My name is Buraq From lightning or radiance And I am both; Half angel, half horse, half bird I am not an angel nor a horse Yet I am both. Poets have written verses about the beauty of my face The luminosity of my eyes and the span of my wings which is that of an angel. One night there was a rustling and swooshing And before me stood the majestic figure Of the archangel Gabriel. He had a special mission for me. Not accustomed to command I bucked and snorted. Then Gabriel chided me gently, “No one is more beloved of God In all creation than the one you are to carry to the presence of the Lord.” My passenger was none other than the Seal of the Prophets, the Beloved of God, the insan-i-kamil. As the enormity of the task sank in, and the magnificence of the honour, sweat poured over my body. When the beloved of God was summoned From on high we left from the Kaaba in Makkah to the noble sanctuary in Jerusalem the holy Prophet joined the others beloved of God, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, in prayer and we then ascended to the heavens all the while accompanied by angels and guided by the venerable Gabriel himself. Planets and stars orbited around us suns and moons set and rose in front of us. I saw the moons of Jupiter Dance on its shoulder And beams from distant planets almost threw me off my course There was a sublime silence that filled every corner of the universes and a million stars sparkled around us. When we had crossed the seven skies and the seven heavens we arrived in the presence of the Almighty. The brightness around Him Was that of a thousand suns a sight I had never seen and yet a blissful calm permeated everything. There the messenger of God took instructions from the Almighty. Then we turned and began the return journey Creation and creator had met worshipper and worshipped had come face to face even I knew the magnitude of what had happened. Poets would sing about this night journey, Shab-i-Miraj, painters capture it in their imagination and every year worshippers would pray in its memory but nothing could compare to what I saw. Yet The savants argue interminably With rulers and maps Round and round ’till I get a headache. Fools… There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The hand of the holy Prophet brushed against a glass of water and he reached for it– between the time the glass began to fall and he caught it we had completed our travel; space and time were compressed into a fleeting moment. My name is Buraq I am unique in the heavens and legendary on earth for I carried the Beloved of God to the seventh heaven and brought him back safely. The writer is Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University and author of The Flying Man: Philosophers of the Golden Age of Islam