 1924, 55–61); Harris Birkeland, ‘The Legend of the Opening of Muhammed's Breast’, in Auhandlinger Utgitt Av Det Norkse Videnskaps Akademi (Oslo: N.p., 1955); Windengren, Mu[hdot]ammad; and, more recently, Brent E. McNeely, ‘The Mi'raj of Mu[hdot]ammad in an Ascension Typology’, http://www.bhporter.com/Porter%20PDF%20Files/The%20Miraj%20of%20Muhammad%20in%20an%20Asceneion%20Typology.pdf (accessed 1 July 2012).

³Al-[Tdot]abarī reports the names of several scholars who maintained the ‘dream theory’, citing evidence attributed to Mu[hdot]ammad's wife ‘Ā’isha and the first Umayyad Caliph, Mu‘āwiya ibn Abī Sufyān. Mu[hdot]ammad ibn Jarīr al-[Tdot]abarī, Tafsīr Jāmi’ al-Bayān, ed. [Sdot]idqī Jamīl al-‘Attar (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1999),15: 22. Al-[Tdot]a[hdot]āwī's staunch rejection of the dream theory in al-‘Aqīda gives further evidence of its former prevelance (al-[Hdot]anafī, Shar[hdot] al-‘Aqīdat al-[Tdot]a[hdot]āwiyya, 223).

⁴The earliest extant rejections of the dream theory date from the 4th/10th century, and see Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373) for the fullest summary of this discourse. Abū al-Fidā’ Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, ed. Ahmad Abū Mulhim et al. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, n.d.), 3: 112–13. From the 4th/10th century onwards, accounts of al-Isrā’ wa-l-Mi‘rāj preserve much fantastic material gathered from earlier sources without expressing doubt as to its historicity: see the similarities between al-[Tdot]abarī's 4th/10th century version attributed to Abū Hurayra (al-[Tdot]abarī, Tafsīr Jāmi‘ al-Bayān, 15: 10–16), and the 8th/14th-century works history of Ibn Kathīr (Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, 3: 109–10; and Abū al-Fidā’ Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1994), 3: 3–21.

⁵Separate from the search for the story's ‘true origins’ (see note 2); Colby's and Vuckovic's recent studies of al-Isrā’ wa-l-Mi‘rāj focus on the development of the story in the Muslim tradition. Frederick S. Colby, Narrating Mu[hdot]ammad's Night Journey (Albany: State University of New York, 2008); and Brooke Olson Vuckovic, Heavenly Journeys Earthly Concerns—The Legacy of the Mi'raj in the Formation of Islam (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2005). More akin to this article's literary approach to the Ascension narratives in Muslim writing, Christiane Gruber and Frederick Colby eds. The Prophet's ascension: cross-cultural encounters with the Islamic mi‘rāj tales (Bloomington: Indiana, 2010) contains stimulating accounts of the employment of Muhammad's Ascension story for esoteric and missionary purposes, particularly in the later Persian and Turkish traditions from the twelfth century onwards; this present article, however, engages with the earlier Arabic tradition.

⁶The tradition initiated by More is sometimes referred to as ‘scientific utopias’, as the genre began in the European ‘Age of Reason’ and has a goal of inspiring societal betterment through rational political or technological improvement. See Khrisan Kumar, ‘Aspects of the Western Utopian Tradition’, in Thinking Utopia: Steps Into Other Worlds, ed. Jorn Fehr and Michael Rusen, Thomas Rieger (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 26–7; and Wolfgang Pircher, ‘On the Construction of Worlds’, in Thinking Utopia: Steps Into Other Worlds, ed. Jörn Rüsen, Michael Fehr and Thomas Rieger (New York: Berghahn Books: 2005), 68.

⁷Thomas More, ‘Letter to Peter Giles’, in The Complete Works of Sir Thomas More, vol. 4, ed. E. Surtz and J. H. Hexter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), 251.

⁸The understanding of utopia's purpose to inspire action is summarised by Marina Leslie, Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1998), 12).

⁹Thomas More, Utopia (1516) (London: Cassell & Company, 1901), 4.

¹⁰Jonathan Swift, ‘Travels into Several Remote Nations of the Worlds in Four Parts (Gulliver's Travels)’, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol I, ed. M.H. Abrams et al. (New York: Norton, 1962), 1925–26.

¹¹More, Utopia, 4.

¹²Francis Bacon, ‘New Atlantis’, in Ideal Commonwealths, ed. Francis Bacon, Thomas More, Thomas Campanella, James Harrington (New York, London: P. F. Collier & Son, 1901), 103.

