The Year of Sorrow to the Night Journey

On his deathbed, the Prophet ﷺ begged his uncle Abu Talib to say "la ilaha illallah" so that he could argue on his behalf before Allah. Abu Talib, who knew in his heart the Message was true, was about to say it, but Abu Jahal, who was present, challenged him: "Are you going to leave the religion of your father?" Abu Talib fell silent, and died without having said the kalimah.

Placed here because: Ep. 19: "barely 5-6 weeks after the Banu Hashim came back to Makkah, Abu Talib fell sick and eventually passed away in the month of Shawwal in the 10th year of the dawah."

Khadija RA passed away on the 10th of Ramadan, less than 40 days after the death of Abu Talib, in the same Year of Sorrow (Aam al-Huzn). The command to pray janazah had not yet been revealed, so no funeral prayer was performed over her; the Prophet ﷺ himself placed her in the grave.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 19: "the death of Khadija RA followed. She passed away on the 10th of Ramadan, less than 40 days after the death of Abu Talib." The lecture's months do not reconcile with each other; the order given is kept.

After Abu Talib's death, the Quraysh escalated their persecution of the Prophet ﷺ far beyond what they had dared while he was alive; hostility that had long been held back out of respect for Abu Talib was now openly displayed. Abu Lahab, as the seniormost pagan Hashimi still living, took over leadership of the Banu Hashim and, surprisingly, extended his own protection to the Prophet ﷺ, not out of love for him, but from a chieftain's sense of duty to guard his own clan.

Placed here because: Ep. 20 places Ta'if "as soon as Abu Lahab retracted his protection", so the withdrawal sits between Abu Talib's death and the journey to Ta'if.

A few weeks after the deaths of Khadijah RA and Abu Talib, and after Abu Lahab retracted the protection he had briefly offered, the Prophet ﷺ and Zayd ibn Harithah RA walked on foot to Ta'if, the nearest major city to Makkah, to seek support and a new base for the message. The Prophet ﷺ presented Islam privately to the three chieftains of Thaqif who jointly led the city (Abd Yalil, Mas'ud, and Habib, the sons of Amr) and each mocked him ﷺ in turn. He ﷺ then spent about a week preaching to the common people in Ta'if's marketplace; no one responded except one person who showed interest. When this reached the Thaqif leaders, they grew alarmed and sent a mob to stone the Prophet ﷺ and Zayd out of the city, pelting them until his ﷺ sandals were soaked in blood and Zayd was injured head to toe, finally letting them go at Qarn al-Manazil / Qarn al-Tha'alib outside the city.

Placed here because: Ep. 20: "this happened in the month of Shawwal, basically a few weeks after Abu Talib & Khadija RA died, as soon as Abu Lahab retracted his protection."

The mob of Ta'if drove the Prophet ﷺ and Zayd ibn Harithah out of the city with stones as far as Qarn al-Manazil, his sandals soaked in blood and Zayd cut from head to foot shielding him; he said later that he did not come to himself until he reached that place. There he found shade under a tree by a garden wall and, not knowing whose garden it was, made the prayer that Ibn Ishaq preserved and that scholars accept without a chain because no heart but a prophet's could have made it: O Allah, to You I complain of my weakness, my lack of means and my lowness before men; You are the most merciful of the merciful, the Lord of the weak and my Lord; to whom do You leave me, to a stranger who scowls at me, or to an enemy You have given power over me? If You are not angry with me I do not care, though Your protection is easier for me; I seek refuge in the light of Your face, by which the darkness is lit and the affairs of this world and the next set right, from Your anger descending on me or Your displeasure falling on me; Yours is the right to reproach until You are content; and there is no power or might but through You. It is a complaint to Allah, not against Him, and its fear is not of the stones but of having earned His anger. The garden belonged to Utbah and Shaybah, the sons of Rabi'ah, distant cousins on his father's side, who had watched him stoned out of the city and felt for him, and felt too the old tribal shame that Ta'if should do this to a man of Quraysh. They sent Addas, their servant, a Christian from Nineveh, to him with a bowl of grapes: as though the answer to the prayer came before it was finished. The Prophet ﷺ said bismillah and began to eat, and Addas asked what that phrase was, for no Arab of those parts said it. Something my Lord taught me, the Prophet ﷺ said; and where are you from, Addas? From Nineveh. The city of Yunus ibn Matta? Addas was astonished that anyone in that land had heard of Yunus. How could I not know him, the Prophet ﷺ said; he is my brother, he was a prophet and I am a prophet. Addas fell to kissing his head and hands and feet, as Christians did their priests, and believed. His masters, watching, told him he was a fool: the man had turned him from his religion, and their religion was better than his. There is no one on earth better than he, Addas answered; he has told me things only a prophet could know. Five years later they tried to drag him to Badr to fight against the Prophet ﷺ and he refused them, saying that the mountains themselves could not harm that man; and both his masters died there. Then, as al-Bukhari has it from the Prophet ﷺ's own account, he looked up at Qarn al-Manazil and saw a cloud shading him, and in it Jibril, who said: Muhammad ﷺ, your Lord has heard what your people said to you and how they answered you, and He has sent you the angel of the mountains to command as you please. And the angel of the mountains greeted him and said: if you wish, I will bring the two mountains together on them. No, he said; I hope rather that Allah will bring out of their loins people who worship Him alone and associate nothing with Him. He rested there, and on the road home camped at Nakhla, where the jinn heard him recite.

