 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen Wa Salatu wa Salamu ala ashrafil anbiya'i wal mursaleen Nabiyyina Muhammad Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in I hope everyone is doing well, insha'Allah I hope everyone is doing well on this blessed night, masha'Allah of the day of Friday Today we're going to talk about a very exciting topic, a topic that's very dear to my heart and insha'Allah this will be the first of a series that we're planning to do all throughout the bay area and this is a lecture series focused on the Quran but from a different perspective than we're usually used to seeing this type of discussion A lot of times we learn about the Quran, we learn about the different parts of the Quran and we attend lectures related to the Quran and the focus is on the meaning of a particular surah a particular passage, a particular important ayah in the Quran but there's another aspect of the study of the Quran which is the study of what is the Quran and studying and understanding what is this Quran that I am meant to build a relationship with and part of the motivation of studying this science and we'll talk about it in a minute part of that motivation is when we're trying to build a relationship with a human being we try to learn as much as we can about that person yes there's also experiences we have with the people that we have around us, our friends, our family and those experiences shape us and mold us in many ways but part of building that relationship is also learning about that person what is that person like, what do they like, what do they dislike what are the things they enjoy, etc etc and so similarly the Quran which is the book of Allah SWT the word of Allah SWT deserves a similar type of attention from us so that we can be more intimately connected with the details of the Quran so inshallah today's talk we'll be focusing on two main things the first is understanding what do we mean when we say the Quran when we usually mention the Quran or I read some Quran yesterday there's a Quran class going on all of those times we kind of have an idea of what it is but if someone asks you, okay so what is it so that's kind of what we're going to talk about how do you define the Quran and the second part of the talk inshallah will be on revelation we talk about how the Quran has been revealed to us through the Prophet SAW but what does it mean for something to be revealed what is revelation what are the different types of revelation is the Quran the only type of revelation and what are the differences between the different types of revelation and then inshallah we'll go into a little bit on exactly how the Quran was revealed on the Prophet SAW over many many years and what were the different wisdoms and benefits that we can acquire from that so inshallah we'll get started with the first part of this presentation in which we'll talk about the definition of the Quran so how do we define something or someone say if I'm trying to define for example my friend Ahmed there are a couple of ways that I can define who he is one is I can say well his name is Ahmed this is how you point at him or if he's standing here I can be like oh this is Ahmed right so that's one way we can do that pointing at them the second is describing their characteristics their origins their background different facts about them like for example Ahmed likes to play soccer Ahmed likes to read stories Ahmed likes to go hiking etc etc he likes the color blue all these are different characteristics he's an engineer whatever it is all these different characteristics and descriptions of my friend and so that's another way that we can understand who a person is and define a person so how can we define the Quran because the way we as Muslims are told to approach the Quran is similar to how we approach another person so we'll take those same two approaches and define the Quran in two ways so the first one is the Quran is the book that is in front of me I don't have a Quran with me unfortunately but let's just imagine that this because it has a PDF of the Quran inside it this is the Quran and I'm holding it and I say this is the Quran it's what's between these two covers that is the Quran that's one way of defining it just as how I can point to my friend and say this is Ahmed the second way to define it is a more detailed description of exactly what the Quran is and it consists of six descriptions and these six descriptions together give you the very precise meaning of what the Quran is and there's nothing else that can be part of this definition nothing that's accidentally included because these six descriptions are very carefully chosen by the scholars so the definition goes number one it's the inimitable I can never say this word unfortunately inimitable speech of Allah SWT inimitable means something that cannot be copied it cannot be imitated it is un-imitatable essentially so that's the first character it's the speech of Allah SWT the second is that it is the speech of Allah SWT that was revealed upon the final prophet and messenger SWT through the archangel Jibril A.S so this second description differentiates the Quran from all of the previous scriptures that came to all the previous prophets number three that is written in the quote-unquote Masahif now Masahif is an interesting discussion and inshallah in the future we will have a dedicated talk on this topic as well but for our purposes here at the time of the prophet SAW as the Quran was being revealed to the people the prophet SAW would have scribes around him that were assigned to the role of writing the Quran down to make sure that it was preserved and as we'll see in a couple of slides as well there were two ways that the Quran was preserved number one was through memory so initially Jibril A.S brought the Quran down to the prophet SAW and he preserved it in his memory and then many of the companions around the prophet SAW heard the Quran from his blessed mouth they heard it and they memorized it as well so it was preserved in memory from heart to heart to heart until today that's one way the other way was through writing and that writing was standardized once and it was collected into one volume before it was different Sahaba who had I have one just here written I have one piece that I heard the prophet SAW reciting one time this is the one part that I recited to the prophet SAW so everyone had their own portions their own pieces that they had collected at the time of the prophet SAW they collected it all into one compilation one book that had the entire Quran from beginning to end then later on at the time of the third righteous caliph they decided that we need to now copy this one Mus'haf this one Quran, one written copy of the Quran into multiple copies that can each be sent to one of the big cities across the Muslim world because the Muslim Ummah is now very big people in every single region need one copy that they can keep going back to so they can know that they are reading the Quran correctly that there are no mistakes that are creeping in because obviously memory is very very important and it's like the first way of preserving the Quran but as human beings our memory isn't perfect so we will have lapses, we might forget and there might be a disagreement between two people on what the right way was and so there is a written copy in every one of the major cities in the Muslim world including Makkah, Medina two cities in Iraq, Kufa and Basra and then also in Syria so the Quran that was revealed on the Prophet and was written and preserved in the Mus'hafs, in the Mas'ahif these written copies of the Quran that was then mass transmitted to us from the Prophet to us today and so this is addressing now the other aspect of preservation through memory, through the hearts but if I heard something from my friend and then I go and tell my neighbor that I heard such and such thing from my friend he can be like okay, sure that's nice and he's like okay so what did I tell him it's like oh I told him that my house was on fire and so he's like oh okay interesting, that's really sad to hear and there could be a chance that I'm lying I'm making something up some kind of distortion has entered in and so the message as we've seen also in the game of telephone that we play as children you have one message and it goes around around and by the end of it unintentionally the message has kind of distorted to something completely different so to preserve the Quran through memory what happened is that there were so many people in the companions that had heard the Quran from the Prophet that when the next generation came and they heard the entire Quran from one companion then from another companion then from another companion so many companions I hear the Quran from at this point there's no doubt in my mind that this is exactly how the Prophet says to them recite the Quran if one person recited it to me there's like a little bit of a chance that they might have forgotten something but if 20 people recited it to me exactly the same way then I'm 100% sure that this is exactly how it was and similarly in the case of for example there was a fire in my neighborhood one person tells me that I'm like okay maybe this person is making it up then I'm walking down the street another person tells me the same thing I walk down the street a third person tells me the same thing and they're all different people who don't know each other at the end of this interaction with three people I am 100% sure this was a fact that happened there was a house that burned in our neighborhood and so that's what the expression of the Quran was like as well it was mass transmitted and the word in Arabic for this is مطاواتر number 5 its recitation is a means of worship and this is a unique virtue that is given to the Quran and to no other text because it's the speech of Allah just the single act of reading the Quran has a reward as the Hadith of the Prophet says every single word that you read in the Quran has 10 rewards for it and then he says I'm not saying that alif lamim is one word in this context but rather for alif you will get the 10 rewards for lam you will get the 10 rewards and for mim you will get the 10 rewards but what is the most significant part of this entire narration is the example that the Prophet s.a.w. chose he chose alif lamim that is something that nobody knows for sure what it means the scholars have tried and attempted to say maybe it could mean this but at the end of the day they say Allah knows best these words that happened at the