The Sacred Precinct by Night

A single cubic stone building stands at the centre of an open precinct, draped in a dark cloth covering, the Ka'ba in its early-7th-century form, a generation after the Quraysh rebuilt it, with no surrounding colonnade or arcades of any kind.

Ranged around the open precinct stand carved stone and wooden idols on low bases, the cult images of the pre-conquest Makkan sanctuary. Their presence dates the scene firmly before the cleansing of the sanctuary that came years later.

The precinct sits at the bottom of a narrow valley hemmed by bare dark hills, the houses of the town crowded right up to the edge of the open sacred ground. There is no broad paved plaza, the open earth runs up to the doorways of the surrounding dwellings.

Near the building a low open well-mouth and a semicircular low wall (the Hijr) are visible, the well of Zamzam as an open watering-point, not yet any domed or built structure over it.

It is deep night, the sky full of stars. The scene is the terrestrial point of departure named in the opening verse of Surat al-Isra', 'Glory to Him who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque' (Q 17:1), and shows only that starting place, never the journey itself.

No figure is present and nothing of the Night Journey is depicted. The whole subject is the place: the Sacred Mosque of Makkah as it stood, by night, at the moment the verse names as the beginning.

The dating is traditional and approximate: the Sunni sources place al-Isra' wa-al-Mi'raj roughly a year before the Hijrah, about 621 CE, though the exact year is debated among the scholars.

The Qur'an, Surat al-Isra' (Q 17:1): The foundational text naming al-Masjid al-Haram as the starting point of the Night Journey. The inerrant Word of Allah and the direct warrant for the scene's subject.

Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim (3rd c. AH): The canonical Sunni hadith narrations of al-Isra' wa-al-Mi'raj (e.g. Sahih al-Bukhari 3887; Sahih Muslim 162). They establish the event in the Sunni tradition; the scene deliberately depicts only the named earthly starting place, not the journey the hadith describe.

Ibn Ishaq / Ibn Hisham, Sirat Rasul Allah (compiled 8th-9th c.): Places the Night Journey in the late Makkan period, roughly a year before the Hijrah, and preserves the early biographical framing.

Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya and Tafsir (14th c.): Standard Sunni synthesis of the event and discussion of the variant datings of the year. Used for the acknowledgment that the exact year is debated.