¹³South Sea mystique was not entirely extinguished: Europeans from Diderot to Gaugin imagined idealised native communities in the remote islands of the South Pacific. These conceptions do differ from utopia, however, as the island ideals were ‘real’ places that anyone could visit, not the inaccessible ‘no place’ of the utopian tradition.

¹⁴More, Utopia, 4.

¹⁵Jack Vance, Big Planet (New York: Avalon, 1957).

¹⁶Bacon, ‘New Atlantis’, 103.

¹⁷More, Utopia, 4.

¹⁸Ibid.

¹⁹Ibid.

²⁰Bacon, ‘New Atlantis’, 104–8.

²¹For example, Bacon's description of the first encounter with citizens of utopia has them in gilded boats with sumptuous robes, ‘an excellent azure color, far more glossy than ours’ (‘New Atlantis’, 105). Utopia's fruits are of unusual colour and have wondrous effects against infection, and its citizens live in houses of blue bricks and dine on food more delicious even than the ‘collegiate diets’ known in Europe (‘New Atlantis’, 106–8)!

²²See note 7.

²³See Kumar ‘Aspects of the Western Utopian Tradition', 7–9 on Cokaygne as a ‘false utopia’; and for a full analysis of this ‘fools paradise’ eschewed by scholars, see A. L. Morton, The English Utopia (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1952), 16–17 and passim.

²⁴Qur’ān 17:1. Arberry's translation. See also Qur’ān 17:60 and 53:13–18 for more cryptic references usually interpreted as connected to al-Isrā’ wa-l-Mi‘rāj.

²⁵In modern scholarship, Colby makes this case, citing both Ibn Sa‘d and Muqātil. Muqātil, however, is ambivalent in this regard. His commentary on Chapter 17 of the Qur’ān can be read to imply that al-Isrā’ was separate from al-Mi‘rāj (2: 513–20), but in his commentary on Chapter 53 he indicates that both events occurred together (4: 160–1). Mu[hdot]ammad Ibn Sa‘d, al-[Tdot]abaqāt al-Kubrā, ed. Mu[hdot]ammad ‘Abd al-Qādir ‘Atā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1997); and Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-‘Ażīm, ed. ‘Abd Allah Ma[hdot]mūd a-Sha[hdot]ata (Cairo: Al-Hay’at al-Misriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kutub, 1979–1989).

²⁶By ‘canonical’ I intend texts that constitute some of the main sources for orthodox dogma up to the present, written in the early 4th/10th century, and that unambiguously relate al-Isrā’ wa-l-Mi‘rāj in the form familiar today. See, for example, al-[Tdot]abarī, Tafsīr Jāmi‘ al-Bayān; and al-[Hdot]anafī, Shar[hdot] al-‘Aqīdat al-[Tdot]a[hdot]āwiyya.

²⁷Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir, 3: 3–23; and Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, 3: 107–20. Al-Bidāya is expressed as a more condensed version than the Tafsīr, containing what Ibn Kathīr deems ‘sufficent detail’ (maqna‘ wa kifāya) (3: 107), although it is a long section with ample fantastic detail, such as descriptions of the ranks of thousands of angels at the gate of Heaven (3: 109), and the rivers of Paradise (3: 114).

²⁸Ibn ‘Abbās, Abū Hurayra, Anas ibn Mālik and Sa‘d al-Khudrī.

²⁹Colby's work on the evolution of anecdoes associated with Ibn ‘Abbās provides excellent analysis of the changes that could occur to ‘original’ material as it was cited and re-cited over the centuries.

³⁰Some texts record small numbers of long narrative anecdotes (see Muqātil, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-‘Ażīm, 2: 513–20), whereas others recorded larger numbers of shorter, more laconic anecdotes (see al-Ballādhurī's biography of the Prophet). A[hdot]mad ibn Ya[hdot]yā Al-Ballādhurī, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, ed. Mahmud al-Fardous al-Azem (Damascus: Dār al-Yaqażat al-‘Arabiyya, 1997), 1: 295–7.

³¹See al-[Tdot]abarī, Tafsīr Jāmi‘ al-Bayān, 15: 3–24 and 27: 66–77.

³²For instance, one anecdote notes that Muhammad stopped to pray in Bethlehem on his way to Jerusalem. This is not widely attested and Ibn Kathīr declares it ‘munkar’, a non-recognised, disavowed fact (Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3: 16).

