Around the age of forty, Muhammad often went alone to the cave of Hira, in a mountain above Makkah, to pray for days at a time. There, one night, the angel Jibril came to him. The first word he said was not “believe” or “pray”. It was iqraʾ: read.
In the cave
“Read.” “I do not know how to read.”
ʿAʾishah related what the Prophet ﷺ himself described:
فَجَاءَهُ الْمَلَكُ فَقَالَ اقْرَأْ. فَقَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم مَا أَنَا بِقَارِئٍ
“The angel came to him and said: Read. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ replied: I do not know how to read.”
Three times the angel repeated the command, and three times he pressed the Prophet ﷺ to him with force. The third time he recited five verses, the first words of the Qur’an to be revealed. The Prophet ﷺ went home trembling to his wife Khadijah and said: Cover me, cover me.
Five verses
“Read” twice. “Taught” twice. “Man” twice.
ٱقۡرَأۡ بِٱسۡمِ رَبِّكَ ٱلَّذِي خَلَقَ
Recite in the name of your Lord who created
Al-ʿAlaq 96:1
خَلَقَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنَ مِنۡ عَلَقٍ
Created man from a clinging substance
Al-ʿAlaq 96:2
ٱقۡرَأۡ وَرَبُّكَ ٱلۡأَكۡرَمُ
Recite, and your Lord is the most Generous
Al-ʿAlaq 96:3
ٱلَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِٱلۡقَلَمِ
Who taught by the pen
Al-ʿAlaq 96:4
عَلَّمَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنَ مَا لَمۡ يَعۡلَمۡ
Taught man that which he knew not
Al-ʿAlaq 96:5
These five verses are built on pairs. Read in the first and third. Man in the second and fifth: first he is created, then he is taught. And taught, ʿallama, in the fourth and fifth. Creation and knowledge are named side by side, as two gifts of the same kind. It recalls the opening of Ar-Rahman: created man, taught him eloquence.
Reading and Qur’an
The first word gave the Book its name.
The first word · Al-ʿAlaq 96:1
ٱقۡرَأۡ
read, recite
The same root
The Book’s name · An-Naḥl 16:98
ٱلۡقُرۡءَانَ
the recitation
Iqraʾ and al-Qurʾān share the root ق ر أ (q-r-ʾ). The word means both to read from a page and to recite aloud, by heart. Qur’an literally means “the recitation”, or “what is recited”. The Book is named after the first command it brought.
The pen
To a man who did not write, the pen is mentioned first of all.
The Prophet ﷺ could neither read nor write. The Qur’an says so itself:
وَمَا كُنتَ تَتۡلُواْ مِن قَبۡلِهِۦ مِن كِتَٰبٖ وَلَا تَخُطُّهُۥ بِيَمِينِكَۖ إِذٗا لَّٱرۡتَابَ ٱلۡمُبۡطِلُونَ
And you did not recite before it any scripture, nor did you inscribe one with your right hand. Otherwise the falsifiers would have had [cause for] doubt
Yet the pen is in the fourth verse ever revealed: who taught by the pen. The Qur’an was memorised and recited aloud, but it was also written down as it came. And a community in which few could write became, within a few centuries, one of the great book cultures of the world.
First, but not at the front
The first revelation is surah 96.
In the Qur’an as it is read today, these five verses stand near the end, at the start of surah 96 of 114. The order of the surahs in the Book does not follow the order of revelation. The Book opens with Al-Fatihah, the prayer, but the first word to come down was the command to read. Whoever opens the Qur’an and starts to read is, in a way, obeying its first word.