The
Mi'raj

When the Messenger made his night journey to Jerusalem,

the first thing he did when he arrived

was go to the place that stands beneath what we now know as

'The Dome of the Rock',

and there he prayed,

being joined by all those Messengers that went before him.

What makes Jerusalem so important to muslims

is that Ibrahim built two temples to the One God,

one in Makkah and one in Jerusalem.

And in the early days of his Message,

while the Ka'aba was still surrounded by idols,

the muslims prayed facing Jerusalem.

In fact, the Messenger spent more years praying facing Jerusalem

than he did facing the Ka'aba.

But although Jibril had showed him how to wash and pray,

there were no fixed prayer times for the community to follow.

This changed after the Mi'raj.

As the Messenger rode Buraq up through the seven heavens

he again met those who had come before him,

but on the earth they had been in their earthly bodies,

whereas now he saw them in their heavenly forms.

He said that of all the Gardens of Paradise,

a piece the size of a bow

was better than everything under the sun

from its rising to its setting,

and that a woman from Paradise

would fill the space between heaven and earth

with light and fragrance.

And at the end of his upward journey

he reached the Lote Tree of

the very end of knowledge and understanding,

beyond which all is mystery

except to God alone.

And there it is said that he received the command

that his people should pray fifty times a day.

After which

he made the journey back down to Jerusalem below.

But on the way he met Musa,

who said that he thought humans were so weak

that this would be too much for them to bear,

and he advised him to go back

and ask God to make their burden lighter.

And so he returned to the Lote Tree,

where God reduced the required prayers by ten.

But still Musa said that was too much,

and when the Messenger asked

God reduced the need for prayers even further.

Time and again the Messenger went back and forth,

each time being advised by Musa to ask for less,

and each time God took away more and more

until the requirement stood at only

five Sala prayers a day.

At this point, when Musa said to go back again,

the Messenger told him that he was

too ashamed to ask for less than that.

And so it is that today those who follow him

make those same five prayers each day,

and so it is said that

when someone makes those five prayers in good faith,

trusting in God's bounty,

the reward is as if they had made the fifty prayers

that God originally asked for.