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before us,

Or until you have a gilded house or you mount up into the sky.

And we will not believe in your mounting up until you

cause to come down upon us a book that we can read.

The expectation was that a holy man would mount to heaven and reveal a whole book, all at once, which Muḥammad did not do. In fact, later tradition sometimes suggests that the entire Quran was revealed in one “Night of Power.” The Quran itself, however, advises that such complaints can be countered with simple statements of God’s majesty: “Say, Glory to my Lord, am I anything but a mortal human being and a messenger” (Q 17:93)?

Ascension traditions are crucially important to the social process of confirming the picture of the universe and the ethical systems. They have been told about prophets and priests since the beginning of historical time. Already before Islam, the heavenly journey was a well understood religious mythologem of great antiquity which, like Jerusalem itself, had to be domesticated to the Islamic cause. In relating the tradition, one can see the drama of creative minds working out the most effective way to bend the ascent tradition to express best the revelation of Islam.

Muḥammad’s journey, therefore, also forms the confirmation of the journey of the soul heavenward. The soul of the virtuous takes the same route: it slips easily and painlessly from the body, led by the angel of death, or the angel Gibril, through the seven heavens to a vision of God; then, it returns to the grave to await the resurrection. The wicked have a different experience: Their passing is painful, and their taste of the hereafter is fearful. They are foul-smelling and are not permitted to ascend to heaven. Instead, they have a vision of the hell that awaits them on the day of judgment, whereupon they return to the grave to await their punishment in dread.26

The story of the mi’raj also forms the basis of a number of important ecstatic and ascension traditions for the living, thus confirming the existence of the heavenly realm, as developed by Muslim tradition. One of the earliest accounts by Muḥammad’s successors is found in “The Quest for God” (Al-Qasd Ila Ilah) attributed to Abu’l-Qasim al-Junayd, though it is most likely pseudonymous. The ninth chapter of this work contains the account of the mi’raj of Abu Yazid al-Bistami, a person whose ecstatic utterances are, in turn, discussed in “The Book of Flashes” (kitab al-Luma’) of Abu Nasr as-Sarraj (d. 988). To Bistami is attributed a number of ecstatic utterances (shaḥiyat), like those of the prophet himself at the end of the Quran, but far more provocative. Among them is “Glory to me,” which claims divine attributes for Bistami, probably within the transformation tradition, which we have traced in ancient Near Eastern religious life, as well as in Judaism and in Christianity. What justified the divine self-designation of Bistami may well be his heavenly journey, which is found in Pseudo-al-Junayd. A great journey to God is described in the mir’aj of Abu Yazid al-Bistami. In it he appears before the divine throne and is vouchsafed a vision of God and special status as a chosen one (ṣafi):

I continued to cross sea after sea until I ended up at the greatest sea on which was the royal throne (’arsh) of the Compassionate. I continued to recite his praises until I saw that all that there was-from the throne to the earth, of Cherubim (karubiyyin), angels, and the bearers of the royal throne and others created by All Most High and Glorious in the heavens and the earth-was smaller, from the perspective of the flight of the secret of my heart in quest for him, than a mustard seed between sky and earth. Then he continued to show me of the subtleties of his beneficence and the fullness of his power and the greatness of his sovereignty what would wear out the tongue to depict and describe. Through all that, I kept saying: O my dear one! My goal is other than that which you are showing me, and I did not turn toward it out of respect for his sanctity. And when Allah