الإسراء
al-Isrāʾ
Event
The Prophet’s night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, and back to Mecca, named in Quran 17:1.
What it means
Al-Isrāʾ is the night journey of Muhammad (peace be upon him) from Mecca to Jerusalem (al-Quds) and back. The Quran begins surah 17: “Glory to Him who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, around which We have blessed” (17:1). The surah takes its name from this event, which the tradition places in the later Meccan years.
Hadith accounts add that the Prophet then ascended through the heavens, an event called the miʿrāj, and that the daily prayers were prescribed on that occasion (Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim). Many Muslims commemorate the night with prayer. Scholars hold different views on whether the journey was of the body and spirit together, though most take it as a physical and spiritual journey.
What the sources say
The verse names no date and no details beyond the two mosques, so the story of the night comes from the hadith literature.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 23, listed as AL ISRĀ'. The definition is restated here.