Placed here because: Ep. 20: "The entire mob continued to pelt them, until finally, they let them out of the city at Qarn al-Manazil / Qarn al-Tha'alib." The du'a, Addas and the angel of the mountains follow there.

On the way back to Makkah after the Incident of Ta'if, the Prophet ﷺ camped in the Valley of Nakhla and, as was his habit, prayed tahajjud despite his unhealed wounds. A group of jinn passed by, listened quietly to his Qur'an recitation, believed, and returned to their people as warners (Qur'an 46:29-31). Abdullah ibn Mas'ud RA later recounted, in answer to his student Alqama ibn Qays's question, how the Prophet ﷺ went missing one night, was searched for in fear, and returned after Fajr having gone out to meet a delegation of jinn, reciting Qur'an to them and afterward giving them bones and animal droppings as provisions for themselves and their animals.

Placed here because: Ep. 20: "On the way back to Makkah, the Prophet ﷺ camped in the Valley of Nakhla, and as was his habit, he prayed tahajjud."

Having left Makkah for Ta'if, the Prophet ﷺ found himself unable to freely re-enter the city. Zayd ibn Harithah RA asked him how they would do so; the Prophet ﷺ replied that Allah would make a way. He ﷺ then sent requests for protection (jiwar) to several Quraysh notables. Al-Akhnas ibn Shurayq declined, citing his tribe's weak position; Suhayl ibn Amr declined on behalf of Banu Amir ibn Lu'ayy, saying they had never given protection to anyone of Banu Ka'b ibn Lu'ayy. Mut'im ibn Adi, chief of Banu Nawfal ibn Abd Manaf, agreed, and sent his four armed sons to escort the Prophet ﷺ back into Makkah. Mut'im then received him ﷺ at the Ka'bah and, after the Prophet ﷺ performed tawaf under armed guard, stood and publicly announced before the Quraysh, including Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, that he had given Muhammad ﷺ his protection, as a civic grant, not as a follower of the message.

Placed here because: Ep. 20: "by walking out of Makkah and leaving for 10 days ... he found himself in a state of limbo and unable to freely return to Makkah ... Then the Prophet ﷺ sent a request to Mut'im ibn Adi."

