AyaSeerah

Year 1 of prophethood · 13 BH (610 CE)

The first revelation

in the cave, Waraqah's warning, and then silence.

His age
40
Where
Makkah
Counted as
13 BH

The year

In Ramaḍān, in the cave of Ḥirāʾ, the angel Jibrīl عليه السلام came to him and said: Read. He answered that he could not read. The angel held him hard, three times, and gave him the first five āyāt of Sūrat al-ʿAlaq. He came home shaking and asked to be covered.

Khadījah رضي الله عنها did not tell him to calm down. She listed back to him what his life had been — keeping family ties, carrying the weak, honouring guests — and said Allah would never disgrace such a man. Her cousin Waraqah, an old man who read scripture, recognised the angel as the one who came to Mūsā عليه السلام and warned him that his people would drive him out.

Then the revelation stopped. The pause was long enough that Makkah began to mock him and long enough to test him. Notice the shape of the year: an overwhelming first contact, a believing wife, a warning about what was coming, and then a wait.

What happened, event by event

Iqraʾ in the cave of Ḥirāʾ

c. 13 BH · Ramaḍān · age 40

He ﷺ was forty, and for years he had been going up to a cave outside Makkah to worship alone. In Ramaḍān the angel Jibrīl عليه السلام came to him there and told him to read. He said he could not read. The angel held him hard, three times, and then gave him the first five āyāt of Sūrat al-ʿAlaq. He went home shaking and asked to be covered.

Chapter: The Cave of Ḥirāʾ — the first revelation

Khadījah رضي الله عنها and Waraqah ibn Nawfal

c. 13 BH · Makkah

Khadījah رضي الله عنها did not tell him to calm down. She told him what his life had been — that he kept family ties, carried the weak and honoured guests — and said Allah would never disgrace such a man. She took him to her cousin Waraqah, an old Christian who read scripture, and Waraqah said this was the same angel who came to Mūsā عليه السلام, and that his own people would drive him out.

Chapter: The Cave of Ḥirāʾ — the first revelation

The pause in revelation (fatrat al-waḥy)

c. 13–12 BH · Makkah

After that first meeting the revelation stopped for a while. People mocked him, saying his Lord had left him. Then Sūrat aḍ-Ḍuḥā came: your Lord has not left you and does not hate you. Its proof is his own past — orphaned and sheltered, lost and guided, poor and provided for.

Chapter: The Cave of Ḥirāʾ — the first revelation

The Qur'an alongside this year

People in this year

Answer from memory