From Ottoman Bursa to Timurid Herat: Early Modern Turkic Representations of the story of Prophet Muhammad's Isra and Mi'raj
Metin Mustafa
Abstract: The exegesis of Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey (Isra) and Ascension to Heaven (Mi’raj) has inspired literary and artistic works in the Islamic world for centuries. The literary and illustrated works, Mevlid-i Şerif and Miraj Nameh of the Ottoman Sufi scholar Süleyman Çelebi (d.1411) from Bursa and Timurid poet-artist Mir Heidar in Herat (Afghanistan, c.1436) respectively, reflect the Qur’anic revelation of the miraculous event underscoring the concept of a return to God and the life to come. Embedded with Islamic eschatology and Sufi mysticism, this essay explores the early 15th century productions of the literary and visual representations of the spiritual event from the life of Prophet Muhammad from eastern to western Turkic worlds reflecting the early modern Ottoman and Timurid literary intellectualism and iconographic traditions.