What Was the First Sura of the Qur'an Revealed?

Abstract. — The Muslim tradition ordinarily answers without hesitation the question of the first revelation: it would be the opening of Sūrat al-ʿAlaq, “Read, in the name of your Lord.” An examination of the sources shows, however, that the question is one of the most debated in the Qur’anic sciences (ʿulûm al-Qur’ân), not because the dominant answer would be fragile, but because the word “first” covers several realities. This article distinguishes the senses of the term, sets out the majority opinion and its foundations, examines the competing views, presents the classical art of reconciliation, gauges the actual degree of certainty, and then confronts the whole with the perspective of Western historical criticism.

1. An equivocal term: what does “first revealed” mean?

The apparent contradiction among the sources dissolves as soon as one distinguishes the senses of the word “first” (awwal). The classical treatises identify four of them¹:

the first passage revealed in an absolute sense, which inaugurates prophethood;
the first complete sura, sent down all at once;
the first passage revealed after the interruption of revelation (fatrat al-wahy), which inaugurates the public mission;
the first verse placed at the head of a sura.

This grid is not a late harmonizing artifice: it literally structures the chapters that al-Zarkashî and al-Suyûtî devote to the question². Most of the “divergences” one believes one reads among the hadiths in fact resolve themselves as soon as one specifies which “first” is being spoken of.

2. The dominant opinion: the incipit of Sūrat al-ʿAlaq

The view held to be the best established identifies the first passage revealed with the first five verses of Sūrat al-ʿAlaq (96): “Read, in the name of your Lord who created…”

2.1. The foundation: the report of ʿÂ’isha

Its bedrock is the hadith of ʿÂ’isha on the beginning of the revelation: the truthful dreams (al-ru’yâ al-sâdiqa), the spiritual retreat in the cave of Hirâ’, the angel who commands “Iqra'” (“Read”) three times while pressing the Prophet against him, and finally the sending down of “Read, in the name of your Lord.” This hadith opens al-Bukhârî’s Sahîh, in the very first book, the Kitâb Bad’ al-Wahy (“The Beginning of the Revelation”), and likewise appears in Muslim³. It is therefore muttafaq ʿalayh — reported by the two most rigorous collections — which places it at the summit of the scale of authenticity. Its opening formula is explicit as to the inaugural character of the scene: “The first manner in which revelation began for the Messenger of God was the truthful dream”⁴.

It will be noted, for the sake of exactness, that ʿÂ’isha reports an event she did not herself experience: she holds it from the Prophet himself or from a Companion. The chain of transmission (isnād) is irreproachable, but the testimony is, strictly speaking, mediate.

2.2. The corroboration of the lists of the order of revelation

Two traditional lists of the order of sending down (tartîb al-nuzûl), reported notably by al-Suyûtî, converge upon the same conclusion: one attributed to Ibn ʿAbbâs, the other to the Successor Jâbir b. Zayd, both begin with al-ʿAlaq⁵. Their probative value must, however, be weighed: these are statements of Companions or Successors (mawqûf), belonging to the interpretive effort of the first generations, and not an authenticated prophetic pronouncement.

2.3. The verdict of the specialists

On this point, the agreement of the great authors of ʿulûm al-Qur’ân is remarkable. For al-Suyûtî, of the four recorded views, “the first — and it is the correct one (al-sahîh) — is: Read”⁶. For al-Zarkashî, al-ʿAlaq constitutes “the most firmly established of the views” (athbat al-aqâwîl)⁷. For al-Zarqânî, finally, it is “the most authentic” (asahhuhâ)⁸.

3. The competing opinions and their actual import

Three other views have been maintained. None, on analysis, overturns the first.

3.1. Sūrat al-Muddaththir (74)

The most serious objection rests on another sahîh hadith, that of Jâbir b. ʿAbd Allâh, who, questioned about the first revealed, answers: “O you who are wrapped in a cloak” (al-Muddaththir)⁹. But the report qualifies itself: in al-Bukhârî’s version (no. 4925), the Prophet there speaks expressly of “the interruption of the revelation” (fatrat al-wahy) and there recognizes “the angel who had [already] come to me at Hirâ’,” seated on a throne between heaven and earth¹⁰. The mention of a prior coming establishes that the al-Muddaththir episode is subsequent to that of al-ʿAlaq. Read in full, the hadith of Jâbir therefore confirms the chronology of ʿÂ’isha rather than contradicting it.

Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalânî explains the origin of the misunderstanding: the version transmitted by Yahyâ b. Abî Kathîr — the one that al-Bukhârî places in the Qur’anic commentary — is deprived of these two chronological indications; thus truncated, it could give the impression of the priority of al-Muddaththir¹¹. He insists, and the precision is important, on the fact that no error may be imputed to Jâbir: his statement bore specifically on the resumption of revelation after the fatra.

