One of the things that interested me most when talking about the Mi’raj and Isra’ was the Buraq, the mystical creature that Muhammad supposedly rode on during his journey. Mythological creatures have always interested me, particularly those that are tied to religion. Religions, at least in an early age, generated a host of creatures to embellish their stories, and many of our favorite creatures from today come from religion.
I chose to make a pencil sketch of the Buraq because I wanted to put on paper some of the strange descriptions I found about the Buraq in my explorations. People seem to argue about whether the Buraq was supposed to have a human face or not. This is interesting to me, because a human face seems to be the one quality that stays consistent in most all of the religious mythological creatures. Angels and devils tend to have human faces, though the faces of devils may be distorted or gruesome. The sphinx of greek mythology has a human face, as do various faeries, elves, dwarves, etc. It’s as if the presence of the human face is there so that we can relate to the creature, but the distortion of the rest of its body helps us understand the religious significance of the creature.
The other interesting characteristic of the Buraq is how it moves. It supposedly had a stride so long that it could reach the edge of its sight with each new step. I suppose this could mean that it’s extremely nearsighted, but it likely meant that either its legs were extremely long or it could jump/fly quite far between paces. I chose to depict the latter, as the idea of such long legs is hard to fathom. The other interesting characteristic of the Buraq that I read about, though, is similar to the long legs- it was said that its hind legs extended when going up a slope, and its front legs extended when going down. This means that the rider will always be kept level. It’s interesting to me that the Buraq was designed as essentially a mystical luxury car- it travels super fast, and has a very comfortable ride. The modern version of a Buraq might look something like this: http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/automotive/bose_suspension/index.jsp