Miraj is an Arabic word meaning “ladder, to elevate, or to ascend.” In Islamic literature it is used for the night journey of Prophet Muhammad when he was miraculously taken to the presence of Allah (God) in Heaven. According to the Islamic faith, it is one of the major miracles of the Prophet. It happened on the night of the 26th of Rajab, the seventh month of the Islamic calendar, in the year 621 CE, which is one year before the Prophet’s migration to Medina. How the miraculous journey occurred is a matter of differing opinions among Muslim theologians. Some maintain that it occurred only spiritually, while others assert that it happened both bodily and spiritually.
Stages of Miraj
Miraj happened in two stages. In the first, the Prophet was taken from Masjid al-Haram, the mosque which surrounds the Ka'bah, in Mecca to Masjid al-Aqsa, the mosque just south of the Dome of the Rock, in Jerusalem. This stage, which is mentioned in the Qur´an, is named al-isra, the night journey (Qur´an...
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Ahmad ibn Hanbal. (1895). al-Musnad (Vol. I, p. 309). Cairo.
al-Dihlavi. (1992). Hujjatullah al-Baligha (Vol. I, p. 115). Beirut.
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Kose, A. (2014). Miraj. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_461
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