Jesus appears not just in the Quran, but in the sira, the Prophet’s biography. According to Muhammad’s early biographers, the Angel Gabriel whisked Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem on Buraq, a winged creature with the body somewhere between a horse and a mule, “whose every stride carried it as far as its eye could reach.” In Jerusalem, Muhammad met and prayed with Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. Later that night, during his ascension to heaven, Muhammad stopped off to visit them again, each in a different level of the seven heavens. On his return to Arabia, he would describe them
...more
