The ''Kitab al-Mi'raj'' (Arabic: كتاب المعراج "Book of the Ascension") is a book by
al-Qushayri
'Abd al-Karīm ibn Hawazin Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī al-Naysābūrī (, ; 986 – 30 December 1072) was an Arab Muslim scholar, theologian, jurist, legal theoretician, commentator of the Qur’an, muhaddith, grammarian, spiritual master, ...
(died 1072) concerning the ''
Miraj'', that is,
Muhammad
Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...
's ascension into
Heaven
Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common Religious cosmology, religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deity, deities, angels, souls, saints, or Veneration of the dead, venerated ancestors are said to originate, be throne, ...
following his miraculous one-night journey from
Mecca
Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia; it is the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley above ...
to
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
. The book is divided into seven chapters, and was written in
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
using the
Naskh script.
In the second half of the 13th century, the book was translated into
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
(as ''
Liber scalae Machometi'') and
Spanish (by
Abraham of Toledo), and soon thereafter (in 1264
CE) into
Old French
Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th .
[I. Heullant-Donat and M.-A. Polo de Beaulieu, "Histoire d'une traduction," in ''Le Livre de l'échelle de Mahomet'', translated by Gisèle Besson and Michèle Brossard-Dandré, Collection ''Lettres Gothiques'', Le Livre de Poche, 1991, p. 22.] Its
Islamic depictions of Hell are believed by some scholars to have been a major influence on Dante Alighieri">Dante
Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...
's ''Divine Comedy'' (completed in 1320), including Miguel Asín Palacios, and Enrico Cerulli .
Notes
References
Traces de soufisme en Europe occidentale{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090411215228/http://www.soufisme.org/site/article.php3?id_article=33 , date=2009-04-11
*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080319003125/http://www20.brinkster.com/gurupak/Miraaj%20-%20The%20Ascension%20to%20Heaven.htm THE NIGHT JOURNEY OF MUHAMMAD TO HEAVEN
Sunni literature
Medieval Arabic literature
Entering heaven alive