Al-Isra wal-Mi'raj is a single night in two legs: al-isra, the night journey from al-Masjid al-Haram in Makkah to al-Masjid al-Aqsa in Bayt al-Maqdis, and al-mi'raj, the ascent from there through the seven heavens. It came after the Year of Sorrow and the stoning at Ta'if, the lowest point of the Prophet ﷺ's life, and the scholars read it as the ease Allah promises after every hardship: a gift given to him alone, which the rest of us are asked only to believe. Allah refers to it twice, in the opening verse of Surah al-Isra, where He calls the Prophet ﷺ "His servant", the highest title in the Qur'an, and in Surah al-Najm, which says the heart did not lie about what it saw. Ibn Ishaq and most early writers place it a year before the Hijrah; a report that Khadija RA died before the prayer was made obligatory would rule out anything earlier than the last years in Makkah. No month is known from any Companion, which the Companions themselves treated as unimportant. More of them narrate this one night than the rest of the Makkan period put together, which is also why storytellers padded it with legends the scholars had to sift out, and why the exact order of some scenes cannot be recovered. The Prophet ﷺ said that while he lay in the Hijr beside the Ka'bah (another authentic report has the roof of his house open, and Ibn Hajar joins the two: Jibril AS came to the house and led him first to the Hijr) Jibril opened his chest, washed his heart in a golden basin filled with Zamzam, or with faith, and closed it again, the second such opening after the one in his childhood, this time to strengthen him for what no one else could have seen and kept his mind. Then Jibril brought al-Buraq, a white beast between a mule and a donkey in size whose every stride reached as far as its eye could see; when it shied, Jibril rebuked it, for no rider more honoured before Allah had ever mounted it. On the way the Prophet ﷺ passed the grave of Musa AS and saw him standing in prayer. At Bayt al-Maqdis, where in that age the site of the Temple lay in ruins and was used as a refuse tip under Roman rule, he found the sanctuary standing as it had been, tied al-Buraq to the ring the prophets used, went in and prayed two rak'at, and found the prophets gathered with him: Musa, tall and dark like a man of Shanu'ah; Isa AS, of middle height and reddish in complexion, as if he had just come out of a bath; and Ibrahim AS, of whom he said that no one resembled him more than the Prophet ﷺ himself. When the prayer was called he was set before them all as imam, the leader of the leaders of every nation, as he later said of himself without boasting, the master of the children of Adam on the Day of Judgment. Then, either here or in the heavens, since the reports differ, Jibril held out two vessels, milk and wine, and told him to choose for his community. He chose the milk, and Jibril told him he had chosen the fitrah: the pure thing that nourishes over the corrupted thing that corrupts. Jibril then rose with him and asked leave at the gate of the lowest heaven. Who is it? Jibril. Is anyone with you? Muhammad ﷺ. Has he been sent for? Yes. The gate opened, and the same exchange was repeated at each of the seven. In the first heaven stood Adam AS, who greeted him as a righteous son and a righteous prophet, the souls of his descendants on his right and his left, and he smiled at the one and wept at the other. In the second, Yahya AS and Isa; in the third Yusuf AS, who had been given half of all beauty; in the fourth Idris AS; in the fifth Harun AS; in the sixth Musa; in the seventh Ibrahim, sitting with his back against al-Bayt al-Ma'mur, the House in the heavens, which later reports place directly above the Ka'bah, into which seventy thousand angels enter every day never to return. Each greeted him as a brother and a prophet; only Adam and Ibrahim called him son. When he had passed, Musa wept, and explained that he wept because a young man sent after him would bring more of his people into Paradise than Musa had. Somewhere on this night the Prophet ﷺ sat with Ibrahim, Musa and Isa as they spoke of the Hour, and only Isa knew anything of it: that he would return, kill the Dajjal, and see Gog and Magog break out and die at his prayer, after which the Hour would be as near as a woman in labour. Ibrahim sent his greeting to this community and told them that Paradise is fertile soil waiting to be planted with subhan Allah, alhamdulillah, la ilaha illa Allah and Allahu akbar. He met Malik, the keeper of Hell, who greeted him first; a report not found in the main collections adds that Malik never smiled, and that had he smiled for anyone, it would have been for him. Above the seventh heaven stood Sidrat al-Muntaha, the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary, its fruits like the great jars of Hajar and its leaves like elephants' ears, its trunk in the sixth heaven and its crown at the end of the seventh, where everything that rises from the earth ends and everything that descends begins. It was covered, as the Qur'an says, with what covered it: colours he could not name, changing as he looked, and golden moths. At its foot ran four rivers, two hidden, the rivers of Paradise, and two seen, the Nile and the Euphrates. Here he saw Jibril in the form Allah created him, with six hundred wings as Ibn Mas'ud RA reports, one of only two times he saw him so; a later report adds pearls and coral falling from his feathers. Some scholars count these three, the Tree, the House and the angel, among the greatest signs of his Lord that the Qur'an says he saw. Then, alone, he was raised higher, to a place where he could hear the scratching of the Pen that writes what is to be, and Allah spoke to him. What passed between them is not recorded, and the scholars take the silence as deliberate; three things came out of it: the closing verses of Surah al-Baqarah, which Ali RA described as from a treasure beneath the Throne, a promise that whoever of his people died without associating anything with Allah would be forgiven, and the command to pray fifty times a day. Whether he saw Allah was argued from the first generation: Ibn Abbas RA said he did, Aisha RA said that whoever claims it has lied against Allah, since eyes cannot grasp Him, and when Abu Dharr RA asked the Prophet ﷺ himself, he answered: "Light; how could I see Him?" Elsewhere he described Allah's veil as light which, were it lifted, would burn away everything His face reached. On the way down Musa asked what his Lord had enjoined on his people, and told him to go back and ask for less, for he had tried the Children of Israel and they could not bear it; the Prophet ﷺ glanced at Jibril, who nodded, and went back. Up and down he went, five or ten prayers fewer each time, until he came down with five and could not bring himself to ask again. "I have gone back to my Lord until I am ashamed; I am content." And a voice called: My command is settled and I have lightened the burden on My servants; five, and they shall be counted as fifty. He then saw Paradise, tents of hollowed pearl on soil of musk, and the punishments of the Fire, most of them in a report Ibn Ishaq gives from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri RA: men with camels' lips swallowing coals for devouring orphans' wealth, others tearing their own faces with copper nails for backbiting, others leaving good meat to eat rotten for adultery, others swollen and trampled for usury, others cutting their tongues with shears of fire for preaching what they did not practise; and the Dajjal, one-eyed, his eye like a swollen grape. In a report whose fuller form was not found in the collections checked, he caught a beautiful fragrance and asked what it was, and Jibril told him of the hairdresser of Pharaoh's daughter, who let slip "bismillah" over a dropped comb, refused to call Pharaoh her lord, and went into the cauldron with her children after her nursing infant spoke to tell her that the pain of this world was nothing beside the next. He rode al-Buraq back to Makkah, passing three Quraysh caravans on the road, from one of which he drank, and lay down again in the Haram before dawn. He woke, in his own words, anxious about how he would tell his people, and by one report it was Abu Jahl who found him first and called the Quraysh together to hear it. They asked him to describe a city he had never seen; Bayt al-Maqdis rose up before his eyes above the house of Aqil so that he answered every question (al-Bukhari), and the caravans arrived when he said they would (Ibn Ishaq). Abu Jahl is said to have called it sorcery, and Abu Bakr RA, told of it before the Prophet ﷺ could tell him, said that if he had said it then it was true, and that he believed him in something stranger still, that revelation came to him from the heavens; he was called al-Siddiq from that day. Most scholars hold that the journey was made awake and in the body, arguing that a dream of Jerusalem would have been no miracle, nor would the Quraysh have jeered at one, nor would he have needed a mount, nor drunk on the way; Ibn Ishaq, however, reports Aisha RA as saying that his body remained where it was, and Mu'awiyah RA as calling it a true vision, and holds that it was true either way. Some scholars see in a journey that begins and ends in Makkah the first hint of the qibla turning back from Jerusalem to the Ka'bah after the Hijrah.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 21: "After the Year of Sorrow and the trial of Ta'if, Allah blessed the Prophet ﷺ with a great miracle ... this is the majority opinion, that al-Isra wal-Mi'raj happened after the Year of Sorrow and before the Hijrah ... we don't even know the month."