beginning of the different surahs alif lamim all of these broken disjointed letters that we pronounce no scholar in the entire history of Islam has been able to say 100% sure I know what this means and that is the example that the Prophet s.a.w. chooses here because it is not connected to the meaning in and of itself the word of the Quran has reward in it is a means of worship it is a means of us getting closer to Allah that does not mean at all that the meaning is not important of course the meaning is the most important because at the end of the day the Quran's main purpose is a book of guidance it's a book of principles that can take us through this difficult life but that's important but that does not diminish the fact that every single word that we utter with our mouths of this Quran gives us reward and has a blessing for us in ways that we cannot even imagine and that is not true for any other book in this world and the last description here about what the Quran is is that it begins with surah al-Fatiha and ends with surah al-Nas and this just gives us sort of like the beginning and end just the limits of what the Quran is so after having understood what the Quran is the next discussion is what are the names of the Quran because something that we will realize when we start reading the Quran and we start looking at translations of the Quran is that the Quran is unique in an aspect that is very very rare to find the Quran references itself it talks about its own truth it talks about it being the guiding light for people and that's a very self-referential characteristic that the Quran has and it almost makes it feel like it's a real person a person that you can have a communication with you can have a relationship with because as a person I can talk about myself I can tell you who I am I can tell you what I do the Quran also tells us what it is it tells us what its purpose is its purpose is guidance in the Quran and this Quran surely this Quran leads to that which is most upright and so the discussion on the names of the Quran is kind of unique because one of the things that we kind of don't have in our culture today is a lot of titles but some people might be familiar with this from other cultures that they might be familiar with where there's this habit that people have important people, dignitaries they will have like 15 titles you'll hear his highness the most powerful the this, the ruler of the the seven seas and the custodian of the whatever and the this and that 15 different titles for a person what's the point of those titles you saying those titles is not making that person any better it's not giving them more power or anything like that but the point of mentioning all those names is the number and the status of that person you are expressing this person in so many different ways to give us different ways of appreciating who this person is similarly for the Quran there are many many names so the names fall under two different categories the first are proper names the names that the Quran uses itself to refer to itself the first one is the Quran the second one is the Kitab these two are the main ones and these two words in their meaning there is sort of two layers that we can appreciate at the base layer both the word Quran and the word Kitab mean something that is compiled essentially a book so they're both referring to a book but at a deeper level Quran refers to a book that is recited and Kitab refers to a book that is written and these two words being used within the Quran to refer to itself is a strong indication to us an indication to the fact that this is going to be how the Quran will be preserved through these two mechanisms it's a book that will both be preserved through writing and through reading through memory that's one of the really fascinating aspects of the names of the Quran there are other names as well like Al Furqan which means the criterion because the Quran is the criterion that tells us what is right and what is wrong it's our moral compass it's our ethical guide in this world we go back to the Quran to get the principles with which we can live our life that is Al Furqan now the second category of names of the Quran there are many of them here Shifa Shifa is a cure Allah says in the Quran and it is a cure for what is in the hearts what is in the chests and there are many verses in which he refers to the Quran as Shifa as a cure and the scholars have practiced on this throughout the generations in that whenever there is a sick person they recite Quran next to them frequently hoping for the blessings of the Quran to help this person in their reflection and then there are specific suras that are also recited in front of the sick person in front of the person who is passing away to give them ease to give them a little bit more mercy from Allah SWT the second description is Rahma the Quran is a mercy and there is no denying it every single principle every single thing we learn from the Quran is a mercy not only for us but for everyone around us and the more we engage with the Quran the more we will start to embody this principle of mercy within our own lives because it is a description of my friend eventually I will start to adopt the characteristics of my friend so if I become a friend of the Quran then this mercy will become part of who I am and there are many other descriptions as well inshallah for those who are interested through the Quran whether in translation or in Arabic and just like looking at how is the Quran described by Allah SWT is a very fruitful exercise may Allah SWT grant us understanding as I mentioned earlier the Quran is self-referential and this is important for us in building our relationship with it the more we understand about the characteristics of the Quran the better we will be able to build our relationship with it so the first section was a little bit shorter understanding what the Quran is the different names of the Quran now the second part of this discussion inshallah will be a little bit more detailed and this is going to be about the revelation of the Quran we said in our definition earlier that the Quran is the word of Allah but how does the word of Allah Allah who is not bound by a time or space Allah who is beyond all of creation how did Allah SWT send this word to us the creation who live in time and space who live in this physical world so we'll start off by discussing what is revelation we've mentioned this word a couple of times already but what exactly does this word mean in Arabic the word is wahi now the scholars they are very particular and very precise in how they discuss terminology how they discuss topics they'll start off by discussing how did the Arabs at the time of the Prophet before Islam what was their usage of this word how did they use it generally speaking because a lot of times what happens is that the Quran and the Prophet and our religion when it came down on this culture the society it took terms and words and concepts that they had in their society and it modified them a little the concepts that the scholars bring up a lot which is that Islam does not come to destroy cultures it does not come to destroy societal norms it comes to modify them it comes to remove the harmful aspects of them and it corrects it to the right path to the path which is more beneficial for people so what is the original definition the original meaning of the word wahi so there's two meanings here one is the meaning of an indication and the other is the meaning of teaching in a subtle way and this meaning is something we're going to see coming up in that more technical definition the way is defined in our religion in our Islamic sciences because when Allah swt revealed the Quran to the Prophet everyone else on the earth couldn't see this revelation happening to the Prophet those who were right around him could see the effects of it on the Prophet but the actual instruction teaching that was happening the words that were coming from Allah nobody could see them happening there was no physical book that was coming to the Prophet so it was in a very subtle way and it was an indication to the Prophet what is the right way to proceed what are the words to say at this occasion what are the words of Allah swt pertaining to this matter so the technical definition of wahi is when Allah swt is among His prophets any certain manner about their prophethood now that just sounds like a lot of words repeated one after the other but the whole idea is before the Prophet swt became a prophet he was a regular human being living on earth interacting with people going to the market doing his work interacting with his family all of those things his status from a regular human being to a prophet that thing that happens is revelation it is a connection between this physical finite world and Allah swt who is infinite and beyond the physical world once that connection happens the first time now this person is called a prophet and that prophethood begins with revelation and that's all that's saying and then afterwards as after this person then for the remainder of their time Allah swt will inform them of the things related to being a prophet for example what are the commands what are the prohibitions what are the things that you need to tell your people that they are doing wrong what are the things they are doing right and what are the things they are doing wrong so that is revelation it's a means of communication between the divine and this world so the Prophet swt just like every other previous prophet was the connection was the almost you can almost say the means of communication between us and Allah swt and they were chosen for this task and at this point there's a very interesting quote when I was preparing for this talk I wasn't sure exactly where to put it there were several places that this could have gone and so Al-Hassan al-Basri who is one of the pious predecessors of our Ummah one of the greatest scholars to have ever lived in this Ummah and who was also one of the greatest khatibs and orators who have ever lived and his speeches have been preserved for us to this day he said those before you would see the Quran as letters from their Lord they would spend their nights pondering over them and they would spend their days missing them and the reason why I thought to include it on this website on this slide was because we had just talked about the Prophet swt being this means of communication between Allah swt and us now I want us to take this to our own context you have a very good friend a best friend somebody