Did Revelation Descend Upon Muhammad?

Introduction

Early Islamic sources، the hadith collections, the biographical (sira) literature, and the works on the Prophet’s physical characteristics (shamail). record a detailed description of Muhammad’s physical and psychological state while receiving what is held to be revelation. These descriptions, found in recognized Islamic sources rather than in outside, adversarial ones, raise serious questions for the careful researcher about the nature of this phenomenon. This study gathers these reports from their sources, presents the questions some researchers raise about them, and then, in keeping with the method followed throughout this website, presents the response Muslim scholars themselves have given to these very questions.

The Reports Found in Islamic Sources

1. Mishkat al-Masabih, in the Book of Virtues and Characteristics (Kitab al-Fadail wa l-Shamail), chapter on the beginning of revelation (drawing on Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim), records that when Gabriel came to Muhammad in the cave of Hira’, he returned to Khadijah “his heart trembling,” saying, “Cover me, cover me,” and they covered him until his fright passed. Sira sources add that Khadijah sought to verify the nature of what he had seen by consulting her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, who was familiar with the earlier scriptures.

2. In Sahih al-Bukhari (Book of the Beginning of Revelation) and Sahih Muslim, on the authority of Aishah, al-Harith ibn Hisham asked the Messenger of God: “How does revelation come to you?” He said: “Sometimes it comes to me like the ringing of a bell, and that is hardest on me; then it leaves me, and I have retained what it said. And sometimes the angel takes the form of a man and speaks to me, and I retain what he says.”

3. Also, in the two Sahihs, on the authority of Aishah: “I saw revelation descend upon him on an intensely cold day, and then it would leave him, his forehead streaming with sweat.”

4. Muslim relates in his Sahih, Book of Jihad, on the authority of Jabir ibn Abd Allah and Ubayd Allah ibn Kab ibn Malik, that when revelation descended on the Prophet, “a severe distress [burahha’ shadidah] would seize him, and his face would darken [tarabbada].”

5. Ibn Ishaq records in his Sira (as transmitted by Ibn Hisham) that Muhammad used to be treated with ruqyah against the evil eye before his prophethood, and that his mother Aminah likewise treated him with it, a report also carried by Ali ibn Burhan al-Din al-Halabi in his Sira (Insan al-Uyun fi Sirat al-Amin al-Mamun). The same sources report that the Prophet told Khadijah he heard a voice calling his name, and that he feared he might be afflicted by a jinn or that he had gone mad, states said to be accompanied by trembling, closed eyes, a darkening of the face, and a sound resembling the groaning of a young camel.

6. A similar description is related from Abu Hurayrah: that the Prophet would be seized by trembling, his face would darken, his eyes would close, and he would emit a sound resembling that of a male camel.

7. Some works on the Prophet’s characteristics relate, on the authority of Umar ibn al-Khattab, that a humming near his face resembling the humming of bees could be heard when revelation descended.

8. The author of Mirat al-Kainat (a later historical/biographical work) relates from Abu Hurayrah that henna was applied to the Prophet’s head because of headaches that afflicted him.

9. Al-Halabi, in Insan al-Uyun, relates from Zayd ibn Thabit, a scribe of revelation, a description of the Prophet’s body becoming extremely heavy while receiving revelation while mounted, such that the camel would kneel under the weight, and that his state resembled that of one who had fainted.

10. Muslim relates in his Sahih, Book of Faith, on the authority of Anas ibn Malik, the hadith of the splitting of the chest: that Gabriel came to the Prophet as a boy playing with other children, took him, split open his heart, and extracted a clot, saying, “This is Satan’s share of you,” then washed it in a golden basin with water from Zamzam, and restored it. The other children ran to his wet-nurse saying Muhammad had been killed, and they found him pale.

11. The author of Mishkat al-Masabih notes, citing hadith commentators, that this splitting of the chest occurred to Muhammad on more than one occasion: with Halimah when he was about ten years old (or four, in another report), at the onset of revelation in the cave of Hira’, and on the Night Journey and Ascension (al-Isra wal-Miraj).

12. Ibn Hisham relates in the Sira that the husband of Halimah al-Sadiyyah, the Prophet’s wet-nurse, advised her to return the child to his family for fear that he had been touched by a jinn, and that Halimah, asked later why she had returned him to his mother, said she had feared he might have a devil in him.

Questions Raised About These Reports

On the basis of this body of reports, some researchers raise questions of the following kind.

First, what conclusive evidence establishes that these physical symptoms specifically indicated the descent of divine revelation, rather than some other phenomenon? History records comparable symptoms, trembling, partial loss of consciousness, auditory or visual hallucination, in other historical figures without those symptoms being taken as evidence of prophethood.

Second, do these symptoms, trembling, partial loss of consciousness, profuse sweating, change in facial color, and sounds heard just before the episode (such as the ringing of a bell or the humming of bees), correspond to the clinical description of epileptic seizures? A standard reference work, al-Mawsuah al-Arabiyyah al-Muyassarah (pp. 1122-1123), defines epilepsy as “a neurological disorder characterized by sudden attacks of loss of consciousness, often accompanied by convulsions… the attack may be preceded by a strange, illusory prior sensation affecting one of the senses, such as sight or hearing, as when the patient sees an apparition or hears a sound.” Those who raise this question see a notable resemblance between this clinical description and the reports listed above.

Third, is it not striking that the Prophet’s own recorded statement, related by Muslim (no. 3895) on the authority of Abu Hurayrah, describes the bell as “the flutes of Satan?” How, then, could the Prophet describe his experience of revelation as resembling the sound of a bell, while elsewhere describing the bell itself as a satanic instrument?

