IN THE SHADE OF THE MESSAGE AND PROPHETHOOD
IN THE CAVE HIRA:
When Prophet Muhammad (Peace
be upon him) was nearly forty, he had been wont to pass long
hours in retirement meditating and speculating over all aspects
of creation around him. This meditative temperament helped to
widen the mental gap between him and his compatriots. He used to
provide himself with Sawiq (barley porridge) and water and
then directly head for the hills and ravines in the neighbourhood
of Makkah. One of these in particular was his favourite resort
— a cave named Hira’, in the Mount An-Nour. It was only two
miles from Makkah, a small cave 4 yards long and 1.75 yard wide.
He would always go there and invite wayfarers to share him his
modest provision. He used to devote most of his time, and Ramadan
in particular, to worship and meditation on the universe around
him. His heart was restless about the moral evils and idolatry
that were rampant among his people; he was as yet helpless
because no definite course, or specific approach had been
available for him to follow and rectify the ill practices around
him. This solitude attended with this sort of contemplative
approach must be understood in its Divine perspective. It was a
preliminary stage to the period of grave responsibilities that he
was to shoulder very soon.
Privacy and detachment
from the impurities of life were two indispensable prerequisites
for the Prophet’s soul to come into close communion with the
Unseen Power that lies behind all aspects of existence in this
infinite universe. It was a rich period of privacy which lasted
for three years and ushered in a new era, of indissoluble contact
with that Power.
GAGRIEL BRINGS DOWN THE REVELATION:
When he was forty, the
age of complete perfection at which Prophets were always ordered
to disclose their Message, signs of his Prophethood started to
appear and twinkle on the horizons of life; they were the true
visions he used to experience for six months. The period of
Prophethood was 23 years; so the period of these six months of
true visions constituted an integral part of the forty-six parts
of Prophethood. In Ramadan, in his third year of solitude in the
cave of Hira’, Allâh’s Will desired His mercy to flow on
earth and Muhammad (Peace be upon him) was honoured with
Prophethood, and the light of Revelation burst upon him with some
verses of the Noble Qur’ân.
As for the exact date,
careful investigation into circumstantial evidence and relevant
clues point directly to Monday, 21st. Ramadan at night, i.e. Au,
10, 610 A.D. with Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) exactly 40
years, 6 months and 12 days of age, i.e. 39 Gregorian years, 3
months and 22 days.
‘Aishah, the
veracious, gave the following narration of that most significant
event that brought the Divine light which would dispel the
darkness of disbelief and ignorance. It led life down a new
course and brought about the most serious amendment to the line
of the history of mankind:
Forerunners
of the Revelation assumed the form of true visions that would
strikingly come true all the time. After that, solitude became
dear to him and he would go to the cave, Hira’, to engage in Tahannuth
(devotion) there for a certain number of nights before returning
to his family, and then he would return for provisions for a
similar stay. At length, unexpectedly, the Truth (the angel) came
to him and said, “Recite.” “I cannot recite,” he [Muhammad (Peace be upon
him)] said. The Prophet (Peace be upon him) described: “Then he took me
and squeezed me vehemently and then let me go and repeated the
order ‘Recite.’ ‘I cannot recite’ said I, and once again
he squeezed me and let me till I was exhausted. Then he said: ‘Recite.’
I said ‘I cannot recite.’ He squeezed me for a third time and
then let me go and said:
“Read!
In the Name of your Lord, Who has created (all
that exists), has created man from a clot (a
piece of thick coagulated blood). Read! and your
Lord is the Most Generous.’” [96:1-3]
The Prophet (Peace be
upon him) repeated these verses. He was trembling with fear. At
this stage, he came back to his wife Khadijah, and said, “Cover me, ...
cover me.” They
covered him until he restored security. He apprised Khadijah of
the incident of the cave and added that he was horrified. His
wife tried to soothe him and reassured him saying, “Allâh will never
disgrace you. You unite uterine relations; you bear the burden of
the weak; you help the poor and the needy, you entertain the
guests and endure hardships in the path of truthfulness.”
