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Featured work · A painting by Hafsa Imran
Van Gogh's night sky, keeping watch over the place of the Night Journey.
Starry Night over Al-Aqsa is a painting by Lahore artist Hafsa Imran. It sets the Dome of the Rock, at the heart of the al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem, beneath the swirling sky, cypress and village of Van Gogh's The Starry Night. It was exhibited at the Rawalpindi Arts Council in February 2026.
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Look closely
A swirling blue night sky fills most of the canvas, laid on in short, curving strokes of blue, white and pale green. Yellow stars burn in it, and in the upper right hangs a great yellow moon.
On the left a dark cypress rises like a flame. Below green hills a small village sleeps, a church steeple among its roofs and red steps climbing into it.
On the right stands the Dome of the Rock: its golden dome, the band of tiles beneath it, the blue and green tilework of its walls and, along the top of the building, a band of Arabic calligraphy, all painted in fine detail.
The story
In June 1889, in the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Vincent van Gogh painted the view from his window just before sunrise, and added a village that was not there. The Starry Night now hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one of the best-known paintings in the world.
Hafsa keeps his sky, his cypress and his sleeping village. The borrowing is open: this is his night. What she changes is what the night is keeping watch over.
Where Van Gogh's hills fall away, she paints the Dome of the Rock, the golden-domed shrine at the heart of the al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem. For Muslims, al-Aqsa is the third holiest site in Islam and the first direction of prayer.
It is also the destination of the Night Journey. The Quran opens its seventeenth chapter with God taking His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque in Makkah to the Farthest Mosque, al-Aqsa; from there, in Islamic belief, the Prophet rose through the heavens. So the night in this painting is not decoration. It is the hour the story belongs to.
Along the top of the building runs a band of Arabic calligraphy, painted by hand in fine strokes beneath the loose, swirling sky. The two ways of painting sit side by side on one canvas: Van Gogh's movement above, the patience of the calligrapher below.
Every Pakistani passport carries the line "valid for all countries of the world except Israel". For people in Pakistan, al-Aqsa is a place known from photographs and from prayer, not from visits.
Van Gogh painted his night from a window he could not leave. Hafsa paints a sanctuary that, on a Pakistani passport, she cannot travel to. Both are views of a place held at a distance, and both are painted with longing.
The description and reading on this page are written by the Bloom & Beyond studio. They are our reading of the painting, not a statement by the artist.
Ask about the work
Collectors, curators, writers and anyone the painting has stayed with can message the studio directly. Hafsa reads every message.
Share the work
Share it with credit to Hafsa Imran and a link to this page. For print, publication or any commercial use, please message the studio first.
All artwork and photographs © Hafsa Imran. Please ask before reusing them.
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