“The revelation was a fit, or a possession”

The objection

“The revelation was a fit, or a possession.”

It too draws on the Muslim sources. The Prophet ﷺ comes back from Hira, his heart trembling, to Khadija (Bukhari 3). According to an account of Urwa, he had told her before this: “I see a light, I hear a voice; I feared I was a soothsayer” (al-Salihi, II, 229). After the first descent, the revelation pauses (Bukhari 4), and an addition to the account then speaks of his grief and of the mountain peaks (Bukhari 6982).

His adversaries in Mecca were already saying it: a soothsayer, a man possessed (52:29; 68:2). An overwhelming experience, a fear, a voice: why see in it an angel rather than a fit?

The answer

The Qur’an reports the accusation and asks that it be examined

The Qur’an does not merely deny. It proposes a test, and the test bears on the man the Meccans knew:

The man Mecca knew

Before the mission, his people called him ﷺ al-Amin, “the trustworthy”: “his name among his people was none other than al-Amin” (Ibn Hisham, I, 183; I, 198). According to several accounts, the clans of Quraysh, in dispute over who would put back the Black Stone, some of them bound unto death by an oath of blood, agreed to abide by the first man to come in, which Ibn Ishaq introduces with “some of the transmitters claimed”; it was he: “here is al-Amin, we accept him” (Ibn Hisham, I, 196-197). And when he called them from the top of al-Safa, they answered him: “we have never found anything in you but the truth” (Bukhari 4770).

It is to this man, who had lived forty years among them (Ibn Hisham, I, 233), that the Qur’an points: “your companion” (34:46).

What came out of Hira

The account of al-Bukhari is sober: the true dreams, “like the break of dawn”, the love of seclusion, the angel commanding “Read”, then the return to Khadija, his heart trembling (Bukhari 3). What comes down that day is neither a cry nor a lament, but a text, of which al-Bukhari quotes the first three verses and Ibn Ishaq the first five (Bukhari 3; Ibn Hisham, I, 236):

There follows a message sustained for thirteen years in Mecca, according to the view Ibn Kathir holds to be the soundest, and ten in Medina (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, II, 290; Bukhari 3903). It foretells what no one could know: the victory of the Romans “within a few years” (30:2-4), the death of Abu Lahab in unbelief (sura 111), both fulfilled (research file v1, part 4). A fit does not produce a prophecy that comes true.

A revelation that answers, in its own time

The revelation does not come when he wants it, and it does not come at random: it answers, in its own time. It pauses after the first descent, until the first verses of sura 74 (Bukhari 4). In the affair of the slander against Aisha, his wife, he ﷺ waits a month with nothing revealed to him about her (research file v1, part 4), and then come the verses that answer it (24:11; Ibn Hisham, II, 303).

He ﷺ also distinguishes what is revealed to him from his own opinion. About the pollination of the palm trees, he says: “you know better the affairs of your world” (Muslim 2363; research file v1, part 4). A man possessed by a foreign voice does not draw that line.

What the objection gets right

The first revelation shook him. He comes back, his heart trembling (Bukhari 3). The tradition does not hide this fear, and it tells rather against the objection: an account forged to exalt the Prophet ﷺ would have erased this trembling.

The fear of being a soothsayer comes from an account of Urwa transmitted without the Companion who witnessed it (al-Salihi, II, 229): we give it for what it is worth. At most it shows a man questioning what is happening to him, before Waraqa, a Christian who copied passages of the Gospel, recognises in it “the Namus that God sent down upon Moses” (Bukhari 3; research file v1, part 2).

The grief and the mountain peaks are not part of the account of Aisha. The passage is in al-Bukhari, but al-Zuhri introduces it with “according to what has reached us”, which sets it apart from the account before it (Bukhari 6982; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 386; al-Salihi, II, 271). We point it out; it cannot carry a thesis.

Further reading

• The account of Hira and the pause in the revelation: The revelation and the first believers.
• Al-Amin and the Black Stone: Khadija, the Ka’ba and al-Amin, up to Hira.
• The features of his person ﷺ: The testimony of his person.
• A related objection: “He was sincere, but he was mistaken”.
• All the objections: Objections answered.

Sources for this page

• Qur’an: Tanzil text (Uthmani); translation of the meaning by this site.
• The first revelation and Waraqa: Bukhari 3.
• The pause in the revelation: Bukhari 4; the addition of al-Zuhri: Bukhari 6982.
• Al-Safa: Bukhari 4770.
• Thirteen years in Mecca: Bukhari 3903.
• The pollination of the palm trees: Muslim 2363.
• Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-nabawiyya, ed. al-Saqqa, al-Abyari and Shalabi, al-Babi al-Halabi, Cairo, 2nd ed., 1955, I, 183, 196-198, 233, 236; II, 303.
• Ibn Kathir, al-Sira al-nabawiyya, ed. Mustafa Abd al-Wahid, Dar al-Ma’rifa, Beirut, 1976, I, 386; II, 290.
• Al-Salihi al-Shami, Subul al-huda wa-l-rashad, ed. Adil Abd al-Mawjud and Ali Mu’awwad, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, Beirut, 1993, II, 229, 271.
• Research file “Annonces du Prophète ﷺ”, v1.0, 14 October 2026, parts 2 and 4.