In Praise of Imam Ali – From Qur'an and Hadeeth(3)
(Collected from a number of books and websites, presented by Syed-Mohsin Naquvi)
اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ
خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ مِنْ عَلَقٍ
اقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ الْأَكْرَمُ
الَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِالْقَلَمِ
عَلَّمَ الْإِنسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ
Read in the name of the Lord who created, He created man from ALAQ, Read, because your Lord is generous, who taught by the pen, He taught man what he did not know.
(Q.96:1-5)
This is the story of the very first revelation to the Prophet.
The word ALAQ has been translated as a "a clot of blood,' but it means much more, which we can explain elsewhere.
Anyway, these five verses were the earliest revelation, that came to Prophet on the "Night of Power" or the "Blessed Night" in the month of Ramadan (the ninth month of the Islamic calendar) of the 40th year of the Elephant. They are at the beginning of the 96th chapter of Al-Qur'an. The name of the chapter is Iqraa (Read) or 'Alaq (the Clot of Congealed Blood).
The Night of Power or the Blessed Night occurs, according to tradition, during the last ten days of the month of Ramadan, and could be the 21st or 23rd or 25th or 27th of the month.
In their respective accounts of the reception by Muhammad of the First Revelation, the Sunni and the Shia Muslims are not in agreement. According to the Sunni tradition, the appearance of Gabriel startled Muhammad, and when the Angel ordered him to read, he said, "I cannot read." This happened three times, and each time when Muhammad declared his inability to read, the angel pressed him hard to his bosom. Eventually, he was able to repeat the five verses whereupon the angel released him and disappeared and so on. It is also reported that the Prophet was so scared by his mission that he contemplated suicide, it was only after Khadeeja gave him courage that he recovered from that thought.
As opposed to that, according to the Shia Muslims accounts, Muhammad, far from being surprised or frightened by the appearance of Gabriel, welcomed him as if he had been expecting him. Gabriel brought the tidings that Allah had chosen him to be His Last Messenger to Mankind, and congratulated him on being selected to become the recipient of the greatest of all honors for a mortal in this world.
Muhammad had no hesitation in accepting the mission of prophethood nor did he have any difficulty in repeating the verses of the First Revelation. He read them or repeated them effortlessly, spontaneously. Gabriel, in fact, was no stranger to him, and he also knew that his own raison d'être was to carry out the mission imposed upon him by God as His Messenger. He was "mission-oriented" even before Gabriel's visit. Gabriel only gave him the signal to begin.
The Shia Muslims also say that one thing that Gabriel didn't have to do, was to apply physical pressure on Muhammad to read. If he did, it would truly be a bizarre mode of imparting to Muhammad the ability to read – by squeezing him or choking him. They further maintain that Muhammad did not contemplate suicide at any time in his life, not even in its most desolate moments; and that it never occurred to him that he could ever be touched by "evil" or that he could be "corrupted" or "polluted."
. That actually is confirmed by the first 17 verses of Sura Najm, Chapter 53 of holy Qur'an.
Imam Ali records this event in Nahjul-Balagah in one of his sermons known as Khutba Qaase'ah ( خطبۂ قاصعہ). This is a long sermon, in some copies of Nahjul Balagha it is sermon #192 and in some other versions, it is sermon #234. It is just a difference between the way various commentators have organized the book, it is exactly the same Arabic text in both versions. It is a long text and I believe it is a collection of various different sermons, because very diverse topics have been discussed in it. The portion of the long text that is relevant here is the one where Imam Ali talks about his close relationship with the Prophet of Islam and how kindly and carefully, he himself was raised by the Prophet and lady Kahdeeja from very early childhood. In that Imam Ali shares his experience of the revelation of the first WAHY to the Prophet of Islam.
We will, insha Allah, present that text in the next posting in this series.
It is also recorded that with the first revelation or, soon after that, the Prophet received the command to establish five times prayer and he began performing those prayers at the set times.
An interesting story is found in SEERA records about that. The story is quoted here from Ibn Is-haaq's SEERA:
From Yahya b. al-Ash'ath b. Qays al-Kindi from his father, from his grandfather Afiif: Al-Abbas b. Abdul Muttalib was a friend of mine who used to go often to the Yaman to buy aromatics and sell them during the fairs. While I was with him in Mina, there came a man in the prime of life and performed the full rites of ablution and then stood up and prayed. Then a woman came out and did her ablution and stood up and prayed. Then out came a youth just approaching manhood, did his ablutions, then stood up and prayed by his side. When I asked Al-Abbas what was going on, and he said that it was his nephew Muhammad b. Abdullah b. Abdul Muttalib, who alleges that Allah has sent him as an Apostle; the other is my brother's son, Ali ibn Abi Talib, who has followed him in his religion; the third is his wife, Khadija daughter of Khuwaylid who also follows him in his religion. Afiif said after he had become a Muslim and Islam firmly established in his heart, 'Would that I had been a fourth.!' (The Life of the Messenger of God)
The story is also found in Ibn Jareer Tabari's Tareekh ar-Rusul wal Mulook.
This confirms a great glory for Imam Ali, exclusively. He is one of the first two who performed the five-times-a-day prescribed Islamic acts of worship with the Prophet of Islam, the second one being lady Khadeeja.
This is one of those exclusive glories of Imam Ali, to which no other Companion of the Prophet can assert a claim and none have done it – even the later apologists among historians and Muhaddetheen have not had the courage to fabricate anything like that – and our readers are fully aware that there is a truckload of fabricated reports floating around in the Islamic literature.
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