The Islamic Scholarly Response to These Questions

Scholarly integrity requires presenting how Muslim scholars, hadith commentators, theologians, and contemporary Muslim physicians, have answered these very questions. Their responses run along several lines.

1. The varying reliability of the sources cited. Hadith scholars note that the reports listed above are not all equal reliability. Some are found in the two Sahihs (nos. 2, 3, 4, and 10) and are treated with high confidence by the majority of hadith scholars, while others (the account of treatment against the evil eye, the report of Halimah’s husband fearing a jinn, and the report of the humming of bees) are found in later sira and shamail works (such as al-Halabi’s Insan al-Uyun and Mirat al-Kainat), sources that gather sound, weak, and even fabricated material without always subjecting it to the same rigorous chain-of-transmission criticism (jarh wa tadil) applied to prophetic hadith in the canonical collections. Treating all these reports as methodologically equivalent is accordingly imprecise for anyone who distinguishes between tiers of Islamic sources.

2. The Qur’an’s own account of the “weight” of revelation. Exegetes cite the Qur’an’s statement in Surat al-Muzzammil: “Indeed, We will cast upon you a heavy word” (Al-Muzzammil 73:5), and in Surat Al-Qiyamah: “Do not move your tongue with it to hasten with it” (Al-Qiyamah 75:16), to show that the weight and intensity of revelation upon the Prophet is a concept established in the qur’anic text itself, not merely an isolated hadith report, and that it is understood, in their view, as the effect of encountering something beyond ordinary human capacity, what theologians term “the awe of theophany [hawl al-tajalli]”, rather than as a pathological symptom.

3. Objections to the epilepsy hypothesis. Muslim physicians and researchers respond to the epilepsy hypothesis with several clinical observations: that epileptic seizures recur at random, independent of the sufferer’s will, and are not followed by coherent, structured discourse, whereas the Prophet’s state, according to the very reports cited, was invariably followed immediately by highly eloquent and internally consistent speech (the qur’anic text itself) rather than confusion or delirium. They add that chronic epilepsy sufferers typically show, over years of recurrent seizures, as would apply to Muhammad’s roughly twenty-three-year experience of revelation, noticeable cognitive decline or personality change, which the sources do not record of a Prophet who continued to lead complex military and political affairs throughout that period. This specific hypothesis was in fact raised by nineteenth-century Orientalists (such as Aloys Sprenger) and has been contested by Muslim and Western researchers alike on these clinical grounds.

4. Clarifying the hadith on “the bell and Satan’s flutes.” Commentators such as Imam al-Nawawi and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, in their commentaries on Sahih Muslim, explain that the hadith condemning the bell (no. 3895) refers to the physical bell hung on animals’ necks or used as a musical instrument, condemned by jurists for reasons connected to superstitious omen-taking or to its use as an instrument of frivolous amusement, whereas the expression “the ringing of a bell” used to describe revelation is a purely rhetorical simile for the timbre and intensity of a sound, not a literal description of the bell itself nor a judgment upon it, a type of rhetorical comparison (likening one sound to another without extending judgment to the object compared) well attested in Arabic and not, in the view of philologists, requiring that both judgments coincide.

5. The hadith of the splitting of the chest and its interpretation. Many exegetes and hadith commentators hold that the report “this is Satan’s share of you” does not mean that an actual material portion of Satan resided within the Prophet’s heart to be surgically removed, but rather represents, for those who accept the hadith literally, a symbolic purification signifying his immunity from any inclination to evil prior to being charged with prophethood. Some later and contemporary scholars, both rationalist and traditionalist, have separately discussed the authenticity of this report’s chain of transmission and whether its meaning should be read literally or figuratively, without arriving at a single unified position.

6. Comparing the phenomenon to its counterparts in the wider religious tradition. Some comparative researchers note that acute physical reactions accompanying an experience of revelation or vision are not unique to the Islamic prophetic biography, but have documented parallels in the texts that Jews and Christians themselves rely upon: the prophet Daniel describes his state during a vision, saying, “no strength remained in me… and my radiant appearance was fearfully changed, and I retained no strength” (Daniel 10:8); Ezekiel describes falling on his face at a vision (Ezekiel 1:28); Acts describes Saul (Paul) falling to the ground and being temporarily blinded upon seeing the light (Acts 9:3-4); and Revelation describes John falling “as though dead” at his vision (Revelation 1:17). On this basis, the claim that “no prophet is known to have experienced anything like this while receiving revelation” invites revision from a comparative standpoint, though the question of how best to interpret this resemblance between the two traditions remains open to each researcher according to their own theological framework.

نتیجه گیری

This survey shows that Islamic reports do indeed record acute physical symptoms accompanying Muhammad’s experience of what was held to be revelation, and this is not itself in dispute. The real dispute lies in interpretation: are these symptoms evidence of an encounter with something beyond ordinary human capacity, as traditional Islamic scholars hold, or are they indicative of a particular clinical condition, as some researchers argue by comparison with modern medical definitions? This study has shown that both sides draw on the same Islamic sources to reach opposing conclusions, and that the matter requires the careful reader to examine the reliability of each report individually, distinguishing between what is found in the canonical hadith collections and what is found in later sira literature, before building on either conclusion.

Reference Sources

1. Sahih al-Bukhari, Book of the Beginning of Revelation.
2. Sahih Muslim, Book of Faith and Book of Jihad.
3. Mishkat al-Masabih, by al-Tabrizi, Book of Virtues and Characteristics.
4. The Prophetic Biography (al-Sira al-Nabawiyyah), by Ibn Hisham.
5. Insan al-Uyun fi Sirat al-Amin al-Ma’mun (al-Sira al-Halabiyyah), by Ali ibn Burhan al-Din al-Halabi.

Al-Mawsuah al-Arabiyyah al-Muyassarah, entry “Epilepsy [al-Sara].”