who you've been friends with for many years you have a phone on which you text them you talk to them but in the daytime you have to go to work they have to go to work they have to get busy with their life you get busy with your life during the daytime so you spend your day you're like I can't wait to message my friend call my friend talk to them later on it's just a really good time whenever I'm interacting with them and similarly to the Prophet swt one of his main goals one of his main missions was to connect us to our creator the one who brought us into existence and so one of the scholars that I was I can't remember his name I happened to hear him discussing this exact quote from Hassan al-Basri and he was saying you can also look at this as their love letters from Allah swt to us because Allah swt loves us so much in every sentence in every aya of the Quran you feel the mercy and the love of Allah swt even the harshest of aya in the Quran when we think about it it's something that we need it's out of Allah's mercy that he gave us that harsh aya in that place in that context and that's part of the mercy and the love that is built into the message of Allah swt for this world and that's something we can't really say about any other book there can be the nicest book the most eloquent book written by a very righteous person but it will never compare with Allah swt because it is personalized to every single one of us every single person reads that same Quran and they get their own benefits from it they're reading the same meaning but it applies in their life in a different way and it just makes sense to them in a way that doesn't make sense to other people and that's why we see throughout the last 1400 years every generation scholars continue to write more and more commentaries on the Quran and if the meanings of the Quran were like limited or you know it was just like you get it, you move on, it's a simple meaning you're good you got an A then the first generation would have done that for us and that would be it but every next generation that came they built on the previous generation's work they expanded further they reflected even more on the concepts that are being discussed in this book and they realized that there are so many more wisdoms and secrets within those same words there's a saying that says do not end every single word they say that if you spend your entire life pondering over every single word of the Quran you can keep deriving more and more wisdoms and benefits out of it may Allah SWT allow us to do that so we've understood what the revelation is that it's a communication between Allah SWT and an individual who becomes the prophet who has granted the status of prophethood now what are the different types of revelation and is the Quran the only type of revelation because we talked about the Quran earlier we talked about what the Quran is and what the Quran is not now what are the different types of revelation and how does the Quran fit into this so Imam Al-Juaini who was the teacher of the famous Imam Al-Ghazali he is an excellent scholar and academic and he wrote some piercing works and one of the really well organized things that he mentions that scholars later on continuously like copy and paste essentially citing back to him again and again because it was done really well was on the types of revelation so Imam Al-Juaini describes that there's revelation of two types and then he gives a very vivid and very beautiful example of us understanding how to make sense of that let's just look at it in terms of okay there's two types of revelation okay cool let's talk about what they are non-literal, literal one of them contains just the meaning from Allah SWT the other one contains the meaning and the wording from Allah SWT okay that sounds cool that's like another fact to add to our book of facts but why is that significant why is that unique and why are those two different gives us sort of an example for us to ponder upon and obviously Allah SWT is above any examples but these examples help us understand things better so starting off with the non-literal revelation this is the type of revelation where Allah SWT gives the meaning to the Prophet SAW and then the Prophet SAW expresses it using his own words and so Imam Al-Juaini says that this is like a king ordering someone in his court he says take a message from me to so and so to Ahmad over there tell him to show up in court tomorrow now what is the king telling this person he's telling him take this message to Ahmad it doesn't matter what words you're using it doesn't matter if you use the exact words I used or you use your own words that person is going to show up there he's going to be like oh the king is ordering you to come tomorrow the point is to get the message across the meaning across as opposed to the second category we'll get to that so this first I think there's a typo in the slide that is not supposed to be the Quran so the non-literal revelation is the Sunnah of the Prophet SAW which has been preserved for us in the form of Hadith the sayings the doings and the things that the Prophet SAW approved those things have been preserved for us in the form of these snapshots like as the companion says oh I saw the Prophet SAW one day doing this thing another companion says I saw the Prophet SAW one day speaking to us and he reminded us of this very important lesson so it's almost like snapshots almost like tweets that we can imagine a person that is tweeting a message that is not all they do in their entire life one snapshot into what they're thinking about that day one snapshot about what they've been processing that day and so similarly the companions captured some of their experience with the Prophet SAW in what they passed on to their students and to their students all the way until today so that's a non-literal revelation then comes the literal revelation in which both the words and the meanings are from Allah SWT when Jibril SAW brought literal revelation to the Prophet SAW Allah SWT gave him the words that were going to be said by the Prophet SAW and then he would come down to the Prophet SAW he would teach him those words the Prophet SAW would repeat them to the angel Jibril and then those words were then preserved by this ummah until today this is the Quran what is the example of this he said this is like a king sending an official edict like a whole, like a written down firmah like a signed document a proclamation from the king he says here take this message to the people now the messenger is going to go take this edict from the king and he's going to go and read it word for word because this is a very important message from the king and that's every word to be noticed and every word to be considered and that's the difference between the non-literal revelation and the literal revelation the literal revelation has a higher status it has wisdoms not only in its meaning but also in its wording so if you open up a book of tafsir a lot of the discussions they have are related to why did Allah SWT choose this word in this place why did he not choose another synonym here there's a connection between this word and the meaning here and a particular place where this is often a reflection of the scholars of tafsir is at the ends of the ayahs we often see Allah is all forgiving, all merciful Allah is almighty, all wise these are different attributes of Allah what do they have to do with the message that came before if Allah SWT was talking about paradise or hellfire or some other message why is there a constant reminder of certain attributes of Allah SWT and so one of the reflections that the scholars then go through is well how does this attribute relate to this message because it's important Allah SWT did not place any word in here for no reason there is a reflection there waiting for us and it just takes our effort to go and get it and so coming back to this example the sunnah of the Prophet SAW just as every single message of a king is important to follow the sunnah of the Prophet SAW of course we follow, we are ordered to follow it and we follow it with our hands and eyes I think that makes no sense in English but I was thinking of another example in my head but anyways we'll move on every single command of the Prophet SAW every single thing he has told us to do is equal in terms of its obligation on us as what Allah SWT tells us because Allah SWT tells us in the Quran وطيع الله وطيع الرسول and obey Allah and obey the messenger of Allah both of them are together, there's no separation here however the main core message kind of like the constitution is the Quran and then the explanation of this Quran how do we actualize this into our lives how do we apply it into our lives that's what the sunnah gives us it clarifies, it explains, it expounds on the Quran similar to how in the founding of this country we had the constitution and then we had the federalist papers that were in all these like tens of papers that were just explaining how to run the country both of them are used today in the court of law both of them are important for how this country functions but there's a hierarchy there it's a harmonious balance between them similarly the Quran and the sunnah there is a hierarchy there, the Quran is the literal word of Allah SWT but they both work harmoniously together I apologize for the switch in the words there so that brings up a question so I just defined the Quran as being the literal revelation and the sunnah as being the non-literal revelation so the hadith are going to be part of non-literal revelation some of you might have heard of the concept of a divine narration a hadith qutsi so how does that fit into this discussion the scholars explain that the hadith qutsi is a non-literal revelation but it is of a higher status and rank than the other narrations from the Prophet SAW so much so that when the Prophet SAW narrates these and this is how we know that they are divine narrations usually we say the so and so the companion he said that the Prophet SAW said X, Y and Z the Prophet SAW said Islam is built on five pillars that's the statement the Prophet SAW said it end of story in these the companion will say the Prophet SAW and what did the Prophet SAW say Allah SAW said so the Prophet attributes that statement that is about to come straight to Allah SAW and one of them for example is Allah SAW telling us directly through the Prophet SAW I have forbidden oppression and wrongdoing upon myself you can see from the type of message that it requires Allah SAW directing it at us