The Prophet ﷺ rode al-Buraq back from Jerusalem, passing three Quraysh caravans on the road, in one of which he recognised a man he knew, from another of which he drank from the public water-skin, and in the third of which he saw men searching for a strayed camel; then he slept, and woke in the Haram of Makkah where the night had begun. He told the rest himself. He woke anxious about how he was going to tell his people what had happened to him, and while he sat there, worried and downcast, Allah willed that Abu Jahl should pass and see him so. Abu Jahl asked, with his usual edge, whether anything had happened. Something had: he had been taken last night from there to Jerusalem. And you are here among us now? Abu Jahl did not know, the Prophet ﷺ said afterwards, whether to mock him on the spot or to wait, in case he took it back once others were listening, so he asked whether the Prophet ﷺ would repeat it in front of the Quraysh. He would. Abu Jahl shouted the city together, and Makkah being small and Abu Jahl a chief, everyone came. Tell them what you told me. Last night I went to Bayt al-Maqdis and prayed in the farthest mosque. He said nothing of the ascent to the heavens; that was for the Muslims, later. The crowd did not know what to do with it. Some clapped, some put their hands to their heads, some laughed; the man had never been known to lie. Then one of them who had been to Jerusalem asked him to describe it, for everyone knew he had never been there. He began, and as they pressed him on details he could not recall he was, in his own words, more distressed than he had ever been, until he saw Bayt al-Maqdis raised up before his eyes above the house of Aqil ibn Abi Talib, the house he had grown up in, and there was no question they asked that he did not see the answer to; and the man who knew the city said that in every detail he was right. Then, Ibn Hisham says, he gave them signs of his own: one caravan would be back soon, being nearest; a second had lost a camel they could ask about; from the third he had drunk from a large water-skin. Abu Jahl said that if he had seen the first where he claimed, it should be entering Makkah about now, and while they argued word came that it was; he went to look, found it as described, and came back to say it was plain sorcery. Ibn Hisham also has a line, without a chain of narration, that some Muslims left the religion when they heard, which the scholars set aside, since no one is known to have left Islam in the Makkan years, and Abu Sufyan told Heraclius as much. Before the Prophet ﷺ could reach him, a Qurashi ran to Abu Bakr with the news: his companion claimed to have gone to Jerusalem and back, two months' journey, in a night. If he said it, Abu Bakr answered, then it is true; and pressed on whether he really believed such a thing, said that he believed him in something stranger still, that revelation came to him from above the seven heavens in a moment. From that day he was called al-Siddiq, the one who believes the truth without pause.

Placed here because: Ep. 23: the Prophet ﷺ "woke up" in the Haram and Abu Jahl found him: "So Abu Jahal started screaming out to the people, 'Come forth! We have an announcement to make!'"