History of The Quran - Revelation

Revelation

The Qur'anic revelation started one night during the month of Ramadan in 610 AD, when Prophet Muhammad, who was forty years old, received the first revelation from the angel Gabriel, who had given him the responsibility for inscribing these messages from God to give to mankind.

Muslim scholars believe that prophet Muhammad was illiterate, as mentioned in the Qur'an itself,

"Those who follow the messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) with them......"Qur'an 7:157.

According to Bukhari, Aisha bint Abu Bakr (a wife of Muhammad) described that, the first Qur'anic revelation occurred when the angel Gabriel visited Muhammad and asked him to recite. Muhammad responded ma aqra’u (I do not read). Gabriel pressed him “until all the strength went out of me; thereupon he released me and said: ‘Read!’” This was repeated three times and upon the third, Gabriel released him and said, “Read in the name of the Sustainer who created humankind from a clot! Read! And your Sustainer is the most Beautiful.” After this the Prophet continued sporadically over a period of twenty-three years to have revelations, until shortly before his death in 11/632.

Muslims believe the angel brought the word of God to the Prophet verbatim, without any alteration or change. In the Qur'an, it is emphasized that the Prophet was required only to receive the sacred text and that he had no authority to change it (10.15). Even though the Prophet Muhammad had no authority to change the Qur'an, he was active in the way that he received the revelations in full consciousness, witnessing in his heart the greatness of the presence of the voice of God. The impact of receiving these revelations are described below. It is also, believed that God did not make himself known through the revelations; it was his will that was revealed. There is nothing in the Quran that suggests that the Prophet saw God during his revelations.

For the Prophet, the revelations were real and he believed the context was objective, but he was only able to describe the experience through metaphorical terms.

When asked about the experience of revelation the Prophet reported,

“sometimes it is revealed like the ringing of a bell. This form of inspiration is the hardest of them all and then it passes off after I have grasped what is inspired. Sometimes the Angel comes in the form of a man and talks to me and I grasp whatever he says.”

At times, it has also been reported that the experience was painful and agonizing for the Prophet. For example, the Prophet had been heard saying, “Never once did I receive a revelation without thinking that my soul had been torn away from me.”

After, the Prophet would get revelations he would memorize the Qur'an by ear, and later recite it to his companions, who also memorized it. Before the Qur'an was written down, speaking it from memory prevailed as the mode of teaching it to others. This fact, taken in the context of 7th century Arabia, was not an extraordinary feat. People of that time had a penchant for recited poetry and had developed their skills in memorization to a remarkable degree. Events and competitions that featured the recitation of elaborate poetry were of great interest.

People questioned the nature and modes of Muhammad’s revelations. The Meccans of the time of Prophet Muhammad judged the Qur'anic revelation based on their understanding of ‘inspiration’. For them, poetry was closely connected to inspiration from a higher spiritual source, called jinn. For this reason when Prophet Muhammad began preaching and reciting the Quran, the Meccans accused him of being a poet (21.5) or a ‘poet possessed’(37.36).