directly but that does not mean that every single word in that narration is a literal word of Allah SAW it doesn't have that divine quality it is not something that we can use to gain reward just simply by reading it something that we said was special about the Quran so that doesn't exist for the Hadith Qudsi additionally the Quran can be recited in prayer and that is actually required for our prayer to be valid however the Hadith Qudsi cannot be recited in prayer and that would not allow our prayer to be valid so that's a short discussion on the different types of revelation and so broadly speaking the two sources that we all follow as believers and we all believe in is the Quran and the Sunnah both of them are revelation from Allah SAW Allah SAW says in the Quran the Prophet SAW does not speak from his own desire every word uttered by the Prophet SAW was either inspired by Allah SAW or if it was from himself Allah SAW would either affirm it or he would correct him as long as the Prophet SAW lived with us in this world in his worldly life every single thing that we have recorded from him is part of the revelation Allah SAW allows us to appreciate the Quran and the Sunnah so continuing on we now arrive at how did the Quran get revealed we talked about the different types of revelation we talked about what revelation is so how did it actually get from Allah SAW who is timeless, spaceless to us the creation that live in time and space so scholars tell us based on several narrations from the Prophet SAW that there was two phases of revelation there was the first phase in which the entire Quran went from when the entire Quran entered into our dominion, our world the lowest heavens we hear about the seven heavens the lowest heaven our universe everything that we will ever see is going to be within this lowest universe and that lowest universe the Quran entered into that at once and that was the first part of revelation now why is this important because in the Quran we see several ayahs that reference the Quran being revealed on particular days and particular months we have revealed this Quran on the night of power the month of Ramadan is the month in which the Quran was revealed now the companions went to the Prophet SAW and they asked how could it be that the Quran says this but we know that you get revelation all throughout the year how does that work and so this was the response is that there was two different revelations the first revelation was on this special day on this during the special month of Ramadan from Allah SWT to the lowest heaven and in fact it's mentioned in some of the narration that it was to a place called the House of Honor the House of Honor now someone might ask what are the reasons for this like why would there be a need for Allah SWT to reveal the Quran twice and so the scholars mentioned some wisdoms for this one it brings more honor to the Quran and to the and to humanity with the angels because when the Quran is revealed in its entirety to the lowest heavens the only creature who is perceiving this is the angels but they recognize and realize that a very important profound time has come a time has come in which the final in which the final message of Allah SWT to this world is about to start it sets the clock moving for the final message to be delivered to the face of this earth and this message is like no other it's a message that will last until the end of times every other message that came before was restricted to time and place and after the prophet got it their job was to deliver this message to the people around them their job was to deliver this message while they were alive and then after they passed away generally there would be another prophet that Allah SWT would send and that was the system back then but after the prophet SAW there are no prophets there are no messengers we no longer have a connection directly that has just happened and to show that this first revelation was done the second wisdom is Allah SWT was granting the Quran a privilege that was granted to the other scriptures now something we'll see on the next slide is that the Quran was distinct from all the previous scriptures in this very matter which is what when Musa A.S. recieved the Torah he recieved it all at once when the other messengers recieved their scriptures and revelations they recieved it all at once so someone could argue that if the Quran was not revealed all at once at some point then it's kind of like ah is it really as superior if it can't just all be revealed at once and so that privilege of being with the other scriptures among the divine word of Allah SWT was granted to the Quran in this part of the revelation and the third wisdom here is that the Quran has now entered into our world so that the two mercies for this world the Quran and the Prophet SAW would now be in this world together for the entire duration of the Quran being revealed we had two mercies two sources of mercy and blessing in this world with us but if the Quran had not been revealed fully then it would just be the Prophet SAW so that gives us even more mercy and blessings for all the people in this world that brings us to the second phase of revelation now the Quran has been sent down to the lowest heavens the Prophet SAW is in the cave of Hiraab on the outskirts of Makkah contemplating spending his time pondering upon the creation thinking about who his creator is and Jibril SAW the archangel appears before him and they have this lengthy interaction in which Jibril SAW grabs the Prophet SAW and hugs him so tightly squeezes him until the Prophet SAW says I thought I was going to die it felt like the life was leaving me it was such a tight squeeze and then Jibril SAW let him go then Jibril SAW hugged him again and then he let him go and then he did it a third time all three times the Prophet SAW says I felt like my soul was going to leave my body and every single time the Jibril SAW squeezes the Prophet SAW he would say and the Prophet SAW would say I don't know how to read I never learned to read I'm an unlettered person and Jibril SAW would go and squeeze him again until he felt the life leaving him now what was going on in this moment in this moment we were witnessing the beginning of revelation in this moment something unique was about to happen there was going to be a direct contact between Allah SWT and this world something that had not happened since the time of Isa SAW many hundreds of years earlier but as a human being the Prophet SAW would have a difficult time understanding and processing what was happening seeing an angel is hard enough believing that what you just saw was not just a dream it's actually happened that is why Jibril SAW was squeezing him to the point where he felt his life escaping because he needed to feel that this was real it's kind of like how we see something that's really bizarre really amazing and we're like oh pinch me slap me wake me up shake me is this real or am I imagining things it's kind of like that feeling that the Prophet SAW needed that shaking that squeezing to bring him back to reality and tell him yes this is real yes you are receiving the revelation from Allah SWT and that's when the first revelation came to this world the first five ayas of Surah Alak in the name of your Lord who has created created man kind from a quiet created man kind from a quiet created man kind from a quiet read your Lord is the most generous read your Lord is the most generous who taught the pen the one who taught the pen he taught the pen what he did not know So that began a 23 year long period when there was continuous communication between Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala and this world. Jibril A.S. would come to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in several different ways and several different times revealing sometimes two ayahs, sometimes three ayahs, sometimes four or five but never too many. There would be a small number of ayahs revealed every single time and those ayahs, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would then memorize them, understand them, process them and then he would teach them to his people, to the companions around him. And the companions later on after the passing of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam they maintained this tradition of learning the Quran bit by bit. We live in an age unfortunately where we just want to consume, mass consume everything on the planet. So now we design an AI that gives us all of the world's knowledge and compresses it into one sentence so then we can just eat the capsule and then we're good. But the companions and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam they understood something. There is something profound about knowledge that is attained slowly. Knowledge that is attained at a rate at which your body and your mind and your soul can process it. Which you can actually practically see this knowledge implementing into your life around you. If for example I decided that I was going to memorize the entire translation of Surat al-Baqarah in two days, maybe it's possible. You know maybe if I spent 48 hours, maybe I'll be able to do it. I don't think I can, but maybe someone is able to do that. In two days they're able to memorize the translation of all of Surat al-Baqarah. But what's going to happen a week later or a month later, a year later? Do they remember every single word of it? Now let's imagine the other scenario where this person takes it one page at a time, five lines at a time. All they do is read those five lines in the morning. Then they read those five lines when their lunch break. They read those five lines again after work. They read those five lines again before they go to sleep. Throughout their day they've been thinking about five verses that were five messages from Allah SWT. They were able to focus on the small aspect of revelation and slowly doing this again and again every day of their life. Over the next year they will have absorbed so much more of the Quran than the person who spent 48 hours continuously trying to jam-pack everything in. Only for it to leave a week later. I mean we've all crammed for exams and none of us remember what we did in those exams. But for the subjects that we really enjoy, where we really care about it and we spend time on it, those things we will always remember because we've spent time processing it. And that's part of the wisdom that was part of the second part of revelation. The gradual revelation in short passages. In Arabic they say nujum. Nujum is also a word used for stars because stars are little lights that shine and go. Shooting stars take a little bit of light across. Similarly the revelation is a light. It's a light of guidance. And little shooting stars of that light entered into this world, one after the other, for a period of 23 years. So there's 23 years of prophethood during which the revelation of the Quran into the world was completed. 