Ibn Umayr said to Aisha, “Tell us about the most amazing thing you have seen from the Messenger of God.”
After a silence, she said, “One night, the Messenger said to me, ‘O Aisha, excuse me to worship my Lord on this night.’
“I said, ‘By God, I love your companionship and I love what makes you happy!’
“He purified himself, then stood in prayer. He began crying until his cheeks became wet, and he cried after that until his beard was wet, and he continued crying until the tears started to fall to the ground.
“At that moment, Bilal came to the Messenger of God to announce the predawn prayer and he saw him crying. He said, ‘O Messenger of God, why are you crying? Indeed, God has forgiven your previous and future sins.’
“The Messenger replied, ‘Shall I not be a grateful servant? A verse has been revealed to me on this night, woe to the one who reads it and does not reflect upon it.’
“He then recited: ‘Verily! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding (3:190).’”
This narration captures a moment of profound intimacy, though it might be more accurate to say intimacies when we read how Muhammad relates to God, his wife, and even his friend, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him. He is unabashed in his reverence, polite in his discourse, and unfettered in his emotional expression.
He is compelled initially by the desire to worship, so much so that he is willing to put off the companionship of his wife for the evening, after first begging her pardon. Having entered into Divine communion, he is overcome. His devotions give way to something much greater, and the weight of revelation bears down on him. As his comprehension awakens to the fullness of what has been revealed, he cannot stem the flood of tears. When asked about it by his companion, he remarks that he is grateful, but for what exactly?
For the privilege of revelation? We have many instances of the Prophet receiving Divine instruction, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him. And while the experience is often described as arduous, he is not consistently moved to tears.
There is something unique about this revelation and the opportunity it offers everyone. He is overjoyed to have learned this, and also terrified that the opportunity will be missed by many. For it requires understanding which cannot be achieved but through observation and reflection.
Most worrisome, sorrow and dejection await all who refuse to pay attention.
Years before this, before Muhammad knew about God or his mission, he made a regular practice of spending time outside, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him. His retreats to the cave of Hira are well known, as is the fact of his illiteracy. A lack of formal education did not temper his contemplative nature, however, and we can imagine him among the rocks watching as the light changed and shadows lengthened. We can imagine him listening as he lay at night to the sounds of invisible creatures rummaging through his camp supplies for food. We can guess that he watched the rotation of the stars and wondered at the beauty of a desert dawn.
And each of these things told a story. There was rhythm, order, beauty, majesty, danger, and mystery. He was a part of it, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him, but somehow simultaneously just outside of it in his capacity to observe phenomena, discern patterns, and predict outcomes.
There was a “greatness” to it all, a vastness that dwarfed the hustle and bustle of village life. Of course he wasn’t the only one to appreciate the natural world. Surely he would have heard poets extolling the beauty of the moon or the loyalty of a favorite camel, but these were descriptive.
What did it all mean?
Perhaps there were books written on such things, books he could not read. Scripture certainly existed, with the local Jewish and Christian communities debating the finer theological points in these texts that were inaccessible to him. Did he lament this? Did he, like the rest of us, imagine at all the unrealized possibilities of his life? Did he yearn for insight into the meanings that the learned people of his region were sharing and discussing?
We don’t have any evidence that he frequented these circles of study, and neither do we know if he cared.
What we do know is that he was drawn to his cave, over and over again, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him. Observing, reflecting, contemplating, his heart and mind filled with reverence for all that he saw, felt, smelled, and heard. This was his study and he intuited that there had to be something behind all of it.
When the angel Gabriel pressed in upon Muhammad, may the peace and blessing of God be upon them both, he commanded that Muhammad should read:
Read! In the Name of your Lord, Who has created, created man out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood. Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the pen, taught man that which he knew not.
Q96:1-5
According to tradition, Muhammad protested, “I cannot read!”
And this is where things get really interesting. The translation tells us “Read! In the Name of your Lord,” and it is indeed a command. In his bewilderment, we can see the humanity of Muhammad as he responds to the command in helpless frustration, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him.
But it is a matter of faith that no one is more beloved to our Creator than he. Why should it be that God, at this first moment of revelation, begin by reminding the Prophet of his illiteracy?
I’m not a religious scholar. I’m someone completely enamored with the reality that there is no better moral, philosophical, ethical, intellectual, or spiritual instruction available to man than immersion in the wilderness. This was the way of my Prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him.
Confessing my bias, I believe what Gabriel revealed to Muhammad is the reality that all is read, interpreted, and understood first through the acknowledgement of God as creator. That was the command. We must observe creation and see in the transmogrification of a blood clot into a human being the proof of Design. Words alone are inadequate, and to the extent they are useful, we must also appreciate that there can be no words without first the study and manipulation of our environment.
The “pen” by which God teaches men is rendered qalam in the Arabic, from the triliteral root q-l-m which carries the meaning of to cut, trim, or lop off. This is in reference to the crafting of reed pens that had first to be trimmed from the reed bed. Ink was made of some combination of soot or the concentrated tannins of oak galls, all of it requiring an intimate knowledge of the wilderness and its properties.
Writing cannot precede man’s relationship with the materials of his environment. Muslim academics tell us that the “pen” is a stand in for writing, formal education, and the specific knowledge that comes from a study of such things. We can all appreciate the gift of writing and its utility in the recording and transmission of information.
But I think there is more.
The pen itself is a lesson. The reed in its bed is a standalone miracle. Beyond this is the possibility that man, through observation and experimentation, will recognize the reed’s specific properties, characteristics that allow him to record and transmit divine revelation for the benefit of future generations.
It is, I believe, this interplay of creation and scriptural revelation that broke Muhammad when he first heard: Verily! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding.
Creation is the foundation and vehicle of scriptural revelation which acts as commentary, contextualizing creation.
The Qur’an is the furqan, often rendered in English as the “criterion,” that which affirms and clarifies, a Divine standard that separates truth from falsehood. Its revelation is fixed in time, as opposed to creation which reveals itself to us with every waking moment.
To understand the revelation of creation, we need a tool. That tool is the Qur’an.
And to maintain the Divine revelation of the Qur’an, we also need a tool. That tool is the pen, plucked as it was, from creation.