She set out with the
Prophet (Peace be upon him) to her cousin Waraqa bin Nawfal bin
Asad bin ‘Abd Al-‘Uzza, who had embraced Christianity in the
pre-Islamic period, and used to write the Bible in Hebrew. He was
a blind old man. Khadijah said: “My cousin! Listen to your nephew!” Waraqa said: “O my nephew! What
did you see?” The
Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him) told him what had
happened to him. Waraqa replied: “This is ‘Namus’ i.e. (the
angel who is entrusted with Divine Secrets) that Allâh sent to
Moses. I wish I were younger. I wish I could live up to the time
when your people would turn you out.” Muhammad (Peace be upon him) asked:
“Will
they drive me out?”
Waraqa answered in the affirmative and said: “Anyone who came
with something similar to what you have brought was treated with
hostility; and if I should be alive till that day, then I would
support you strongly.”
A few days later Waraqa died and the revelation also subsided.
At-Tabari and Ibn Hisham
reported that the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him) left
the cave of Hira’ after being surprised by the Revelation, but
later on, returned to the cave and continued his solitude.
Afterwards, he came back to Makkah. At-Tabari reported on this
incident, saying:
After mentioning the
coming of the Revelation, the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon
him) said: “I have never abhorred anyone more than a
poet or a mad man. I can not stand looking at either of them. I
will never tell anyone of Quraish of my Revelation. I will climb
a mountain and throw myself down and die. That will relieve me. I
went to do that but halfway up the mountain, I heard a voice from
the sky saying ‘O Muhammad! You are the Messenger of Allâh (Peace
be upon him) and I am Gabriel.’ I looked upwards and saw
Gabriel in the form of a man putting his legs on the horizon. He
said: ‘O Muhammad You are the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be
upon him) and I am Gabriel.’ I stopped and looked at him. His
sight distracted my attention from what I had intended to do. I
stood in my place transfixed. I tried to shift my eyes away from
him. He was in every direction I looked at. I stopped in my place
without any movement until Khadijah sent someone to look for me.
He went down to Makkah and came back while I was standing in the
same place. Gabriel then left, and I went back home. I found
Khadijah at home, so I sat very close to her. She asked: ‘Father
of Al-Qasim! Where have you been? I sent someone to look for you.
He went to Makkah and returned to me.’ I told her of what I had
seen. She replied: ‘It is a propitious sign, O my husband. Pull
yourself together, I swear by Allâh that you are a Messenger for
this nation.’ Then she stood up and went to Waraqa and informed
him. Waraqa said: ‘I swear by Allâh that he has received the
same Namus, i.e. angel that was sent to Moses. He is the
Prophet of this nation. Tell him to be patient.’ She came back
to him and told him of Waraqa’s words. When the Messenger of
Allâh (Peace be upon him) finished his solitary stay and went
down to Makkah, he went to Waraqa, who told him: ‘You are the
Prophet of this nation. I swear by Allâh that you have received
the same angel that was sent to Moses.’”
INTERRUPION OF REVELATION:
Ibn Sa‘d reported on
the authority of Ibn ‘Abbas that the Revelation paused for a
few days.After careful study, this seems to be the most possible.
To say that it lasted for three and a half years, as some
scholars allege, is not correct, but here there is no room to go
into more details.
Meanwhile, the Prophet (Peace
be upon him), was caught in a sort of depression coupled with
astonishment and perplexity. Al-Bukhari reported:
The Divine inspiration
paused for a while and the Prophet (Peace be upon him) became so
sad, as we have heard, that he intended several times to throw
himself from the tops of high mountains, and every time he went
up the top of a mountain in order to throw himself down, Gabriel
would appear before him and say: “O Muhammad! You are indeed
Allâh’s Messenger in truth,” whereupon his heart would
become quiet and he would calm down and return home. Whenever the
period of the coming of the Revelation used to become long, he
would do as before, but Gabriel would appear again before him and
say to him what he had said before.
ONCE, GABRIEL BRINGS ALLAH'S REVELATION:
Ibn Hajar said: ‘That
(the pause of Allâh’s revelation for a few days) was to
relieve the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him) of the fear
he experienced and to make him long for the Revelation. When the
shades of puzzle receded, the flags of truth were raised, the
Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him) knew for sure that he had
become the Messenger of the Great Lord. He was also certain that
what had come to him was no more than the ambassador of
inspiration. His waiting and longing for the coming of the
revelation constituted a good reason for his steadfastness and
self-possession on the arrival of Allâh’s inspiration, Al-Bukhari
reported on the authority of Jabir bin ‘Abdullah that he had
heard the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him) speak about the
period of pause as follows:
“While I was
walking, I heard a voice from the sky. I looked up, and surely
enough, it was the same angel who had visited me in the cave of
Hira’. He was sitting on a chair between the earth and the sky.
