ABSTRACT
Islam is a revealed religion and for Muslims it began when Muḥammad received his first revelation some time around 610 C.E. in a cave outside of Mecca. Islamic tradition tells us that Muḥammad obtained his revelations either directly from God or through the mediation of the archangel Gabriel (Madigan 2004). Subsequently, Islamic thinkers developed different theories of how the process of revelation unfolds and what happened in the interplay between God, Gabriel, and Muḥammad. Such theories would also cover earlier messengers (singl. rasūl) such as Moses or Abraham, who are believed to have received revelations similar to the Qurᵓān. Finally, there were also the smaller prophets to be considered, whom God had sent to warn different people. These had not produced revelations in the form of a text, yet still had the ability to foretell future events—i.e. divination—or to accurately predict the punishment of people who would neglect to heed God’s warnings. All these phenomena were understood as expressions of prophecy. Authors within the movement of falsafa developed theories that would explain prophecy (nubuwwa) and the process of receiving revelation (waḥy) as part of the normal course in this world. Although a rare event in human history, prophecy was not understood as something extraordinary or even superhuman. It was considered a regular part of the way God created this world and therefore something we would call a natural phenomenon. Islamic philosophical explanations of prophecy should be considered “scientific” in the sense that they give rational explanations for various phenomena called prophecy, explanations that were seamlessly embedded in the physical, metaphysical, and psychological theories held by these thinkers.
