Mount Hira

Islamic biographical tradition describes Muhammad, in the years before his prophethood, retreating periodically to a cave near the summit of Mount Hira to pray and reflect alone, a practice called tahannuth. According to the account preserved in the hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim, it was during one such retreat, traditionally placed in the month of Ramadan around 610 CE, that the angel Gabriel appeared to him and commanded him three times to recite, iqra, before Muhammad, frightened and uncertain what was happening to him, spoke the first verses later collected as the opening of Surah al-Alaq: "Recite, in the name of your Lord who created, created man from a clot of blood."

Shaken, he returned to his wife Khadija, who is said to have wrapped him in a cloak and, once he had calmed, taken him to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a Christian familiar with earlier scripture, who told her that what had come to Muhammad was the same kind of revelation given to Moses and that Muhammad was to be the prophet of his people. Muslim tradition dates the beginning of Muhammad's prophethood to this night on Mount Hira, and some traditions identify it with Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power later commemorated in the last ten nights of Ramadan, though the exact date and its relationship to Laylat al-Qadr are not agreed among early sources.

Unlike the built sanctuaries at the center of Meccan pilgrimage, Mount Hira carries no mosque, shrine or covering structure at its cave, only the bare rock reached by an unpaved and fairly strenuous climb of a few hundred meters. That absence of construction is itself often read as fitting: the cave is remembered as a place Muhammad sought specifically for solitude away from the city, and Saudi religious authorities have generally discouraged treating the mountain as a formal pilgrimage stop, wary of practices that could shade into venerating the place itself rather than the revelation associated with it.

Visiting it is not part of the Hajj or Umrah and carries no ritual requirement, but it remains, informally, one of the most visited sites in greater Mecca, drawing a steady stream of pilgrims and tourists who make the climb to see the cave where, in Islamic belief, scripture first reached the world. The mountain is sometimes called Jabal al-Nur, the Mountain of Light, a name reflecting its place in the tradition rather than any ancient toponym, and it stands within sight of the city as a companion, in the religious geography of Mecca, to Mount Arafat and Mina, the stations of the Hajj itself, though Hira alone lies outside the pilgrimage's required route.