I was very afraid of him and knelt on the ground. I went home
saying: ‘Cover me …, Cover me …’. Allâh revealed to me
the verses:
‘O you [Muhammad (Peace be upon him)] enveloped (in
garments)! Arise and warn! And your Lord (Allâh)
magnify! And your garments purify! And keep away
from Ar-Rujz (the idols)!’” [74:1-5]
After that the
revelation started coming strongly, frequently and regularly.
SOME DETAILS PERTINENT TO THE SUCCESSIVE
STAGES OF REVELATION:
Before we go into the
details of the period of communicating the Message and
Prophethood, we would like to get acquainted with the stages of
the Revelation which constituted the main source of the Message
and the subject-matter of the Call. Ibn Al-Qayyim, mentioning the
stages of the Revelation, said:
The First: The
period of true vision. It was the starting point of the
Revelation to the Men of Allâh (Peace be upon him).
The Second: What the
angel invisibly cast in the Prophet’s mind and heart.
The Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him) said: “The
Noble Spirit revealed to me ‘No soul will perish until
it exhausts its due course, so fear Allâh and gently
request Him. Never get so impatient to the verge of
disobedience of Allâh. What Allâh has can never be
acquired but through obedience to Him.’”
The Third: The
angel used to visit the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be
upon him) in the form of a human being and would speak to
him directly. This would enable him to fully understand
what the angel said. The angel was sometimes seen in this
form by the Prophet’s Companions.
The Fourth: The
angel came to him like the toll of a bell and this was
the most difficult form because the angel used to seize
him tightly and sweat would stream from his forehead even
on the coldest day. If the Prophet (Peace be upon him)
was on his camel, the camel would not withstand the
weight, so it would immediately kneel down on the ground.
Once the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him) had
such a revelation when he was sitting and his thigh was
on Zaid’s, Zaid felt the pressure had almost injured
his thigh.
The Fifth: The
Prophet (Peace be upon him) saw the angel in his
actual form. The angel would reveal to him what Allâh
had ordered him to reveal. This, as mentioned in (Qur’ân),
in Sûrah An-Najm (Chapter 53 - The Star),
happened twice.
The Sixth: What
Allâh Himself revealed to him in heaven i.e. when he
ascended to heaven and received Allâh’s behest of Salât
(prayer).
The Seventh: Allâh’s
Words to His Messenger (Peace be upon him) at first hand
without the mediation of an angel. It was a privilege
granted to Moses (Peace be upon him) and clearly
attested in the Qur’ân, as it is attested to our
Prophet (Peace be upon him) in the Sûrah Al-Isrâ’
(Chapter 17 - The Journey by Night) of the Noble Qur’ân.
Some religious scholars
added a controversial eighth stage in which they state that Allâh
spoke to the Prophet (Peace be upon him) directly without a
curtain in between. This issue remains however unconfirmed.
PROCLAIMING ALLAH, THE ALL-HIGH; AND THE IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENTS
The first Revelation
sent to the Prophet (Peace be upon him) implied several
injunctions, simple in form but highly effective and of serious
far-reaching ramifications. The angel communicated to him a
manifest Message saying:
“O you [Muhammad (Peace be upon him) ] enveloped (in
garments)! Arise and warn! And your Lord (Allâh)
magnify! And your garments purify! And keep away
from Ar-Rujz (the idols). And give not a
thing in order to have more (or consider not your
deeds of Allâh’s obedience as a favour to Allâh).
And be patient for the sake of your Lord (i.e.
perform your duty to Allâh)!” [74:1-7]
For convenience and ease
of understanding, we are going to segment the Message into its
immediate constituents:
- The ultimate
objective of warning is to make sure that no one
breaching the pleasures of Allâh in the whole universe
is ignorant of the serious consequences that his
behaviour entails, and to create a sort of unprecedented
shock within his mind and heart.
- ‘Magnifying the
Lord’ dictates explicitly that the only pride allowed
to nourish on the earth is exclusively Allâh’s to the
exclusion of all the others’.
