Views from Islamic Scholars

 

Among classical Muslim scholars, there was little dispute over the reality of the Night Journey itself. Their discussions centred not on whether the event took place, but on how it should be understood. Since the Qur'an provides only a brief account, they turned to the hadith and the earliest historical reports to explain the details.

 

This approach is clearly seen in the work of al-Ṭabarī (839–923). In his Jāmiʿ al-Bayān, he treats the Night Journey as a historical event and builds his explanation from transmitted reports (athār) and hadith. While the Qur'an establishes that the journey took place, al-Ṭabarī relies on these later sources to describe how it unfolded, including the account of al-Burāq.

 

Ibn Kathīr (c. 1300–1373) follows much the same method. In his commentary on Qur'an 17:1, he accepts the traditions concerning al-Burāq without questioning their authenticity. At the same time, he does not suggest that the creature is mentioned in the Qur'an itself. Instead, he uses the hadith to expand on a verse that is intentionally concise, illustrating how classical exegetes understood the relationship between the Qur'an and the Prophetic tradition.

 

Al-Qurṭubī (c. 1214–1273) focuses on a different question: whether the Night Journey was a physical journey, a spiritual experience, or both. Although the dominant Sunni view is that the Prophet travelled bodily, the very existence of this discussion reflects the brevity of the Qur'anic account. The verse itself leaves many questions unanswered, prompting generations of scholars to look beyond the Qur'an for a fuller explanation.

 

The same pattern continues in the works of al-Nawawī (1233–1277) and Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (1372–1449). Both regarded the reports in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim as authentic and accepted al-Burāq as part of the traditional account of the Isrāʾ and Miʿrāj. Yet their discussions are firmly grounded in the hadith literature. They do not argue that al-Burāq is identified in the Qur'an; rather, they treat the hadith as the source that supplies details omitted from the Qur'anic narrative.

 

Modern Muslim scholars have approached the passage from a slightly different perspective. Muhammad Asad (1900–1992) argues that the Qur'an deliberately leaves the mechanics of the Night Journey unexplained because its primary concern is the spiritual significance of the event. Fazlur Rahman (1919–1988) makes a similar observation, noting that the Qur'an often conveys theological truths without providing a detailed historical account. In their view, the silence of the Qur'an regarding the means of transport is not an omission that needs to be filled but part of the way the Qur'an presents the story.

 

Taken as a whole, the history of Islamic scholarship reveals a fairly consistent pattern. Muslim scholars have long accepted al-Burāq as part of the traditional account of the Night Journey, but they have done so on the basis of the hadith and the broader interpretive tradition rather than the wording of Qur'an 17:1 itself. The Qur'an establishes the event, while the hadith, tafsir, and sīra literature provide the details that shaped the narrative known to Muslims today. 

Recognising this distinction is not a challenge to either source. It simply reflects the different roles that the Qur'an and the later Islamic tradition have played in preserving and explaining the story of the Night Journey.