The life of the Prophet Muhammad (4/11): the Revelation
Contents
The Revelation and its reception by the Prophet
Ibn Sa’d reports: while Muhammad was in his fortieth year and had formed the habit of withdrawing to a barren and steep spot on Mount Hira, close to Mecca, the Truth came to him in a sudden and unheralded manner, in the form of a heavenly voice and a vision in which the angel Gabriel appeared, calling upon him with force. Frightened, and fearing that he might be possessed by one of those djinn bound up with the soothsayers and the idol-worship he abhorred so much, he rushed home to Khadija, who did everything to soothe and reassure him, going to seek counsel from her cousin the hanif Waraqa, versed in the ancient Scriptures, who confirmed to her the presence of the angel Gabriel and bade her tell him to fear nothing and to take heart in his destiny.
And when he had resumed his retreat (khalwa), it was in the darkness of the night of the 26th to the 27th of the month of Ramadan, called the ‘Night of Power: laylat al-qadr’1, while Muhammad was between waking and sleep, that the angel Gabriel suddenly appeared to him, holding in his hand a cloth of brocade on which a mysterious writing was traced, and commanded him to read it: ‘Iqra’!’. To which Muhammad, frightened, replied: ‘I cannot read.’ The angel then pressed him so hard that he thought he would suffocate, and repeated his demand: ‘Iqra’!’. ‘What shall I read?’ asked Muhammad. And the angel Gabriel, in that miraculous and inaugural instant, revealed to him the first five verses of surah XCVI, al-’Alaq (‘The Clot’):
‘V.1 Iqra’ bismi rabbika alladhi khalaq. V.2 khalaqa-l-insana min ‘alaq. V.3 Iqra’ wa rabbuka-l-akram. V.4 alladhi ’allama bi-l-qalam. V.5 ‘allama-l-insana ma lam ya’lam.’
’V.1 Read! In the name of thy Lord who created! V.2 He created man from a clot of blood (‘alaq). V.3 Read! For thy Lord is the Most Generous, V.4 who taught man by the pen, V.5 and taught him what he knew not.’
The angel then displayed to Muhammad the wondrous cloth on which the Revelation was written, and pressed it hard against his breast. At that instant, as the sacred Text reports, Muhammad felt himself wholly enraptured in God: majdhud (from ja-dha-ba: to be carried off into God):
(Qur’an II, 97) ‘Say: who is the enemy of Gabriel? It is he who has brought it down (nazzalahu) upon thy heart, with God’s permission (idhn Allah): a Book confirming what was before it, a guidance and glad tidings for the believers.’
And (XXVI, 192-193): ‘V.192 Truly, the Qur’an is a Revelation from the Lord of the worlds. V.193 The faithful Spirit has descended with it upon thy heart.’
The first believers
After this first Revelation, some anguished days passed with no news of the angel. Only the ‘maternal’ presence of his wife Khadija, in the fullest sense of the word, could anchor that unnameable experience in everyday reality and bring it to term, and so could reassure him. Had she not added, after the words ‘La ilaha illa Allah’ that he passed on to her: ‘wa Muhammad rasul Allah’, thereby making her the first Muslim? Muhammad was in despair, until the angel appeared, again while he was on the steeps of Mount Hira, and reassured him, saying: ‘O Muhammad! Thou art indeed the Messenger of Allah!’
These first revelations, truly, came about in birth-pangs, until the angel completed them and addressed him in the form of an injunction: (LXXIV, 1-7) ‘V.1 O thou who art wrapped in a mantle! V.2 Arise and warn! V.3 Glorify thy Lord! V.4 Purify thy garments! V.5 Flee abomination! V.6 Give not, hoping to receive more in return. V.7 Be patient for the sake of thy Lord.’. And at the same time he taught him the art of true preaching: (LXXV, 16-19)2: ‘V.16 Move not thy tongue in reading the Qur’an, as though thou wouldst hasten the Revelation3. V.17 It is for Us to gather it and establish its recitation. V.18 Follow its recitation once We have recited it. V.19 And it is again for Us, thereafter, to make it understood.’
From this body of verses we have quoted, two essential phases of the Qur’anic Revelation stand out very clearly: on the one hand the undivided descent of the guidance (huda), at once the Book and the divine Spirit, upon the purified heart of the Prophet of God, which is called inzal; and on the other hand its progressive enunciation, tanzil, as indicated in the Qur’an (XVII, 106): ‘We have divided this Reading so that thou mayest recite it slowly to men. We have indeed sent it down.’ A hadith qudsi, a word of God reported directly by our Prophet, says in this regard: ‘Heaven and earth could not contain Me, but the heart of My servant contains Me’4.
As for the outer context, it was little favourable to the reception of the Revelation, outside the family circle and the close friends who made up the first companions. Khadija, as we have seen, was the first to believe in the Prophet’s divine mission, followed by ’Ali, Muhammad’s cousin, and by Zayd, his servant. The first convert outside the family was to be Abu Bakr, a respected merchant and friend of Muhammad. The Prophet thus began public preaching by warning his own clan, the Hashimites, of the danger of the punishment that threatened those who did not worship the one God: (Qur’an XXVI, 214) ‘Warn those of thy family who are closest to thee by blood’. Even the Prophet of God’s uncle Abu Talib, so attentive towards him, was to die having remained faithful to the ancestral customs of his father. Yet the only wage the Prophet of God asks is that people love one another in order to draw nearer to God: (Qur’an XLII, 23) ‘Say: I ask of you no wage for this, save your affection towards your kin’. But once the preaching was under way, difficulties of every kind were to accumulate, until the final triumph of the Farewell Sermon, on the return to Mecca during the Prophet of God’s last pilgrimage, when he received these sublime verses: (Qur’an CX, 1-3) ‘V.1 When the help (nasr) of God and the victory (fath) come; V.2 when thou seest men enter God’s religion in throngs; V.3 celebrate the praises of thy Lord and ask His forgiveness. He is, in truth, the One who ever turns again towards the repentant sinner.’
By Michel Abdallah Grimbert, disciple of the tariqa Qadiriya Boutchichiya.
Further reading
- The life of the Prophet Muhammad (3/11): marriage and maturity
- The life of the Prophet Muhammad (5/11): the Night Journey
- The Night of Power (laylat al-qadr)
Footnotes
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Qur’an, surah al-Qadr, XCVII, 1-5: ‘Truly We sent it down during the night of the decree. How couldst thou know what the night of the decree is? The night of the decree is better than a thousand months! The angels and the Spirit descend during that night, with their Lord’s permission, to settle all things. It is peace and salvation until the break of dawn!’ ↩
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To present these wondrous verses we have combined the translations of D. Masson, M. Hamidullah and J. Berque, cited in note 1 of part 1. ↩
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Muhammad Hamidullah, in his so illuminating translation, specifies in a note on this point: ‘The Prophet communicated the Revelation at the very moment he was receiving it, and hence sometimes before it was finished. Thus, by hastening its communication to his hearers, he risked not paying attention to the rest of the Revelation.’ ↩
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Since this hadith is a word of God reported by the Prophet, and not a word of the Prophet manifesting his personal state, it follows that the servant to whom this hadith applies first is the Prophet himself, which confirms his status. Yet, since it is not a Qur’anic verse, this means that, in his capacity as the ‘excellent model’ he is for the believers, they too may aspire to that realisation, as confirmed by another hadith qudsi in which God says concerning His servants: ‘… And when I love him, I am his hearing by which he hears, his sight by which he sees, his hand by which he grasps and his foot with which he walks…’. ↩