³³He states this in al-Bidāya, noting: ‘some narrators would leave out some information on account of it being well known, or because they forgot it, or because they chose to mention what they thought was more important; while at times they would narrate all they knew, but at other times they cut their accounts according to what was most useful for them’ (Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, 3: 115).

³⁴As these texts are mostly non-canonical, not all have survived, but extant texts were recently collected by James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1985); and James H. Charlesworth, The New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1987).

³⁵See McNeely, ‘The Mi'raj of Mu[hdot]ammad, passim; and Jean Delumeau, History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition, trans. Matthew O'Connell (New York: Continuum, 1995), 23.

³⁶This curious description is fairly consistent across the versions, see Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3: 5, 8, 14 and with slight variation, 12. In one narrative the animal is described as a horse (faras) (Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3:17).

³⁷Suliman Bashear, ‘Riding Beasts on Divine Missions’, Journal of Semitic Studies 37 (1991): 57–58.

³⁸Ibid., 67.

³⁹See Mu[hdot]ammad ibn Mūsā al-Damīrī, [Hdot]ayāt al-[Hdot]ayawān al-Kubrā, ed. Ahmad [Hdot]asan Basūj (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1994), 1: 170; and Mu[hdot]ammad ibn Ahmad al-Qur[tdot]ubī, al-Jāmi‘ li-ahkām al-Qur’ān, ed. Sālim Mustafā al-Badrī (Beirut: Dār al-Kuttub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2000), 10: 135. Ibn Kathīr alludes to this tradition, noting that al-Burāq was stabled in Jerusalem where ‘Prophets stable’ (Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3:5).

⁴⁰al-Damīrī, [Hdot]ayāt al-[Hdot]ayawān al-Kubrā, 1: 171.

⁴¹Elsewhere named Sahm ibn al-[Hdot]arith. al-Jā[hdot]iż, ‘Amr ibn Bahr’, in Kitāb al-[Hdot]ayawān, ed. Mu[hdot]ammad Bāsil ‘Uyun al-Sūd (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya, 1998), 2: 499.

⁴²Ibid., 3: 417.

⁴³See, for example, ‘Antara's poem in al-Mu‘allaqāt. al-Husayn al-Zūzanī, Shar[hdot] al-Mu‘allaqāt al-Sab‘ (Beirut: Maktabat al-Ma‘ārif, 1972), 115.

⁴⁴al-Shanfarā, Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab, ed. ‘Abd al-[Hdot]alīm al-[Hdot]afnī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Ādāb, 1981), Ln 56.

⁴⁵Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3: 6.

⁴⁶Vuckovic, Heavenly Journeys, 36.

⁴⁷Ibn Kathīr, Tafsir Ibn Kathir 3: 8, 9 and 21. The tradition that Mu[hdot]ammad was sleeping in the house of Umm Hāni’ may have been influenced by subsequent ideological persuasions, as she was the sister of the later Caliph ‘Alī. In any event, all locations were essentially adjacent, as al-[Tdot]abarī in his Tārīkh notes that Mu[hdot]ammad's tribe, the Quraysh, all slept around the sacred precinct. Mu[hdot]ammad ibn Jarīr al-[Tdot]abarī, Tārīkh al-Rusul wa-l-Mulūk, ed. Mu[hdot]ammad Abū al-Fa[ddot]l Ibrāhīm (Beirut: Rawā’i‘ al-Turāth al-‘Arabi, n.d.), 2: 308.

⁴⁸In his historical work, al-Bidāya, he also cites the verse at the outset of his discussion of al-Isrā’ wa-l-Mi‘rāj (Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, 3: 107).

⁴⁹Muqātil, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-‘Ażīm, 2: 513 and 516.

⁵⁰Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3: 22.

⁵¹Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, 3: 108.

⁵²See Colby, Narrating Mu[hdot]ammad's Night Journey,15–16.

⁵³Even the earliest extant text makes no indication of competing conceptions of the Qur'an's spatial reference (Muqātil, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-‘Ażīm, 2: 515–516).

⁵⁴Most spectacularly, the finds at Qariyat al-Faw in southern Saudi Arabia. See A.R. al-Ansary, Qaryat al-Fau: A Portrait of Pre-Islamic Civilisation in Saudi Arabia (Riyadh: University of Riyadh, 1982).

⁵⁵Lawrence I. Conrad, ‘The Arabs’, in The Cambridge Ancient History Volume XIV: Late Antiquity, ed. Averill Cameron et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2000), 687–8.

