The Confession of Abu Sufyan Regarding Al-Isrā’ wal-Mi’raj: Caesar’s Wisdom and the Night Journey

Abu Sufyan’s Confession to Caesar About the Night Journey (Al-Isrā’ wal-Mi’raj) and Its Divine Proof

AN INTERESTING CONFESSION REGARDING AL-ISRĀ’ WAL-MI’RĀJ

In his book Dala’il An-Nubuwwah, Al-Hafiz Abu Nu’aym Al-Isbahani recorded via Muhammad bin Umar Al-Waqidi who said:

Malik bin Abi Ar-Rijjal told me from Amr bin Abdullah that Muhammad bin Ka’b Al-Qurazi said:

“The Messenger of ALLĀH sent Dihyah bin Khalifah to Caesar.”

He mentioned how he came to him, and described an incident that showed how wise Caesar was.

He sent for the Arab merchants who were in Syria and Abu Sufyan Sakhr bin Harb and his companions were brought to him. He asked them the well-known questions that were recorded by Al-Bukhari and Muslim, as we shall discuss below, and Abu Sufyan tried hard to give the impression that this was an insignificant issue.

(The narrator) said that Abu Sufyan (later) said:

“By ALLĀH, nothing stopped me from saying something to Heraclius to make him despise (Muhammad) but the fact that I did not want to tell a lie that would later be found out, and he would never believe me again after that.

Then I told him about the night on which he was taken on the Night Journey.

I said: ‘O King, shall I not tell you of something from which you will know that he is lying!’

He said, ‘What is it?’

I said: ‘He claims that he went out of our land, the land of Al-Haram, in one night, and came to your sanctuary in Jerusalem, then came back to us the same night, before morning came.’

The Patriarch of Jerusalem was there, standing next to Caesar.

The Patriarch of Jerusalem said: ‘I know that night.’

Caesar looked at him and said, ‘How do you know about this!’

He said: ‘I never used to sleep at night until I closed the doors of the sanctuary. On that night I closed all the doors except for one, which I could not manage to close. I asked my workers and others who were with me to help me deal with it, but we could not move it. It was like trying to move a mountain. So I called the carpenters, and they looked at it and said: The lintel and some part of the structure has fallen onto it. We cannot move it until morning, when we will be able to see what the problem is. So I went back and left those two doors open.

The next morning I went back, and saw that the stone at the corner of the sanctuary had a hole in it, and there were traces of an animal having been tethered there.

I said to my companions: This door has not been closed last night except for a Prophet, who prayed last night in our sanctuary.”‘

And he mentioned the rest of the Hadith.

{Tafsi‌r Ibn Kathīr}

#ibnkathir #isra (17:1)