13 of these years were in Makkah. And 10 of these years were in Medina. A few wisdoms, we've already mentioned a few of these. But one of the main wisdoms is actually mentioned by Allah SWT. He says, The disbelievers, they say, Why didn't the Quran come down all at once? Is your Lord incapable of sending this book at once? He needs time to write the next chapter. He needs time to think of the next message to send you. He can't do all at once. Allah SWT responds to that. We sent it in this way to strengthen your heart, O Prophet. We gave it to you in gradual revelation. Because the point of it is not to brag about how much is in the Quran. The point of it is to take its message one bit at a time and apply it to our lives. Strengthen our resolve, strengthen our hearts, building up slowly. For those who might have experienced working out, I do not. You can't just go to the gym on the first day and lift 400 pounds on a deadlift. I don't know if anyone can, but he can. So no one can go to the gym on the first day and lift 400 pounds. You try to do like a press and it's never going to press. It's going to crush you. You're going to injure yourself severely. You'll probably end up in the ER. You spend three years training every day at the gym. You can go and do that with your eyes closed. No one will worry about it at all. That was the secret of gradual buildup. The Prophet ﷺ's heart was being prepared to receive the most profound message that has ever entered this world. That is more heavier than any 400 pound barbell in the world. For that much weight, it required slow gradual revelation. So the Prophet ﷺ would fully appreciate that into his own life and fully be able to transmit it to his people. And we'll talk about this aspect a little bit more after. So before the Aisha break, we were talking about the second revelation of the Qur'an. And we talked about some of the wisdoms of the Qur'an being revealed slowly over time. And there are, you know, in more detailed works, scholars have listed many, many wisdoms. One of them, for example, is that the system and the framework that the Qur'an was bringing to the world for people to follow until the day of judgment was a very complex system. It was designed to bring about societal change. And that's not something that you can just send all down all at once, because people won't understand it. And an example that's often given is the example of the prohibition of alcohol. Alcohol was not prohibited the first time there was a verse about alcohol. There were four different verses about alcohol. The first one gave like an indirect warning. It's kind of like, you know, at the Safeway, they started putting alcohol in the poison section, like, you know, the rat poison and like all that, the pesticide section. It's like an indirect warning, like, you walk in there, you're like, wait, it kind of feels weird. It was like that kind of indirect warning came down. The next hour that came down about alcohol was like a direct warning, warning about it. It's kind of like what you have on cigarette packets. It's like, will cause lung cancer, may cause death, pretty direct warning. But it's still not prohibiting. At the third stage, there was a partial prohibition that don't come to the prayer while you are drunk. If you want to keep doing it, do it at hours when you're not going to harm people. Because during the day, what do you have? You have five prayers. So if you drink between the prayers, you won't be able to make it to the next prayer. So that takes out half of the day. And eventually the final verse comes down that alcohol, just as gambling, is absolutely and unconditionally prohibited. But this entire process of it being four steps gives us so many lessons. And we can see it in the society, the larger society that we live in too. Alcohol is such a strong part of this culture that non-Muslims who are very, very well aware of the health harms of alcohol. Whatever it can cause, like liver cancer and all these different cirrhosis and all these different things that alcohol is very directly related to. They know that, but they're like, yeah, but it is what it is. If you don't drink, you don't live. That's their motto, right? It's just part of their culture. If you are having dinner, you have a cup of wine with it. Or if you are going out with friends, you're going to go drink. That's just part of it. And that's how the Arabs were back in the day as well. And that's why we see that in those four stages before the final stage of prohibition came down, there were still some companions who were drinking. Some of them left it very early on. They realized they got the hint from like the being in the poison section of the supermarket. Like, oh, you know, maybe as a wise, intelligent human being, maybe I should think about this a little bit more and kind of walk away from this. But there are other people who are human beings. Just as there are people around us in our larger community, in a larger society, who are human beings, and this is just part of their culture. And so these kinds of mechanisms for bringing about social change while being empathetic and compassionate with people, this is something that could not be taught with the Quran being revealed as one giant, massive book being dropped at once. It had to be revealed over time, and it had to be revealed through a guide who would live it, who would show how do I teach these verses to the people? How do I implement this into my community? When the Prophet ﷺ, later in his life, migrated to Medina, this was a different dynamic. He was building a community now. Before this, there were individuals who were trying to learn about their faith, trying to learn about Allah SWT, who their Creator was. But they didn't really have organized community. They went to Medina and they had a whole another dimension to explore now. How do you solve societal evils? How do you address different types of things that are harming our society? How do you create policies that will help your society and your community grow and keep developing in the right direction? Those are things we learn from the Prophet ﷺ's life, as he implements the Quran. One of the companions came to Aisha, the mother of the believers, and asked her, describe to me the character of the Prophet ﷺ. And her response is, I mean, she could have written a whole book, because his character was so beautiful and so profound. But she gave the most concise description, but it was full of so much meaning. She said, His character was the Quran. The same Quran we're talking about today. He was a living, breathing Quran, walking among people, showing us how to live it. So it gives us a lot of lessons and a lot of points to ponder over in our own lives, in our family lives, in our community lives, etc., etc. Wherever we may be, there's so many lessons for us to extract from the Quran, the way it was revealed, and all these subtle points that the scholars have spent years of their lives discussing and benefiting from and elaborating for us. And, insha'Allah, at the end of the presentation, I'll share a few resources for people to read more as well. I know I've been referencing here and there all this time, so I think it's only fair for me to point you guys towards something, insha'Allah. So, carrying on. The next topic here is about the modes of revelation. What were the different ways in which the revelation came down to the Prophet ﷺ? And these are narrated to us by the companions who witnessed the revelation coming down. So, one type of revelation, which was the one that we've been talking about, and which was the majority of revelation, was through an intermediary, which was Jibril al-Isra. He would bring the message from Allah SWT to the Prophet ﷺ. But this would also be in two different ways. The first was as a ringing bell. Now that sounds really strange, but we'll talk about it in a few minutes. And the second is in the form of a man. Some of you might have heard about the famous Hadith of Jibril, in which Umar ibn Khattab, radiallahu anhu, and the companions are sitting around the Prophet ﷺ, and they say a man appeared before us, walking towards our gathering. And he had very clean white clothes. He had very clean black hair. It did not look like he was a traveler. And this man came and he sat in front of the Prophet ﷺ with his knees touching the Prophet's knees, with his hands on his thighs, sitting like an attentive person. Somebody here to benefit, somebody here to learn. And then they had a whole exchange talking about what is Islam, what is faith, what is excellence, what are the signs of the Day of Judgment. And there was a whole discussion there. And then this man gets up and leaves. Now all the companions sitting there, they're looking at each other, they're like, who is this person? None of us know him. We haven't seen him here before, but he didn't look like a traveler either, because we're in Medina. The closest town is like so far away, and if you walk from that town to here, you're definitely going to get dust in your hair at least. And in the desert, like one gust of wind blows and you have sand everywhere. Who is this person who looked so clean and neat? He's here and we don't know him. So they're all just like puzzled and looking around. And the Prophet SAW said, Ya Umar, atadri manhada? He said, Umar, do you know who that was? And the Prophet SAW said, Ya Rasulullah, you and Allah SWT know best. I don't know. And the Prophet SAW said, that was Jibril. He came to teach you your religion. So in this example, the archangel Jibril SAW came to the Prophet SAW in the form of a man. So that was one of the forms that the Jibril SAW would come to the Prophet SAW. The second type of mode of revelation was without an intermediary. And there's a couple of subtypes of this as well. One is as a dream. We'll get to it in a second, inshallah. We'll read the narration in which it mentions the ringing of the bell, inshallah. The next mode of revelation is the Prophet SAW would receive it in a dream. And we'll talk about this in a few minutes as well. But this was the first type of revelation that the Prophet SAW received, even before Jibril SAW came