When Muhammad was forty years old, probably in the year 610, he was staying in the cave of al-Hira for prayer and meditation when the first revelation occurred. He saw the figure of a man appear to him and command, “Recite!” (The verb could also mean “Read!” as given in Mohiuddin, 94. Reading was performed out loud; early books were seen as prompting aids for recitation.) Muhammad replied that he could not do it, and the figure commanded him again. This figure was an angel; he embraced Muhammad and made him able to recite. The passage he spoke is the opening (al-Fatihah) of the Quran. It’s fairly short, only seven verses:
- In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
- Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds;
- Most Gracious, Most Merciful;
- Master of the Day of Judgment.
- Thee do we worship, and Thine aid we seek.
- Show us the straight way,
- The way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray.
This was a confusing experience for him, since traditional Arabic culture had two ready explanations, neither of which Muhammad could accept. Like the Greek Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, Arabian pagan gods often had a seer who was seized by the god’s spirit and spoke divinations and oracles. The divination messages were delivered in rhymed prose, that is, rhymed but unmetered and with lines of uneven length. And that’s the way these lines read: in Arabic, they all end in either -een or -eem, while the line lengths vary. Rhymed prose, divine message…such seers were in the pagan worship tradition, and Muhammad did not want to be associated with them. The other explanation was that a Jinn had spoken to him, which was thought to be the source of some poetry. Both sources would point away from God, toward some other spirit.
Muhammad ran from the cave, downhill toward home. The angel called after him, “O Muhammad, you are the Messenger of God and I am Jibril.” He stopped and looked up to where the angel filled the sky, waiting until the angel vanished. When he got home, he was overwhelmed. He threw himself on his bed, calling to his wife, “Cover me!” She covered him with a cloak or blanket.
But his reaction is another of the doubtful points: Sunni tradition emphasizes Muhammad’s discomfiture, while Shi’ite narratives say he was filled with joy. In that telling, he ran down the mountain because he was excited, and he knew from the start that he really was speaking to an angel.
When Muhammad told Khadijah about the experience and the messages, she immediately gave her opinion that it was truly an angel from God. This response made her the first official believer. (Shi’ite sources say that a very young Ali agreed, making him the second believer.) Together, Khadijah and Muhammad consulted her cousin Waraqah, who had pursued his theological questions to the point of becoming a Christian. Waraqah was much older than Khadijah; he lived only a short time after these events. His response was that surely Muhammad was the Prophet, and he wished he could live long enough to help defend him against the rejection that was about to occur.
In one hadith, Muhammad was asked how the revelations came to him. He replied that while sometimes they came from the figure of a man, as in this first one, other times, they came with the sound like a loud reverberation of a bell, and these ones made him feel sick and confused. We don’t know as much about the second revelation, whether it was the bell type or another conversation with Jibril. Even more confusingly, it began with the letter N. Just “N.” That’s especially curious since these letters were known to Muhammad, but not in the familiar way we know our letters. He must have been very puzzled. It probably served as a sort of fact-check on whether he was making up the revelations himself, because this confusing detail made it seem much more likely, to everyone including himself, that they were not his own thoughts.
- Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Martin Lings. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1983.
- Revelation: The Story of Muhammad, by Meraj Mohiuddin and Sherman Jackson.
- Prophet Muhammad (S), A Brief Biography. Al-Balagh Foundation. Al-Islam.org.