The Israʾ and Miʿraj (Arabic: الإسراء والمعراج, al-’Isrā’ wal-Miʿrāj) are the names given to the narrations that the prophet Muhammad ascended to the sky during a night journey, saw Allah and the afterlife, and returned. It is believed that expressions without a subject in verses 1-18 of surah An-Najm and some verses of 17th surah of the Quran, commonly called al-Isra’, allude to the story. Framework and the details are elaborated and developed in the miraculous accounts, some of which are based on hadith, the reports, teachings, deeds and sayings of Muhammad collected later centuries attributed after him. The story of the journey and ascent are marked as one of the most celebrated in the Islamic calendar—27th of the Islamic month of Rajab.
Ibn Sa’d summarizes the earliest version of the written stories under the title “Ascension and the Order of Prayer” and dated the event to a Saturday, the 17th of Ramadan, eighteen months before Muhammad’s Hijrah. According to him, the angels Gabriel and Michael accompanied Muhammad to a place in the sacred precinct of the Kaaba, between the well of Zamzam and Maqam Ibrahim. There, a ladder (miʿrāj) is said to have been set up by Muhammad and Gabriel, with whose help they ascended to heaven. When he reached the top, Muhammad is said to have met the previous prophets. According to one version of the tradition, Gabriel held Muhammad’s hand tightly and ascended with him to heaven. When he reached the Sidrat al-Muntaha mentioned in Sura 53, verse 14, Muhammad saw heaven and hell. So, he was required to perform the original fifty prayers, which were reduced to five by the intervention of Moses.

Sunni culture adds to the story that Abu Bakr, who heard about the miracle from the pagans, approved the event without question and was given the title of al-Ṣiddīq, the Veracious. In the version accepted in Sunnism, the story tells of Muhammad’s negotiations with God, who ordered him and his ummah to pray 50 times a day under the guidance of the prophet Moses. After repeated back and forth and negotiations, the 50 times a day was reduced to 5. In the Alawite-Bektashi culture there is no place for the five daily prayers and they add to the story that during his meeting with Allah, Allah spoke to Muhammad by Ali’s voice and that he joined the 40’s majlis on his return journey, a meeting very important for him. In the mirajnamas, religious/political leaders who lived centuries after Muhammad, such as Satuq Bughra Khan, Ahmad Yasawi and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, are also included in stories. Thus, the views and practices of these persons are legitimized and included among the fundamental parts of Islamic culture and glorified.

Traditions of living persons ascending to heaven are also found in early Jewish and Christian literature. The Book of Enoch, a late Second Temple Jewish apocryphal work, describes a tour of heaven given by an angel to the patriarch Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. According to Brooke Vuckovic, early Muslims may have had precisely this ascent in mind when interpreting Muhammad’s night journey.

The similarity of many details in the Miraj narratives to Zoroastrian literature is striking. While critics argue that these narratives are a transfer from Zoroastrian literature, another claim argues that the relevant literature was written after Islam.

In the 13th century AD, an account of the Isra’ and Mi’raj was translated into several European languages—Latin, Spanish and French. Known as the Book of Muhammad’s Ladder, this account purports to be the words of Muhammad himself as recorded by Ibn Abbas. It was translated by Abraham of Toledo and Bonaventure of Siena. It may have influenced Dante Alighieri’s account of an ascent to heaven and descent to hell in the Divine Comedy.