to him in the cave of Hiram. He started having true dreams. Khadija, radiAllahu anha, describes this. He started having true dreams. He would see something and the next day he would be walking around with the exact same thing happening. And so that was revelation, truth coming down in the form of a dream to the Prophet SAW. And there's a narration about that about the time after the Prophet SAW and we'll talk about that in a few slides. And the fourth type of mode of revelation is as direct divine speech behind a veil. Without an intermediary, Allah SWT is speaking directly to the Prophet SAW. That's something that also happened to Musa SAW. We'll talk about all of these in detail as well. Allah SWT says in the Quran وما كان لبشر أن يكلم الله it is not granted to any mortal being that Allah SWT speaks to him except through the following ways إلا وحيا except through revelation أو من ورائح جاب or from behind a veil أو يرسل رسولا في يوحية بإذنه ما يشاء or by sending a messenger to reveal by his command what he wills إنه علي يون حكيم he is exalted in wise. So in this ayah Allah SWT mentions three things. One is sort of like وحيا in this context meaning like a direct revelation to the Prophet, for example in the dream or a direct inspiration in his heart the second is from behind a veil where Allah SWT speaks to the Prophet SAW but the veil meaning the Prophet SAW cannot see Allah or the third one is through an intermediary which is Jibril A.S. So now we'll talk about each of these four in turn in detail. So the first one was like a loud ringing bell and the narration for this is found in the beginning of Sahih al-Bukhari in fact the first chapter in the most authentic collection of hadith is called كتاب بدء الوحي كتاب بدء الوحي the chapter on the beginning of revelation because Imam al-Bukhari رحمه الله تعالى thought it was appropriate that we start our discussion of the prophetic legacy of the Sunnah of the Prophet SAW with how his journey as a prophet began and in that chapter he brings his narration Aisha radiallahu anha narrates I'll read Arabic first An Aisha radiallahu anha أن الحارث ابن حيشام سأل النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم كيف يأتيك الوحي So Aisha radiallahu anha narrates that الحارث ابن حيشام asked the Prophet SAW How does the divine inspiration How doesวحي revelation come to you قال كل ذاك كل ذاك يأتي الملك In all these ways, well the ways he's going to list now, the first one, the angel sometimes comes to me with a voice which resembles the sound of a ringing bell. An extremely loud ringing sound happens that the prophesy I said him can hear. And when this state abandons me I remember what the angel has said and this type of divine inspiration is the hardest on me. So the prophesy I said him can be engaging in whatever action. He might be talking to someone and if he comes down and is revealing something to him from Allah SWT, he will hear this very loud sound. So the prophesy I said him will stop whatever he's doing. Pay attention until the sound stops. Once that sound stops, he remembers and understands every single thing that I said I brought to him. The words of what was brought to him is imprinted onto his heart now. And the ringing and the sound of ringing of a bell kind of gives us an indication to how majestic the angels are. It is such a very loud sound, a sound that nobody can ignore. And the angels are such a creature, they are a very majestic creature and Allah SWT has created them as such. And then the prophesy I said I mentioned here and this type of divine inspiration is the hardest on me. Like experiencing that really loud ringing noise and receiving that divine message as a mortal being is a very, very difficult task in this manner. In narration from Musa Dahmad, the Prophet SAWS adds every time I receive revelation, I feel that my soul is being taken. Now if we think back to the narration we talked about earlier of the first revelation, the Prophet SAWS was hugged by Jibril SAWS three times, squeezed until he thought his life was his soul was going to leave his body. He was being prepared for this reality that will happen again and again and again. And in a way, it was a reminder for the Prophet SAWS that he is still on the right path. He is still awake, he is still aware. He's not imagining things, he's not losing his mind, he's not delusional in any way. This is absolutely real and it's absolutely something that is very heavy to carry for a human being. And this was the toughest of modes. The second one is that Jibril SAWS would come in the form of a person. So that same narration that we were seeing on the previous page continues on and the Prophet SAWS says the second type of revelation is and sometimes the angel comes to me in the shape or in the form of a man and talks to me similar to the narration we talked about earlier where Jibril SAWS came and sat in front of the Prophet SAWS and I understand and remember what he says. Now it's interesting that the Prophet SAWS mentions this point at the end like oh I understand and remember what he says because the question that's on people's minds is like Jibril SAWS is an angel. He's bringing a divine message. Do you understand what he says? Either as the ringing bell, the ringing bell is like an even more bigger question like okay the ringing bell doesn't even sound like language to us. So does the Prophet SAWS understand and remember what the message was? And he confirms both times yes as a ringing bell and when Jibril SAWS comes to me in the shape of a man. Both of those times I understand perfectly everything he says to me and I remember everything perfectly. And one of the very interesting ayat in the Quran is one in which the Prophet SAWS is told by Allah SWT and it's kind of like a mentoring opportunity or a mentorship opportunity where Allah SWT advises the Prophet SAWS because when the revelation started coming to the Prophet SAWS he was so eager. He was like I really want to make sure that I never forget this. And so he would, as Jibril SAWS was saying something to him he would start repeating it back and starting to practice it as it was being said. So Allah SWT told him don't worry. Don't move your tongue so fast so that hoping that it will settle in your heart faster. Inna alayna jam'ahu wa qur'ana. It is our responsibility, Allah SWT says it is our responsibility to make sure that the Quran is collected and compiled and it is recited correctly. And so that kind of connects back to what we're talking about here in the sense that the Prophet SAWS would hear Jibril SAWS and he would understand it and he would remember it. And he, SAWS, says that this was the easiest of modes of revelation when he came as a human being. The third type is as a dream in his sleep and as we mentioned earlier, this was the beginning of the Prophet SAWS's revelation. Aisha Adil Laghana says awwalu ma'budi abihi rasulullahi sallallahu alayhi wa sallamah al ruqya salliha The commencement of the Divine revelation to the Messenger of Allah SAWS was in the form of true dreams. And then after that another thing that would happen is the Prophet SAWS would be walking and he would hear from around him assalamu alayka ya rasulallah Greetings to you, O Messenger of Allah And it was kind of strange for him because he didn't know he was a Messenger of Allah he didn't know who this was referring to and then he would look around to see who was saying this and he couldn't hear, he couldn't see anyone. And so the continuation of this revelation, this narration that is not on the screen right now is that the stones and the trees would send their greetings on the Prophet SAWS and he would hear it but he didn't understand it at that time. Later on he understood that that was part of his preparation that you will receive something that will not seem logical in this worldly sense. Something that physically, biologically, does not make much sense. That you are receiving revelation from beyond the physical realm. So he is being prepared from then onwards that there are things beyond the physical and this is part of our belief as Muslims. In the first, well, in the second Surah of the Qur'an, Surah Al-Baqarah the first Surah after Surah Al-Fatiha what does Allah SWT begin with in the early ayahs? He says, One of the defining characteristics of the believers is believing in the unseen, the things that are not tangible. That is an essential part of our belief. Obviously it's built on sound reasoning that we get to the point that we have absolute faith and conviction in Allah SWT and that Allah SWT, who we cannot see, who we cannot hear directly, we feel his presence. We feel each and every one of his attributes in our lives around us, in the world around us. We feel his mercy. We feel his creative agency in the world. We go into the forest and we go into the mountains and we see such beauty that humans can only dream of. The most talented of human beings to ever live in terms of art were the ones who were able to capture the natural world on a piece of paper. But what about the actual world that was created first when there was nothing to copy? And when we start seeing Allah SWT through his creation, we start experiencing the attributes of Allah SWT all around us. It becomes a physical, tangible experience for us and that's the journey that we are all on is to walk towards that direction. We learn about Allah. We believe in Allah. We learn about his attributes. We learn about his book. We learn about the message of his book and we start seeing it everywhere. We start seeing the wisdom of every command of Allah SWT in our lives. Awwarum abudi abihi Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam al-ru'iyah s-salihah. The first revelation was through two dreams. And the last mode of revelation is direct divine speech behind a veil. Musa alayhi salam is famous and one of his popular nicknames is kalimullah, the one who spoke to Allah. So, some of them I ask like, oh, didn't every prophet speak to Allah? Like they were all receiving revelation from Allah. But what was special? Allah SWT mentions it in the Quran. He says wakallamallahu musa, not just Allah spoke to Musa, kalamallahu musa taklima. It was a real type of talking, a very direct conversation, one that not every prophet experienced. But the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam did also experience this. He experienced this on his night journey to Jerusalem, to Masjid al-Aqsa. And then he went up into the highest heavens and Jibril alayhi salam was accompanying him all the way there. They got to the furthest low