Sirah
The Rock on the Bare Platform
The Jerusalem endpoint of al-Isra', Byzantine Aelia, before the Dome, c. 621 CE
c. 621 CE
Educational historical reconstructionWhere
The Temple Mount platform (al-Masjid al-Aqsa precinct), Jerusalem
31.7780, 35.2354 · View on OpenStreetMap
Background
The opening verse of Surat al-Isra' (Q 17:1) names the destination of the Night Journey as al-Masjid al-Aqsa, 'the Farthest Mosque, whose surroundings We have blessed', universally understood in the Sunni tradition as the sacred precinct in Jerusalem, the site of the ancient Temple. The Sunni sources place al-Isra' wa-al-Mi'raj roughly a year before the Hijrah, about 621 CE. This scene depicts only that terrestrial endpoint, as it actually stood at the time: not a building, but the great Herodian platform above the city, bare and neglected. In the early seventh century Jerusalem was Aelia Capitolina (Arabic Iliya), a provincial city of the Christian Byzantine Empire. Since the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and especially under Christian rule from the fourth century, the old Temple esplanade had been deliberately left desolate, unbuilt, strewn with rubble, in places used as a refuse tip, as a visible sign of the passing of the old dispensation, while Christian devotion centred on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre across the city. The exposed Foundation Rock lay open to the sky. No Muslim structure stood on the platform: the first, the original al-Masjid al-Aqsa, would be built under the early Muslim rule of the city after 638 CE, and the Dome of the Rock over the rock itself only in 691-692 CE under the Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, some seventy years after the Night Journey. The scene therefore shows the blessed precinct in its bare Byzantine state: the platform, the open rock, and the Christian city below. In keeping with the strictest visual ethics, nothing of the Mi'raj is shown and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is not depicted in any form.
What you see
A vast rectangular stone platform stands above the city on great retaining walls of massive ancient ashlar masonry, the Herodian Temple platform, but bare and neglected: no dome, no mosque, no shrine of any kind upon it.
At the high point of the empty esplanade lies a large outcrop of exposed living rock, the Foundation Rock, open to the sky, with no building over it. The absence of any structure on the rock dates the scene firmly before the dome that would later be raised over it.
Below the platform spreads a late-antique provincial city of red-tiled roofs, colonnaded streets and Christian churches, Byzantine Aelia / Iliya, the Jerusalem of the Eastern Roman Empire, with the great domed Church of the Holy Sepulchre visible among the rooftops.
The platform is strewn with rubble and debris and shows signs of long neglect, under Byzantine Christian rule the old Temple esplanade was deliberately left desolate, used at times as a dumping ground rather than maintained.
It is night under a starlit sky. The scene is the far terrestrial endpoint named in the opening verse of Surat al-Isra', al-Masjid al-Aqsa, 'the Farthest Mosque, whose surroundings We have blessed' (Q 17:1), and shows only that place, never the ascent that the hadith tradition describes from it.
No figure appears and nothing of the Mi'raj is depicted. The subject is the blessed precinct itself, in the bare state in which it stood seventy years before the first Muslim building was raised there.
The dating is traditional and approximate, the Sunni sources place al-Isra' wa-al-Mi'raj about a year before the Hijrah, roughly 621 CE, and the material setting is firmly pre-Islamic Byzantine Jerusalem.
Primary sources
The Qur'an, Surat al-Isra' (Q 17:1): Names al-Masjid al-Aqsa as the destination of the Night Journey. The inerrant Word of Allah and the warrant for the scene's subject.
Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim (3rd c. AH): The canonical Sunni narrations of al-Isra' wa-al-Mi'raj. They establish the event and the Jerusalem endpoint; the scene deliberately depicts only the place, not the ascent.
Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya (14th c.): Sunni synthesis of the Night Journey and discussion of the variant datings of the year.
Further reading & cross-references
Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaymi, al-Uns al-Jalil bi-Tarikh al-Quds wa-al-Khalil (15th c.): The standard Sunni history and topography of Jerusalem. Used for the state of the Haram platform and the city, and for the chronology of the later Muslim building of al-Masjid al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, i.e. what was NOT yet on the platform in c. 621 CE.
Byzantine-period archaeology and topography of Aelia Capitolina: Non-confessional cross-reference (excavations and surveys of the Temple Mount retaining walls and the Byzantine city) confirming the Herodian platform, the desolate state of the esplanade under Christian rule, and the layout of churches including the Holy Sepulchre. Used purely for material/date confirmation.
Date of the Dome of the Rock, 'Abd al-Malik's foundation inscription (72 AH / 691-692 CE): Material evidence (the surviving Kufic foundation inscription inside the Dome of the Rock) fixing the dome's construction some seventy years after the Night Journey, establishing that the rock stood bare and open at the time of the scene.
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