The version of the ''Miraj Nameh'' (Mirâj Nâmeh) in the

National Library of France National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

, "supplément turc 190" is an Islamic manuscript created in the fifteenth century, in the workshops of

Herat Herāt (; Persian: ) is an oasis city and the third-largest city of Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains (''Selseleh-ye Safēd ...

Khorasan Khorasan may refer to: * Greater Khorasan, a historical region which lies mostly in modern-day northern/northwestern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan * Khorasan Province, a pre-2004 province of Ira ...

(modern Afghanistan), at the request of

Shahrukh Mirza Shah Rukh or Shahrukh ( fa, شاهرخ, ''Šāhrokh'') (20 August 1377 – 13 March 1447) was the ruler of the Timurid Empire between 1405 and 1447. He was the son of the Central Asian conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), who founded the Timurid dynast ...

, son of

Timur Timur ; chg, ''Aqsaq Temür'', 'Timur the Lame') or as ''Sahib-i-Qiran'' ( 'Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction'), his epithet. ( chg, ''Temür'', 'Iron'; 9 April 133617–19 February 1405), later Timūr Gurkānī ( chg, ''Temür Kür ...

. The text is written in

Eastern Turkic Chagatai (چغتای, ''Čaġatāy''), also known as ''Turki'', Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic (''Čaġatāy türkīsi''), is an extinct Turkic literary language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia and remained the shared literar ...

language and was composed between 1436 and 1437 (840 in the Islamic calendar).Miraj Nameh: Recit de l'ascension de Mahomet au ciel, compose ah 840 (1436/1437), texte iran, publie pour la premiere fois d'apres le manuscript... Ecole des langues orientales, Paris) The most important text is one of many redactions of the story of ''The Miraculous Journey of Mohammed'', which tells of the

Isra and Mi'raj The Israʾ and Miʿraj ( ar, الإسراء والمعراج, ') are the two parts of a Night Journey that, according to Islam, the Islamic prophet Muhammad (570–632) took during a single night around the year 621 (1 BH – 0 BH). Wit ...

or night journey, including the ascension of

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...

to heaven. The text was composed by the poet Mir Haydar in Eastern Turkic, with calligraphy by Malik Bakhshi of Herat in the

Uighur script The Old Uyghur alphabet was a Turkic script used for writing the Old Uyghur, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in Turpan and Gansu that is the ancestor of the modern Western Yugur language. The term "Old Uyghur" used for this alphabet is misleading ...

. The manuscript is illustrated with sixty-one

Persian miniature A Persian miniature (Persian: نگارگری ایرانی ''negârgari Irâni'') is a small Persian painting on paper, whether a book illustration or a separate work of art intended to be kept in an album of such works called a ''muraqqa''. The ...

s; like other Mi'raj manuscripts, these include

depictions of Muhammad The permissibility of depictions of Muhammad in Islam has been a contentious issue. Oral and written descriptions of Muhammad are readily accepted by all traditions of Islam, but there is disagreement about visual depictions. The Quran does not ...

. The Mi'raj has been described as "one of the most extraordinary of all Islamic illustrated manuscripts"."''The Miraculous Journey of Mahomet by Marie-Rose Séguy'' Review by: Walter B. Denny" (June 1980), ''The Art Bulletin'', Vol. 62, No. 2, p. 309

Inspiration

The work is inspired by the first verse from Sura XVII of the Koran, "

al-Isra Al-Isrāʾ ( ar, الإسراء; The Night Journey), also known as Banī Isrāʾīl ( ar, بني إسرائيل; The Children of Israel) is the 17th chapter (sūrah) of the Quran, with 111 verses ( āyāt). The word refers to the "night j ...

": The journey appears as a climb during which the angel

Gabriel In Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Gabriel (); Greek: grc, Γαβριήλ, translit=Gabriḗl, label=none; Latin: ''Gabriel''; Coptic: cop, Ⲅⲁⲃⲣⲓⲏⲗ, translit=Gabriêl, label=none; Amharic: am, ገብር� ...

leads Muhammad from Mecca to the Farthest Mosque in Jerusalem, and thence to the Seventh Heaven, where they received the founder of Islam in ecstatic contemplation of the divine essence. In the first centuries of the

Hejira The Hijrah or Hijra () was the journey of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina. The year in which the Hijrah took place is also identified as the epoch of the Lunar Hijri and Solar Hijri calendars; its date e ...

, this story led to the creation of other popular Arabic stories and then, after theological progress, mystics and literary, were gradually integrated into Muslim belief.

Provenance

The book was bought in 1673 in

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...

by the famous translator of ''

The Thousand and One Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

'',

Antoine Galland Antoine Galland (; 4 April 1646 – 17 February 1715) was a French orientalist and archaeologist, most famous as the first European translator of '' One Thousand and One Nights'', which he called ''Les mille et une nuits''. His version of the t ...

(1646-1715). It was taken to France, and was part of library of

Jean-Baptiste Colbert Jean-Baptiste Colbert (; 29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) was a French statesman who served as First Minister of State from 1661 until his death in 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His lasting impact on the organization of the countr ...

References

Bibliography

*Nameh, Miraj: "The Miraculous Journey of Mahomet . ''Introduction and commentaries by Marie-Rose Séguy'' (1977) Ed Braziller (George) Inc., US *Hillenbrand, Robert: ''Persian Painting: From the Mongols to the Qajars'' (Pembroke Persian Papers) Ed. IB Tauris (2001) {{ISBN, 1-85043-659-2

External links

Text about illustrations in Mi'raj works
Islamic illuminated manuscripts Persian art Bibliothèque nationale de France collections