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