tree, at which point Jibril alayhi salam stopped. He said nobody else can go beyond this except you. You have to go alone. And he went beyond that. And he entered into the divine presence. And there Allah SWT spoke to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam directly. And that is where we received the command of the five prayers. We started off with fifty and then slowly came down and down and down all the way to five. So the five prayers which are part of our daily life were given to us in a very very special way. They were given to our beloved prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam while he was in the divine presence directly with no intermediary, no Jibril alayhi salam, nobody else, no dream, no indirect method all the way directly from Allah SWT to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam showing us the significance and the importance of the five daily prayers. And that is the means for us to stay anchored in this very turbulent world. That is the means for us to stay connected to the divine throughout all the things that distract us. We go to work. We go, we take care of our families. We take care of our responsibilities. All of those are part of our religion. But all of those things have a tendency to make us forget about reality. Reality of Allah SWT, the reality of this world. We sometimes like become drugged by the world. And all we can see is the physical walls around me, the physical constraints I have. Well, what if I lose my job? The economy is not doing well, etc., etc., etc. The worldly forces are like this, like this, and like this. What we forget is that our sustenance, all benefit, all blessing, all mercy is not in the hands of the economy, not in the hands of bankers, not in the hands of my boss. It's all in the hands of Allah SWT. And the prayer reminds us of that five times every day because we leave that important class, that important meeting, that important obligation to turn, find the direction, and raise our hands and pray to Allah SWT. And that brings us to the end of today's conversation. I know I kind of like left you guys on a really high, like suspense mode. And I really apologize for that. That was not intentional at all. It was just in the zone. It happens. So on the last slide here, we have some further readings and resources. I'll walk through each one of these because I think each one of these is very important and deserves some discussion. And the idea here in this list of resources is that as I mentioned at the beginning of the talk, we can approach the Qur'an and build our relationship with it in two ways. One is reading and understanding the actual message of the Qur'an. You know, reading different ayahs, different tafsirs, etc., etc. The second type of engagement that we can have with the Qur'an is learning about the Qur'an. And so these resources are focused on... The first few resources are focused on the second type and then the last two are going to be a little bit more general. So the first resource here is the Qur'an and Eternal Challenge by Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah Daraaz. It's a book that was originally written in Arabic as An Naba Ul Aaveem by a scholar from Egypt, a very senior scholar from Al-Azhar University. And in the 40s and 50s, he was a senior professor in Al-Azhar. And the scholars there sent him to France. They said, go do your PhD over there and learn about how we can disprove the Orientalist understandings of the Qur'an. Show the people of Europe the truth of the Qur'an. And so he spent 10 years in France. He wrote his old dissertation in French. That dissertation was later translated into Arabic by himself. And then one of the books that he wrote later is called An Naba Ul Aaveem. It's written as an introduction to the Qur'an and it addresses a lot of the possible questions that anyone could have about, well, did the Qur'an really come from the Prophet's racism? Did the Qur'an, if it came from the Prophet, did it really come from Allah? Or what if it came from somebody else? What if it, why does it copy so much copy things from the Christians, etc. It's all these types of different doubts that people might have. The sheikh addresses all of those in a very comprehensive and complete way. And the English translation was done by Dr. Adil Salahi, who was a very, very impressive translator, very experienced, very senior, and has translated many, many major works. So it's a very highly recommended book. The second and third works are both about the sciences of the Qur'an, which is what this discussion falls under. You have the study of the meanings of the Qur'an and then the other science is called the Ulumun Qur'an, the sciences about the Qur'an. And so there's a book by Mufti Taqiyus Mani, which is also available and it's been translated into English called An Approach to the Qur'anic Sciences. And there's a book by Dr. Yasser Qadi, an introduction to the sciences of the Qur'an and both of them address, including today's discussion and all of the discussions that we'll be having in this series of lectures over the next year, different topics such as what are the different ways the Qur'an is split up into verses, into chapters, into half-jus, into full-jus, etc., etc., what are the different divisions? How did they come about? What is the history of them? What are the different reading traditions, the reading methods, the Qiraat? What is the history of the Qur'anic writing? What was the phases of its evolution? All of these different sciences, the miracle of the Qur'an, why is the Qur'an miraculous? What does that mean? We always say it, but what does that mean? What is so profound about the Qur'an containing so many stories in it? All of these are different sciences that are discussed in the Qur'an. Insha'Allah, we'll try to address some of these in the upcoming lectures, which will be in different masjids throughout the Bay Area. So, we'll have one every month and insha'Allah, you can follow the Instagram page for Kitab Academy to find out the details for the next events. Then we have the next one is the Ibn Ashur Center for Qur'anic Studies and run by Sheikh Sohib Said, one of my teachers. He has a YouTube channel as well as a website on which he publishes a lot of very in-depth discussions about the Qur'an in English and they're very, very beneficial and priceless discussions from a scholar who has spent a long time studying in Egypt at al-Azhar and then he later did his PhD in Qur'anic studies as well in the UK and now he teaches through Ibn Ashur Center and he's translating and has translated very large works into English as well. And then you also have Yaqeen Institute papers by a couple of scholars that I've mentioned here, Sheikh Ammar Al-Khattib, Dr. Nazir Khan, Sheikh Yusuf Wahab and Sheikh Muhammad Shanawi. All of them have written papers on the Qur'anic sciences, on the preservation of the Qur'an, on the miracle of the Qur'an. So for any of these are things that interest people or they want to learn more about these or hopefully, and we ask Allah SWT to give us the spark of motivation towards knowledge, if there's any little gem or any little thread in the entire talk that interested you then I would highly encourage you to go and look at these books. A lot of these are available as PDFs as well and you can also purchase them but I would encourage you to read more about this topic, about all of these topics and use that as a bridge to your connection to Allah SWT. We ask Allah SWT to allow us to continue building our relationship with Him in this life so that we may reach Him in the next life and join the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the companions in the highest level of Jannah. Ameen Yarabbil Alameen. We can have some questions and answers inshallah. We have some time for that. Okay, I have a mic, break your hand. Mate, let's do sisters first. There's just more. Sisters are quiet tonight. Okay, brothers. Assalamu alaikum. Thank you so much for the beautiful lecture. I had a quick question on Hadith Qudsi that you mentioned. Was Hadith Qudsi, were those words and sentences were constructed by Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam by Allah SWT and they were sent through Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam? Yeah, that's a very good question. So the Hadith Qudsi is a message directly from Allah SWT in the words of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and in a sense you can think of it as if we go back to the imagery that we created of the king sending someone to deliver a message. So on the one side you have the king signing a proclamation and sending a written document that is very specific so that the person can go and read it. On the other hand you have something that's like, okay, go tell this person to show up tomorrow. So he's not going to go and say show up tomorrow. It's going to be like, oh, the king said show up tomorrow. But sometimes it's like the king says, well, can you go and tell this person that he is doing a very good job? So this messenger will go and he will say, the king told me to tell you these words. You are doing a very good job. But they might not be the exact same words but they're communicating the same sentiment. So it's kind of like an in-between level between the regular Hadith and the Quran in the sense that the words aren't divine in and of themselves but the meaning has been raised a degree to give it a higher level of importance. And generally if you, there are these short booklets that have also been translated into English that collect all of the Hadith Qudsis together. And I would encourage you to read through them and you'll notice that there are certain themes and those are only themes that are covered in those. You won't find anything related to rulings, anything related to other things that the prophesies said them has like thousands of Hadiths about, thousands of statements about. Those aren't addressed there. There are very specific topics, topics that are relevant to the believer's direct connection with Allah SWT. And so it's like a very specific point of emphasis that Allah SWT has created for the Hadith Qudsis. Yes, so all of the Sunnah including the Hadith Qudsis are all paraphrase, the words of the Prophet, explaining the meaning that was inspired by Allah SWT. As-Salaamu Alaykum. All the ayah, as you said, that an ayah is not everything was revealed as a full surah multiple times. So, a surah was put together during the surah's lifetime. Yes, so there's a whole discussion there. Inshallah, the