3.2. Sūrat al-Fâtiha (1)

A third view makes the Fâtiha the first sura revealed. Its support is a tradition reported by al-Bayhaqî in his Dalâ’il al-nubuwwa, attached to the account of Waraqa b. Nawfal. Now this tradition is mursal (its chain is broken) and was judged gharîb (anomalous) by Ibn Kathîr¹². It cannot therefore ground the absolute priority of the Fâtiha. It is understood in another sense, perfectly compatible with the dominant view: the Fâtiha would be the first sura sent down in its entirety, all at once, whereas of al-ʿAlaq and al-Muddaththir only the first verses came down at first¹³.

3.3. The basmala

A final view counts “In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Most Merciful” as the first verse. al-Suyûtî rejects it as an autonomous opinion: the basmala does not constitute a separate revelation, but precisely heads the beginning of al-ʿAlaq¹⁴. One will take care not to confuse it with the preceding view: the “Fâtiha first” tradition (the account of Waraqa) and the “basmala first” tradition (transmitted by Abû Maysara) are two distinct mursal reports, often wrongly conflated.

4. To reconcile or to adjudicate: two scholarly methods

Faced with these data, the scholars followed two paths. The first is reconciliation (al-jamʿ): the views would all be true, but in different senses. Its canonical formulation goes back to the judge al-Bâqillânî and was taken up word for word by al-Zarkashî: “The first revealed among the verses is ‘Read, in the name of your Lord’; the first among the commands of preaching is ‘O you who are wrapped in a cloak’; and the first among the [complete] suras is the Fâtiha”¹⁵. al-Suyûtî offers the most memorable variant of it: first revealed for prophethood (nubuwwa), al-ʿAlaq; first revealed for the message (risâla), al-Muddaththir¹⁶.

The second path is weighing (al-tarjîh). al-Zarqânî, for example, does not reconcile: he adjudicates in favor of al-ʿAlaq and refutes the other views one after another, regarding Jâbir’s answer as a personal ijtihâd that yields before the explicit text of ʿÂ’isha¹⁷. The two methods, as can be seen, converge upon the same conclusion.

5. What degree of certainty?

It is fitting to distinguish two planes. What is virtually certain: that the first verses of al-ʿAlaq constitute the first passage revealed. This proposition rests on a muttafaq ʿalayh hadith, on a near-consensus of the specialists, and on the convergence of the lists of the order of revelation. One may speak here of a practical certainty solidly established.

What remains open: the precise order of the revelation. No authentic prophetic fixing (tawqîf sahîh) settles the exact succession of the suras¹⁸. The lists of tartîb al-nuzûl belong to the mawqûf and moreover diverge on the sequel (the place of the Fâtiha, of Sūrat al-Masad, etc.). In short: the dominant view is firm as to which passage was the first, much looser as to the overall order. And the “competing” views are not, at bottom, genuine rivals: they are answers to distinct questions.

6. The light shed by Western historical criticism

It is a remarkable fact that academic Islamic studies arrive, as to the result, at the same point of departure as the tradition: the chronology of Theodor Nöldeke, like the official Cairo edition (1924), both open the revelation with sura 96¹⁹. The status of this affirmation differs, however, entirely.

Nöldeke, in his Geschichte des Qorâns (1860, recast by Schwally), laid down the framework still standard today: three Meccan periods followed by a Medinan period, established on stylistic criteria (length of verses, type of rhyme, register). He opens his first Meccan period with al-ʿAlaq, following in this the tradition of Iqra’, but while presenting his classification as tentative and revisable²⁰.

Bell and Watt go further in their scepticism. Setting the two candidates against each other — sura 96, which begins with “Read,” and sura 74, which bears “Arise and warn” — they conclude that “In fact neither of these may be the first extant revelation, and the stories may be only the guesses of later Muslim scholars, since there are grounds for selecting each as first.”²¹ Blachère, who acclimatized the German chronology in French, displayed the same prudence: one can establish large masses (early Meccan, late Meccan, Medinan), but the fine order remains beyond reach — whence the word essai (“attempt”) at the threshold of his reclassification²². The contemporary Berlin school, around Angelika Neuwirth and the Corpus Coranicum project, retains Nöldeke’s framework while detaching it from the prophetic biography: it dates textual forms and a communal development, not episodes of the sîra²³. At the extreme, finally, the revisionist current (Wansbrough, Crone) holds the whole exegetical literature to be a late construction and regards the quest for “the first sura” as a spurious historiographical problem²⁴.

One point deserves to be emphasized, for it brings the two reading traditions closer together. The academics observe that sura 96 divides clearly into two blocks: verses 1–5 (the incipit “Read”) and verses 6–19 (the polemic against an opponent who prevents a servant from praying, identified by the exegesis with Abû Jahl). They infer from this two moments of composition, only verses 1–5 being able to lay claim to the greatest antiquity. Now this is exactly what Fakhr al-Dîn al-Râzî already envisaged, for whom “it may be that five verses from the beginning of the sura were sent down first, then the rest afterward concerning Abû Jahl”²⁵. On the two-stage composition of the sura, classical exegesis and modern criticism meet.

