Khadījah and Waraqah

At this point the Prophet (peace be upon him) was concerned. He did not know what was happening to him. He went down to his wife and explained to her what had happened, and his wife comforted him — Khadījah al-Kubrā. She was an older woman, and her uncle^* had been an Arab who converted to Christianity, so she was familiar with revelation. She said to him: you are a good person; you take care of the orphan, you take care of the widows, you take care of the needy, and I do not think something bad would happen to you like this. This was because he thought that this might be some kind of evil spirit or something. He really did feel that.

She takes him to her uncle, Waraqah ibn Nawfal, who had some knowledge of previous books, and he says a very interesting thing. He said: this is the nāmūs. For people who know Greek, nāmūs comes from nomos, and nomos means the law. So, in other words, he was saying: this is the nāmūs that came to Mūsā. In other words: you are being given a revelation. That is what this is. And he told him that his people, when they found this out, would become his enemies and drive him from this city. And he said: would they do that? — because he had never done anything wrong to them before that. And Waraqah said: they will do that; and I wish that I were a young man, that I might be by your side doing this.

During the next period of time, he begins to receive these revelations. The next one was yā ayyuhā al-muzzammil — O you wrapped up — because he used to wrap himself when he would meditate, wrapped in a cloak:

And these revelations begin to come with a regularity.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), in a description, said that sometimes the revelation came like a bell, like the ringing of a bell. In other words, it began as a vibration, and then it would move into letters, and then into the actual words. And it is interesting, because there is a group of letters with which many of the chapters of the Qurʾān begin. Nineteen chapters in the Qurʾān begin with these letters; they are called al-muqaṭṭaʿāt. If they are heard recited, one can hear the vibratory force there. And this is how some of these revelations were beginning: literally like a vibration, moving into the material world from another realm, according to the Muslim tradition.