The Keeper of the Keys 35Muslims believe in the continual self-revelation of God from
Adam down to all the prophets who have ever existed in all religions.
These prophets are called nabis in Arabic, and they have been chosen
to relay God’s divine message to all humanity. But sometimes a nabi is
given the extra burden of handing down sacred texts: Abraham, who
revealed the Torah; David, who composed the Psalms; Jesus, whose
words inspired the Gospels. Such an individual is more than a mere
prophet; he is God’s messenger—a rasul. Thus, Muhammad, the mer-
chant from Mecca, who over the course of the next twenty-three years
will recite the entire text of the Quran (literally, “the Recitation”),
would henceforth be known as Rasul Allah: “the Messenger of God.”
What that first experience of Revelation was like for Muhammad is
difficult to describe. The sources are vague, sometimes conflicting.
Ibn Hisham states that Muhammad was sleeping when the Revelation
first came to him like a dream, while al-Tabari claims the Prophet was
standing when the Revelation dropped him to his knees; his shoulders
trembled and he tried to crawl away. The command (iqra) that
Muhammad heard in the cave is best understood as “recite” in al-
Tabari’s biography, but is clearly intended to mean “read” in Ibn
Hisham’s. In fact, according to one of Ibn Hisham’s traditions, the
first recitation was actually written on a magical brocade and placed in
front of Muhammad to be read.
Muslim tradition has tended to focus on al-Tabari’s definition of
iqra (“recite”), mostly to emphasize the notion that the Prophet was
illiterate, which some say is validated by the Quran’s epithet for
Muhammad: an-nabi al-ummi, traditionally understood as meaning
“the unlettered Prophet.” But while Muhammad’s illiteracy may
enhance the miracle of the Quran, there is no historical justification
for it. As Kenneth Cragg and many others have demonstrated, an-nabi
al-ummi should more properly be understood as “the Prophet for the
unlettered” (that is, the Scriptureless), a translation consistent both
with the grammar of the sentence and with Muhammad’s view that
the Quran is the Revelation for a people without a sacred book: “We
did not give [the Arabs] any previous books to study, nor sent them
any previous Warners before you” (34:44).
The fact is that it would be highly unlikely that a successful mer-