Mosque preachers or popular storytellers at Sufi shrines could enrapture audiences with the many esteemed Hadiths from the Sahih books of Bukhari and Muslim describing Muhammad’s ascent through the seven heavens on his miraculous night journey, when God ‘took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque of Mecca to the Farthest Mosque’ in Jerusalem (Qur’an 17:1). One version describes him leading all the great prophets in prayer in the heavens; another had him touring the Gardens of Paradise destined for the felicitous. Some imply that he actually saw God, others that he merely beheld the
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