talk about next class will be more in depth of that. But as a short answer, the prophesies said them would reveal, would receive the revelation as like short groups of ayahs, three, four, five ayahs. And then when he would receive a revelation, he would call his scribes. And two or three of the scribes, whoever was around, would come. They would start writing as the Prophet SAW recited it. And he would tell them, put these ayahs next to that ayah, or put them before this other ayah that I told you the other day. And so the Prophet SAW himself dictated exactly where each ayah fit into every surah. And the name of the surahs was also decided with Surah As-Salaam in his lifetime when they are putting all these ayahs together. So the point of ayahs within a surah, that was done by the Prophet SAW for sure. And then beyond that, the labels and the titles or the names of the surahs, there's some discussion there among the scholars. The majority of scholars say that that was not from the time of the Prophet SAW. It was then after the Prophet SAW to identify which surah we're talking about. And a lot of times in the early generations, what we see is they refer to the surah by the first ayah. So they'll say like Surah Amma Yatasa'alun, or Surah Qulhu Allahu Ahad. So that's how they would refer to the surah, which is also another indication that the names were not from the Prophet SAW himself. Sister, is there any questions? Hi. Any questions online, Sister Samina? Oh, nevermind. So I got a question. I'm a big fan, by the way. So the first Inzal, the first revelation from the higher realm to the lowest heaven. This is getting like technical, so if it's not meant to be answered, that's fine. But doesn't that assume some sort of physical revelation? Like the revelation had to have gone somewhere, even if it was instantaneous. Do we believe it was, you called it the Baid al-A'izah, right? So what that mean that there was like an angel somewhere holding on to that. Could you just talk more about that? Yes, so there are several like narrations and reports from the early generations about, you know, sort of like the more specific details of the different revelations. And so some of the additional details they give about the first revelation from the highest realm. And specifically they say it comes from the sacred tablet in which all of our destinies are written by Allah SWT because one of the first creations of Allah SWT was the pen. And the pen was told to write the destinies of every single creation that will ever be. And that was written on the sacred tablet, the Lohul Mahfuz. And within that sealed the sacred tablet, the Quran was there. And so the first revelation was Jibreel A.S. taking the entirety of the Quran from the Lohul Mahfuz, the sealed tablet down to the Bayt al-A'izah, the House of Honor, and giving it to the high-ranking angels that take care of Bayt al-A'izah. And so they were put in charge of receiving that there. And then afterwards, Jibreel A.S. would then either take the revelation bits and bits from Bayt al-A'izah or from Allah SWT directly. And so there are narrations about both of those things happening so it is possible that it was both or one or the other as well. That from the Lohul Mahfuz to the angels, that's still in the heavens, right? Yes, but yeah, so that was, it was handed to the angels in the lowest heaven. In the lowest heaven? Yes. Okay. In the lowest heaven? With or against? That's a good question. I'll have to get back to you on that, insha'Allah. It's a very good question though. Again, building off what Sefirullah was saying, the first ever revelation, which of the four buckets is that fallen under? Like did he come to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam as a man? Or was it, like which one of the four was that? Yes, so the first revelation in which he hugged and squeezed the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was as a man. Because if we look at the continuation of the story of the first revelation, as the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam descended from the mountain into the valley next to it, Jubilee Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam appeared to him in his true form. And he covered the horizons, and everywhere the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam looked, you could see Jubilee Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And he was a very immense and majestic creature. And so that was his true form. But when he appeared earlier, it was in his human form. And that was the human form that would appear multiple times during the life of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. I feel they were planted. Some of these guys. Sister, is there any question? You know them? He actually, like, he's my teacher. I don't know why he's asking me questions. Unless they're a long-time problem. Yeah. Sister, is there any questions here? Sister Naima, what's your answer? So just off of what you were saying about the Angel Gabriel coming to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in a human form, does that mean that every single time he came down as a man, he was in the same form or did he look differently? So like from when he first gave the revelation on Javelin Nur versus like in the story you were saying where the angel came down and he was in his white robe clean. Didn't look like a traveler but came down as a man. Was it the same form? Well, there's nothing that says that specifically he was the same form every single time. And one of the reasons, one of the, you know, the texts that we could use to say that it's possible that he actually did not come in the same form was that exact narration of him coming down and we knew that he was not a traveler. He did not look like a traveler. No one recognized him. But that's happening in Medina very late in the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's life. So they've seen the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam receiving revelation for so many years now and they didn't recognize him still. So it's very likely that he came in different forms. But the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam recognized him whenever he came. What did it look like through the companion's eyes like when watching the Rasul receive revelation? Like, if they were actively watching him receive it, what did it look like? Yeah, it's a very good question. So there are a couple of narrations that we have that are very vivid descriptions of this. The mother of the believer is Aisha of the Lohanna. She mentions one time the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam had his head in her lap and he started receiving revelation. And she said that the weight of his head became so much. She thought like he was going to crush her leg. And she could see so much sweat coming from the forehead of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam like he was intensely like under pressure and under stress. So she could see those physical effects on him. And then there's another narration that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was once on a riding animal and I can't remember if it was a horse or a camel. But he was riding on an animal and he received revelation and the animal like its feet just like buckled and it fell down because there's too much weight coming down on the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So there were definitely physical manifestations on the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam as the revelation came down on him every single time. Spot tonight. All right, I think the online viewers are pretty quiet tonight too. Seems like you're pretty extensive on. Or I just confused everyone. Either way. Okay, do you want to read us just a minute? We have an online viewer. Want to read it? All right, online viewer says what's the difference between the Wahi of Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the Wahi which the mother of Musa received? That's a very good question. So the scholars, the way they understand revelation and if you go back and see the definition we had for revelation for Wahi on the slides as well is that that's the particular divine communication that signals the start of prophethood. And then after prophethood starts the communication continues until that prophet receives all of the commands and prohibitions that they need to communicate to their people. So this particular thing that we are talking about about revelation Wahi is specific to prophets. And what the mother of Musa Alayhi Sallam received and how the scholars explained that is that was a form of inspiration. And that form of inspiration the scholars say that can be received by anyone from Allah SWT where Allah SWT inspires a person to do something good or if somebody is struggling the Sunnah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is to do something called istikhara when you have two choices, two options you've done all your research you've done all of your background check and you're like okay I really can't decide between these two things. Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said pray to rakaz, read this dua called the dua of istikhara means asking for goodness. So you ask Allah SWT to give you whatever is best for you and then the scholars say you start moving in the direction that seems like the right move at that point and that's part of the inspiration that Allah SWT gives us. Obviously the more righteous and the more pious a person is they feel it a lot stronger and they realize that something is coming from Allah SWT versus from like shaitan or from some other source and so the mother of Musa A.S. a very pious woman received inspiration from Allah SWT that this was the right thing to do and so Allah SWT knows best. Okay, let's go wrap up, Inshallah. Alright, Jazakum Allah Khair in everyone and may Allah SWT allow us to benefit from everything that was said and may Allah SWT forgive us for any mistakes or any shortcomings. We ask Allah SWT to allow us to be of those people who are the people of the Quran. We ask Allah SWT to allow us to be of those people who are beloved to the Prophet SAW and we ask you, Ya Allah, to make us of those people who you love, Ya Allah and we ask you, Ya Allah, to make us of those people who are reunited with the Prophet SAW and the companions in the highest levels of Jannah. Ameen, Ya Rabbi, Al Aalameen. Subhanah, Rabbik, Rabbil Izzati, Amma, Ya Sifoon Wa Salamun Aalil Mursaleen Wa Alhamdu Lillahi, Rabbil Aalameen. Jazakum Allah Khair.