The Clot

#2. Sura ‘Alaq (96: 1–5)

Even if one must always begin at the beginning, it is crucial to remember that there is always room for alternative beginnings.

So while Sura Fatiha (The Opening) marks the formal introduction to the Qur’an, it is to Sura ‘Alaq that we must turn for the earliest revelation to the Prophet Muhammad. Its first words came in the form of a simple, direct command: ‘Read!’

Muhammad receives his first revelation through the Angel Gabriel. Folio from Rashid al-Din’s Jami’ al-tawarikh (‘World History’ or ‘Compendium of Chronicles’), Ilkhanid Iran, 14th-century, University of Edinburgh Library, Or. MS 20, f.45v

This injunction established a fundamental ethic of Islam: the twinning of faith and intellect, spirit and matter, din as well as dunya.

By tying the act of creation to teaching by the pen, these first five verses further signal that the unfolding of revelation and the search for knowledge are both creative acts mediated by the grace and bounty of the Divine.

Read! In the name of your Sustainer who created,
Created the human from a clot.
Read! And your Sustainer is Most Generous,
He who taught humankind by the pen,
Taught what they knew not.