Exalted is He who took His Servant by night

The word ‎أَسۡرَىٰ‎ means to set someone out on a journey, or to take someone, by night. Its root, ‎سُرَىٰ‎, means travel by night; so ‎أَسۡرَىٰ‎ carries the meaning of setting out/taking someone by night.

When Allah says ‎أَسۡرَىٰ بِعَبۡدِهِۦ لَيۡلًا‎ (He took His Servant by night), He is making a particular linguistic choice.

The word ‎أَسۡرَىٰ‎ on its own already means “to take by night”; yet Allah added to it the expression ‎لَيۡلًا‎. Had He used the word ‎لَيۡلَةً‎, meaning “a single night”, it would have evoked the whole night.

Yet the expression ‎لَيۡلًا‎ allows us to understand this as a very small part of the night. This journey took up only a very small portion of the night.

This ayah points to the first part of a two-stage journey, namely the Night Journey (Isra’) and the Ascension to the Heavens (Mi‘raj). This surah mentions only the Night Journey; the ascension to the heavens is taken up in Surah an-Najm. Here, we are reading about the Prophet’s journey to Jerusalem.

The ayah continues:

The Prophet (peace be upon him) had already been declared by the Qur’an to be the imam of Makkah; now he was to be declared the imam of Masjid al-Aqsa as well.

One of the most important events during this journey was that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) led all the other prophets in prayer as their imam. Thus he became the imam of both Makkah and Masjid al-Aqsa, and also of all the prophets who came before him.

Allah describes Masjid al-Aqsa as follows:

This has an outward meaning: the land of Jerusalem is extremely lush, green, beautiful and rich in vegetation. But beyond this, Allah also blessed it with prophets and revelation.

It is one of the places where Prophet Abraham set foot. Abraham left one of his sons there and the other in Makkah. The son left in the region of Jerusalem was Isaac, and his line continued through Jacob and his descendants. His other son, Ishmael, had been left in Makkah, and from his line our Prophet (peace be upon him) was born.

And so, from one of the lines descending from these two legacies would come the one who would unite them both, becoming the imam of both Masjid al-Haram and Masjid al-Aqsa.

Allah explains the purpose of this journey as follows:

This extraordinary event took place in the blink of an eye. According to some scholars, when the Prophet (peace be upon him) returned, the door latch was still swinging. Although time works differently in the realm of the unseen, by our perception of time the event unfolded just this quickly.

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) told the people what had happened, the Quraysh were overjoyed. For until then they had been accusing him of being mad, and now they had gained a trump card they could use against the Messenger’s followers.

They immediately ran to Abu Bakr and said: “Do you know what your Prophet has just said? He claims that he went to Jerusalem and came back, and that he did all of this in just part of a night!”

Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) replied: “Did he really say that?”

They said: “Yes, he did. If you like, you can come with us; he will tell you himself.”

He replied: “If he said it, then it happened.”

Such was his unshakable faith.

Even if his mind struggled to grasp it, this no longer posed a problem; for he had already accepted the Messenger of Allah as a true messenger.

The ayah concludes:

Notice how Allah describes His Messenger with the expression ‎عَبۡدِهِۦ‎ (His servant) at this most exalted point, that is, at the summit of human achievement, on this extraordinary journey.

From this we understand: our most humble position before Allah, the state of “being His servant”, is in fact the most exalted position.