- ‘Cleansing the
garments and shunning all aspects of abomination’ point
directly to the indispensable need to render both the
exterior and interior exceptionally chaste and pure, in
addition to the prerequisite of sanctifying the soul and
establishing it highly immune against the different sorts
of impurities and the various kinds of pollutants. Only
through this avenue can the soul of the Prophet (Peace
be upon him) reach an ideal status and become eligible to
enjoy the shady mercy of Allâh and His protection,
security, guidance and ever-shining light; and will
consequently set the highest example to the human
community, attract the sound hearts and inspire awe and
reverence in the stray ones in such a manner that all the
world, in agreement or disagreement, will head for it and
take it as the rock-bed in all facets of their welfare.
- The Prophet (Peace be upon him) must not regard his strife in the way of
Allâh as a deed of grace that entitles him to a great reward. On the contrary,
he has to exert himself to the utmost, dedicate his whole efforts and be ready
to offer all sacrifices in a spirit of self-fogetfulness enveloped by an ever-present
awareness of Allâh, without the least sense of pride in his deeds or sacrifices.
- The last verse of
the Qur’ân revealed to the Prophet (Peace be upon
him) alludes to the hostile attitude of the obdurate
disbelievers, who will jeer at him and his followers.
They are expected to disparage him and step up their
malice to the point of scheming against his life and
lives of all the believers around him. In this case he
has got to be patient and is supposed to persevere and
display the highest degree of stamina for the sole
purpose of attaining the pleasure of Allâh.
These were the basic
preliminaries that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) had to
observe, very simple injunctions in appearance, greatly
fascinating in their calm rhythm, but highly effective in
practice. They constituted the trigger that aroused a far-ranging
tempest in all the corners of the world.
The verses comprise the
constituents of the new call and propagation of the new faith. A
warning logically implies that there are malpractices with
painful consequences to be sustained by the perpetrators, and
since the present life is not necessarily the only room to bring
people to account for their misdeeds or some of them, then the
warning would necessarily imply calling people to account on
another day, i.e. the Day of Resurrection, and this per se
suggests the existence of a life other than this one we are
living. All the verses of the Noble Qur’ân call people to
testify explicitly to the Oneness of Allâh, to delegate all
their affairs to Allâh, the All-High, and to subordinate the
desires of the self and the desires of Allâh’s servants to the
attainment of His Pleasures.
The constituents of the
call to Islam could, briefly speaking, go as follows:
- Testimony to the
Oneness of Allâh.
- Belief in the
Hereafter.
- Sanctifying one’s
soul and elevating it high above evils and abominations
that conduce to terrible consequences, besides this,
there is the dire need for virtues and perfect manners
coupled with habituating oneself to righteous deeds.
- Committing one’s
all affairs to Allâh, the All-High.
- All the foregoing
should run as a natural corollary to unwavering belief in
Muhammad’s Message, and abidance by his noble
leadership and righteous guidance.
The verses have been
prefaced, in the voice of the Most High, by a heavenly call
mandating the Prophet (Peace be upon him) to undertake this
daunting responsibility (calling people unto Allâh). The verses
meant to extract him forcibly out of his sleep, divest him of his
mantle and detach him from the warmth and quiet of life, and then
drive him down a new course attended with countless hardships,
and requiring a great deal of strife in the way of Allâh:
“O you [Muhammad (Peace be upon him) ] enveloped (in
garments)! Arise and warn.” [74:1-2]
Suggesting that to live
to oneself is quite easy, but it has been decided that you have
to shoulder this heavy burden; consequently sleep, comfort, or
warm bed are items decreed to be alien in your lexicon of life. O
Muhammad, arise quickly for the strife and toil awaiting you; no
time is there for sleep and such amenities; grave
responsibilities have been Divinely determined to fall to your
lot, and drive you into the turmoil of life to develop a new sort
of precarious affinity with the conscience of people and the
reality of life.
The Prophet (Peace be upon him) managed quite successfully to rise to his
feet and measure up to the new task, he went ahead in a spirit of complete
selflessness, relentlessly striving and never abating in carrying the
burden of the great Trust, the burden of enlightening mankind, and the
heavy weight of the new faith and strife for over twenty years, nothing
distracting his attention from the awcommission. May Allâh reward him,
for us and all humanity, the best ending. The following research at
hand gives an account in miniature of his long strive and uninterrupted
struggle he made after receiving the ministry of Messengership.
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