Daily Times

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