"The author was here drawing the boundaries of the sacred space of Jerusalem, while at the same time proclaiming possession of this territory of grace—that this network of holy places belonged to his hero too, and not only to the Chalcedonians currently in possession of them. Although Peter could not undertake this sacred journey, or was prevented from doing so, he did not renounce the holy places. This visionary journey was in fact a provisional solution, a perfect device used in troubled times in the city for tackling the tension between access too and debarment from the holy places in Jerusalem."
1. Introduction and Summary
Muḥammad’s night journey, related by the opening verse of Surat al-Isrā (Q 17:1), is a fantastic episode in the prophet’s biography. Scholars have usually analyzed this journey as a heavenly vision that helped legitimate the Arabian prophet, similar to various prophetic visions from Jewish and Christian tradition. Yet this specific Qur’ānic text has rarely been subjected to modern analytical methods, and its Palestinian context has been unduly minimized.
Starting with Nöldeke, scholars have observed that Q 17:1 was interpolated, since inter alia every verse in Surat al-Isrā shares the same end rhyme, except for Q 17:1. Moses was the subject of the pre-interpolation Q 17:1, with its rare verb asrā designating Moses’ ‘night journey,’ used by three other surahs to describe Moses’ nocturnal exodus from Egypt (Q 20:77, 26:52, 44:23). But the interpolation of Q 17:1 substituted an anonymous servant of God (meant to be understood as Muḥammad) for Moses, and described that servant’s asrā from the sacred masjid to the furthest masjid, usually understood as Jerusalem. Why was it so important to establish that Muḥammad made this nocturnal journey, to the point of requiring interpolation?
This article argues that the interpolation of Q 17:1 sought to fix a severe problem with Quranic typology as Islam emerged, with the problem’s context being Palestinian (hence its focus on the masjid al-aqṣā) rather than Hijazi. The Qur’ān likened the mu’minūn (believers) to Abraham’s children, and likened its Arabian messenger to Moses. This helped legitimize the mu’minūn’s claims to political and religious authority.
But this typology also left the mu’minūn vulnerable to incendiary Christian polemic incorporated in their own Quranic texts, particularly Surat al-Isrā. Q 17:4-8 revels in the Roman destruction of the Jewish temple, along with the Roman expulsion of the ‘corrupt’ Jews from Jerusalem. Q 17:4 contends that the Book of Moses decreed this fate for the Jews, and identifies the Romans as God’s new servants. This Quranic exaltation of Roman-Christian supremacy over Jerusalem contradicted emerging proto-Islamic claims for the supremacy of Muḥammad and his followers. Jesus had entered Jerusalem as a perfectly obedient prophet, and God had given the city over to his followers. In contrast, both Muḥammad and Moses had failed to reach Jerusalem. Further, as Stephen Shoemaker has argued, early mu’minūn evidently viewed Muḥammad’s death as an unexpected calamity. He had sought to enter Jerusalem in eschatological triumph, but failed. How could Muḥammad be God’s final prophet when he had died in exile from the Holy Land, just like the disobedient Moses? God had made Jerusalem the Holy City of Jesus, Romans, and Christians, as Q 17:1-8 itself confirmed.
To fix this Quranic vulnerability, Q 17:1 was interpolated to assert that Muḥammad had made a miraculous journey to Jerusalem. The interpolator used an important late antique Christian tradition: When a holy man could not enter Jerusalem because of sectarian conflict, he would instead make a visionary pilgrimage. As interpolated, Q 17:1 clarified that Muḥammad had certainly not, like Moses, failed to reach Jerusalem. Instead he was taken to the city by night, where he saw its holy signs (a topos of Christian pilgrimage). Q 17:1 does not describe signs witnessed in heaven. Rather the text describes the servant of God as being shown the signs in Jerusalem itself, embedded in the city’s sacred geography, mimicking Christian pilgrimage.
Like Jesus, Muḥammad fulfilled his destiny within the Holy City. His nocturnal journey allowed him to evade the corrupt Christian mushrikūn who controlled Jerusalem, while still claiming the Holy City’s sacred space, just as Peter the Iberian, the hero of Palestinian anti-Chalcedonian Christianity (and the central historical personality behind early conversion of Arab Petraea to Christianity), had famously made his own late 5th century nocturnal pilgrimage to Jerusalem, communing with God while flouting Chalcedonian power. Any believer familiar with Palestinian pilgrimage traditions and texts of the 6th-7th centuries would have recognized this motif, as popularized by Peter’s biographer John Rufus (himself of Syrian Arab descent).
This ingenious maneuver against Chalcedonian Christianity was obscured when Islamic tradition almost entirely suppressed the early mu’minūn’s focus on Jerusalem, replacing it with a Meccan focus and a competing Hijazi pilgrimage. Muḥammad was portrayed as a perfect Hijazi prophet, only vaguely connected to Jerusalem, and Q 17:1 was lost to mystical speculation.
The article concludes by discussing how anti-Chalcedonian monasticism in the 6th century played a central role in early Arabic Christianity and its Christological controversies. Theological innovations arising from anti-Chalcedonian Christianity, as extant in Arabia Petraea, can explain many otherwise puzzling aspects of Quranic origins, including how Quranic composition first emerged and achieved prestige as a distinctive religious discourse.
Great start, and as a laymen, you make me want to read more. I hope it has the same effect on the people who count, even if it does threaten to ram and slightly bruise their ego's.
I have no doubt that you will fill the rest of the article with example after example highlighting why late composition and traditional approaches do not explain aspects of the Quran nearly as well as early composition, along with an anti-Chalcedonian* influence on this composition. In fact, I have no doubt that your comprehensive and detailed approach will carry the average reader, with a strong and irresistible current, to the persuasive conclusion that you want them to see. I just hope yours is not a voice that is lost on the stubborn scholars, who possibly have too much invested in being on the right track themselves.
The last paragraph in your summary seems understated to me. Such is my brash nature, that I'd like to see your all-important conclusion in flashing lights, in block capitals, in screaming Yezeevee font, and in a more prominent position. But you obviously have academic convention to follow, and superior minds to reach out to, so it's probably perfect as it is.
*had to wiki that
Topic: Qur'anic studies today