⁵⁶The existence of Meccan trade with al-Shām alluded to in the Qur'ān (106:1–2) seems to have been definitively proved by Victor Sa[hdot][hdot]āb in Īlāf Quraysh (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-‘Arabī, 1992). However, as set out below, their trade largely centred around market cities located at the very edge Syria, or its borders with the Arabian Desert.

⁵⁷al-Mas‘ūdī, ‘Alī ibn al-[Hdot]usayn, Murūj al-Dhahab, ed. Charles Pellat (Beirut: al-Jāmi‘at al-Lubnāniyya, 1966), §935.

⁵⁸Ibid., §1372.

⁵⁹Al-Ballādhurī, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, 1: 86.

⁶⁰Ibid., 1: 21; and Mu[hdot]ammad ibn Makram Ibn Manżūr, Lisān al-‘Arab (Beirut: Dār Sādir, 1990), 8: 70.

⁶¹Al-Ballādhurī, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, 1: 70.

⁶²Ibid., 1: 67.

⁶³‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Hishām, al-Sīrat al-Nabawiyya, ed. Mustafā al-Saqā et al (Beirut: Dar al-Ma‘rifat, n.d.), 1: 180.

⁶⁴Ibid., 1: 158.

⁶⁵Bacon, ‘New Atlantis’, 108.

⁶⁶In the Tafsīr we encounter honey-sweet Heaven water (Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir, 3: 7), pearl and emerald palaces (3: 4), rivers of mercy and purification (3: 19). Fantastic punishments are also recorded, gnashing of teeth, scratching of faces and disgusting food is served to the wrong-doers (e.g. 3: 5 and 17).

⁶⁷Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3: 13.

⁶⁸Qur'ān 53:14, where its association with the Night Journey is only implicit, although accepted by the Musim tradition.

⁶⁹Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3: 4 and 9.

⁷⁰al-Qur[tdot]ubī, al-Jāmi‘ li-ahkām al-Qur’ān, 17: 63. In modern scholarship, some have deemed it to be a much more prosaic, earth-bound garden near Mecca. This view is roundly refuted by Van Ess (50), and, in any event, for our purposes the association of the tree with ‘al-muntahā’ (the end) clearly intends to conjure conceptions of the furthest, the most distant possible point of travel. Joseph van Ess, ‘Vision and Ascension: Surat al-Najm and its Relationship with Mu[hdot]ammad's Mi'rāj’ Journal of Qur’anic Studies 1 (1999): 47–62.

⁷¹Qur'ān 53:15.

⁷²For the identification of jannat al-ma'wā with the paradise promised to devout Muslims and martyrs, see commentaries on another verse of the Qur'ān: (32:19).

⁷³Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3: 9.

⁷⁴A zone the Qur’ān declares thoroughly beyond all reach of mortals, unless divinely assisted. See, for example, Qur’ān 52:38 and 55:33.

⁷⁵Gabriel is narrated as accompanying Mu[hdot]ammad from Mecca to Jerusalem with al-Burāq, and then to the Heavens without al-Burāq, and in the Heavenly Spheres, Gabriel acted as Mu[hdot]ammad's guide until the Jujube Tree and the Garden (Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, 3: 110).

⁷⁶Not long after More's Utopia was published, the English began a considerable colonisation of Ireland as a precursor to the New World. The important role maps and diagrams played during this process of colonisation and conquest has been discussed elsewhere. SeeChristian F. Feest, ‘John White's New World’, in A New World: England's First View of America, ed. Kim Sloan (London: British Museum, 2007); and Jesus Carrillo, ‘From Mt Ventoux to Mt Masaya—The Rise and Fall of Subjectivity in Early Modern Travel Narrative’, in Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel, ed. Jas Elsner and John-Pau Rubies (London: Reaktion, 1999), passim.

⁷⁷For analysis of More's map of Utopia, see Leslie, Renaissance Utopias, 42–3.

⁷⁸Kumar, ‘Aspects of the Western Utopian Tradition' (26–7) and Pircher (‘On the Construction of Worlds’, 68) stress that utopias must be scientific projects à la More. For for a critique of the perceived scholarly bias against non-Western utopias, see Longxi Zhang, ‘The Utopian Vision: East and West’, in Thinking Utopia: Steps Into Other Worlds, ed. Jörn Rüsen, Michael Fehr and Thomas Rieger (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005).

⁷⁹More, ‘Letter to Peter Giles’, 252.