Muhammad Receives His First Revelation on Mount Hira
According to Islamic tradition, the angel Gabriel appears to a 40-year-old Meccan merchant in a cave
Quick facts
- Location
- Cave of Hira, Jabal al-Nour, near Mecca
- Muhammad's age
- About 40
- First convert
- Khadija, Muhammad's wife
- First male convert
- Abu Bakr
What happened
By his late thirties, Muhammad had taken to retreating to a cave called Hira on Jabal al-Nour, a mountain near Mecca. According to Islamic tradition, in about 610 CE a figure identifying itself as the angel Gabriel appeared to him there with the first verses of what Muslims believe is a revelation from God. Muhammad was reportedly terrified and ran home shaking, and it was his wife Khadija who calmed him and took him to her cousin Waraqa, a Christian scholar who told Muhammad he believed he had received a genuine prophetic call. Khadija became his first convert, and his close friend Abu Bakr became the first male convert.
Why it matters
This event is the traditional starting point of Muhammad's prophetic career and, by extension, of Islam as a religious movement. Everything that follows, from the years of preaching in Mecca to the founding of a new community in Medina, is presented in Islamic tradition as flowing from this single episode.
How we know
The account rests entirely on the Islamic biographical and hadith tradition compiled decades after Muhammad's death; there is no independent contemporary record of the event, so its precise date and details are matters of religious tradition rather than external historical verification.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Prophet Muhammad · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Prophet Muhammad · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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