‘I prayed there, and—just as you now see—I have prayed the dawn prayer with you.’
He then rose to leave, but I caught hold of the edge of his cloak and said, ‘O Prophet of Allah, do not relate this story to the people; they will deny you and hurt you.’ He replied, ‘By Allah, I will most certainly tell them.’ He did tell them, and they rejected his account.
He said, ‘A sign of its truth is that I passed by the caravan of such-and-such a clan in such-and-such a valley. The sound of the mount frightened their animals, and a camel bolted. I directed them to it while I was heading toward Syria. Then, on my return, when I reached Dajnan, I came upon the caravan of another clan. The people were asleep, and they had a covered vessel of water. I uncovered it, drank the water, and replaced the cover exactly as it had been. Another sign is that their caravan is, at this very moment, descending the white pass of Tanʿīm, led by a grey-mottled camel carrying two packs—one black and the other piebald.’
They hurried to the pass, and the first thing they encountered was the very camel he had described. They questioned the people about the vessel and the runaway camel, and the caravan folk confirmed everything just as the Messenger of Allah—may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him—had said.
Yūnus ibn Bukayr relates, from Asbāṭ, from Ismāʿīl al-Suddī, that the sun was on the verge of setting before that caravan arrived. The Prophet supplicated to Allah, and He held it back until they reached Mecca exactly as he had foretold. He (al-Suddī) added, ‘The sun was never withheld for anyone except for him on that day and for Joshua son of Nun.’ Al-Bayhaqī recorded this.
Ibn Isḥāq said: Someone I do not suspect informed me, on the authority of Abū Saʿīd, who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, ‘When I had finished what took place in the Temple of Jerusalem, the Miʿrāj was brought to me. I have never seen anything more beautiful than it; it is what the dying among you gaze upon when death approaches. My companion ascended with me on it until we reached a gate of heaven called the Gate of the Keepers. Over it was a guardian among the angels named Ismāʿīl, under whose command are twelve thousand angels, and under each of those twelve thousand is another twelve thousand.’
Whenever the Messenger of Allah ﷺ narrated this report he would recite, ‘And none knows the hosts of your Lord except Him’ (al-Muddaththir 74:31).
He then mentioned the remainder of the ḥadīth, which is extremely lengthy. We have reproduced it in full—with its chain of transmission and exact wording—in the Qur’ānic commentary and have discussed it there, for it is one of the unusual reports and its chain of transmission is weak.