from the Lord—glorified and exalted be He—on that very night, and the leading Imams of the Sunnah are virtually unanimous on this point.

They did, however, differ over the matter of vision. Some maintained that he saw Him with his heart on two occasions; this was the view of Ibn ʿAbbās and a number of others. Ibn ʿAbbās and others also spoke without qualification of his “seeing,” which is to be understood as implicitly restricted. Among those who used such unqualified language were Abū Hurayrah and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal—may Allah be pleased with them. Others explicitly stated that the vision occurred with the physical eyes; this was the opinion championed, and vigorously defended, by Ibn Jarīr, and several later scholars followed him.

Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī likewise affirmed that the Prophet saw his Lord with his own eyes, as reported by al-Suhaylī, and this view was also adopted by Shaykh Abū Zakariyyā al-Nawawī in his legal opinions.

Another group denied that any visual sighting took place, citing the ḥadīth of Abū Dharr in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: “I asked, ‘O Messenger of Allah, did you see your Lord?’ He replied, ‘There was Light—how could I see Him?’” In another wording: “I saw light.”

They argued that the Ever-Living cannot be perceived by mortal eyes. Hence it is related in some of the revealed scriptures that Allah said to Moses: “O Moses, no living being sees Me without dying, and nothing dry beholds Me without crumbling.” The dispute over this question is well known among both early and later scholars; Allah knows best.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then descended to Jerusalem, and it appears that the prophets descended with him in order to honor and exalt him upon his return from that majestic Divine Presence. Delegations customarily meet no one before the one to whom they have been summoned. Accordingly, whenever he passed by one of them, Gabriel—having first prompted that prophet for the greeting—would say, “This is so-and-so; greet him.” Had he already met them before his ascent, no re-introduction would have been necessary.

Supporting this is his statement: “When the time for prayer came, I led them.” The moment had not yet arrived for the dawn prayer, yet he stepped forward and led them by Gabriel’s command, conveyed from his Lord—exalted be He. Some scholars inferred from this that the supreme imam takes precedence in leading the prayer over the host, even though Jerusalem was their abode and place of residence.

He then took his leave, mounted the Burāq, and returned to Mecca, where he arrived at daybreak in a state of perfect composure, serenity, and dignity.

That night he had witnessed such signs and marvels that, had anyone else beheld even a fraction of them, he would have been left bewildered or unsettled. Yet the Prophet ﷺ awoke calm and collected. Fearing that if he immediately recounted to his people what he had seen they would hasten to deny him, he began gently, first informing them that he had travelled to Jerusalem that very night. Abū Jahl—may Allah curse him—had seen the Messenger of Allah