Mission Begins

The Messenger of Allah was alone in the Cave of Hira on the day destined for the start of his prophetic mission. He was forty-one years old and it was the seventeenth day of Ramadan, the sixth of August 610 C.E.

Suddenly an angel appeared and said to him, ‘Read!’

‘I cannot read’, he replied.

"Read in the name of your Lord Who created, created man of a blood-clot. Read, and your Lord is the Most Generous, Who taught by the Pen, taught man what he did not know."

This was the first day of his Prophethood and these were the first verses of the Qur’an to be revealed.