- Hira
- the small cave on the Mount of Light above Mecca where the Prophet used to withdraw and worship
- the revelation
- God's speech sent down to the Prophet through the angel — the night the Qur'an began
- Read
- the first revealed word of the Qur'an, which became the ummah's standing banner of knowledge
- the quiet preaching
- the call's first years, when it stayed inside the household and among the closest friends
- the prophethood
- the office of carrying God's message that the Prophet bore for twenty-three years
- the Mount of Light
- the hill's later name — the mount holding the cave, blessed by the revelation's light
- the angel
- Jibril, the angel who carried the revelation down to the Prophet in the cave
- 610 CE
- the rough year the sources give for the beginning of the revelation
- the twenty-three years
- the span over which the Qur'an descended on the Prophet, between Mecca and Medina
- Mecca
- the city where the call began before it travelled out into the world
- the calling
- the general name for the work of carrying Islam — from hiding to openness
- the community
- the gathering that faith slowly bound around its prophet until it grew into an ummah