Conclusion

The first passage revealed of the Qur’an is, according to the best-established opinion of the tradition as well as according to the point of departure of criticism, the opening of Sūrat al-ʿAlaq: “Read, in the name of your Lord.” This conclusion rests on a hadith of the first rank and on a broad agreement of the scholars. The competing views — al-Muddaththir, the Fâtiha, the basmala — do not genuinely contradict it: they answer other questions (the first after the interruption, the first complete sura, the first heading). The certainty is therefore strong regarding the inaugural passage, but graduated: the overall order of the revelation, for its part, escapes any authenticated fixing, and it is precisely this zone of obscurity that Western historical criticism, from Nöldeke to Neuwirth, has chosen to explore with its own instruments.

Notes and references

On the four senses, see al-Suyûtî, al-Itqân fî ʿulûm al-Qur’ân, type (nawʿ) 7, “On the knowledge of the first and the last revealed”; al-Zarkashî, al-Burhân fî ʿulûm al-Qur’ân, type 10. ↩
al-Zarkashî, al-Burhân, vol. I; al-Suyûtî, al-Itqân, nawʿ 7. ↩
al-Bukhârî, Sahîh, Kitâb Bad’ al-Wahy, no. 3; Muslim, Sahîh, Kitâb al-Îmân, no. 160. ↩
“Kâna awwalu mâ budi’a bihi Rasûlu-Llâh… mina-l-wahyi al-ru’yâ al-sâdiqa” (Muslim, no. 160). ↩
al-Suyûtî, al-Itqân, nawʿ 7: list of Ibn ʿAbbâs (transmitted via ʿIkrima and al-Kalbî) and list of Jâbir b. Zayd, both opened by al-ʿAlaq. ↩
al-Suyûtî, al-Itqân, nawʿ 7: “ahaduhâ, wa huwa al-sahîh: iqra’ bismi rabbik”. ↩
al-Zarkashî, al-Burhân, type 10. ↩
al-Zarqânî, Manâhil al-ʿirfân fî ʿulûm al-Qur’ân, vol. I, chapter of the first and the last revealed. ↩
al-Bukhârî, Sahîh, no. 4922 (and 4925–4926), Kitâb al-Tafsîr; Muslim, Sahîh, no. 161. ↩
al-Bukhârî, Sahîh, no. 4925: “…wa huwa yuhaddithu ʿan fatrati al-wahy… fa-idhâ al-malaku alladhî jâ’anî bi-Hirâ’ jâlisun ʿalâ kursiyyin bayna al-samâ’i wa-l-ard”. ↩
Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalânî, Fath al-Bârî bi-sharh Sahîh al-Bukhârî, commentary on the suras al-ʿAlaq (96) and al-Muddaththir (74). ↩
al-Bayhaqî, Dalâ’il al-nubuwwa; Ibn Kathîr, Tafsîr and al-Bidâya wa-l-nihâya, qualifying the tradition as mursal and noting its gharâba. ↩
This is the sense retained by al-Zarkashî and, after him, by most of the commentators: the Fâtiha as the first sura revealed in its entirety. ↩
al-Suyûtî, al-Itqân, nawʿ 7: the basmala is not “a view in its own right,” being the first âya sent down at the head of al-ʿAlaq. ↩
al-Bâqillânî, al-Intisâr li-l-Qur’ân, cited and adopted by al-Zarkashî, al-Burhân, type 10. ↩
al-Suyûtî, al-Itqân, nawʿ 7: “awwalu mâ nazala li-l-nubuwwa: iqra’; wa awwalu mâ nazala li-l-risâla: yâ ayyuhâ al-muddaththir”. ↩
al-Zarqânî, Manâhil al-ʿirfân, vol. I: successive refutation of the views and tarjîh in favor of al-ʿAlaq. ↩
On the absence of tawqîf sahîh concerning the exact order of the suras, see the synthesis of IslamQA, fatwā no. 221099. ↩
The Cairo Edition (the muṣḥaf of King Fu’âd, Cairo, 1924), whose order of revelation opens with sura 96; compare with Th. Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorâns. ↩
Th. Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorâns, Göttingen, 1860; 2nd ed. recast by F. Schwally, 1909–1919; Eng. trans. W. Behn, The History of the Qur’ān, Leiden, Brill, 2013. ↩
R. Bell & W. M. Watt, Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’ān, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1970, chap. 7 (“The Chronology of the Qur’ān”). ↩
R. Blachère, Introduction au Coran, Paris, 1947; and Le Coran. Traduction selon un essai de reclassement des sourates, 3 vols., 1947–1951. ↩
A. Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike (2010), Eng. trans. The Qur’an and Late Antiquity; Corpus Coranicum project, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. ↩
J. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, Oxford, 1977; P. Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, 1987. ↩
Fakhr al-Dîn al-Râzî, Mafâtîh al-ghayb (al-Tafsîr al-kabîr), commentary on Sūrat al-ʿAlaq. ↩

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