Ascending to Heaven: Fourteenth-century Illustrations of the Prophet’s miʽrāǧ

Scenes illustrating the Prophet’s ascension to heaven, are some of the most glorious in Persian painting. Single scenes illustrating the subject are found in various types of literature, ranging from such Persian classics as Nizami’s Hamsa to popular devotional works about the Prophet’s life such as the Qisas al-anbiya’ (Tales of the Prophet) and biographies of his life such as the Siyar an-nabi. In all these cases, the ascension is merely one of many illustrations, but in addition there were at least two illustrated manuscripts devoted entirely to the subject of the Prophet’s ascension.
Called Book of Ascension, these works have multiple paintings illustrating several incidents of the journey. The more famous of the two manuscripts, transcribed in Uighur script, was made in the Timurid period. The other illustrated manuscript was made a century earlier under the Ilkhanids, Mongol rulers of Iran from 1256 to 1353. This essay surveys the illustrations from the Ilkhanid copy and shows how the topic of the Prophet’s ascension to Heaven developed in the fourteenth century from a single incident in the Prophet’s life to an independent hagiography with multiple, large illustrations that served as models for the next several centuries.