Khadijah tested Muhammad’s angelic vision with traditional detection methods

Evidence

Muhammad told Khadijah that he saw ‘our companion Gabriel’; she then made him sit, first on her left and then on her right knee, asking each time, ‘O son of my uncle, dost thou see thy friend?’ and receiving the answer yes. Then she covered her husband with a veil, or, as some say, hid him between her shirt and her flesh, and this time he replied that he did not see the angel. Then she said, ‘Be comforted, O son of my uncle, for it is certain that this friend who appears to thee is not the demon, but, as I suppose, the angel of God; wherefore I hope that thou art the Prophet to be of this Nation.’ Thus it was that Khadijah became the first Muslim. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 184

Categorization

• DEFINE: Documents the traditional testing method for distinguishing angelic from diabolical visions — the veil test — which medieval writers recorded as a Muslim tradition.
• FICTION: A vivid scene: a wife testing her husband’s reported vision using a somatic test. Strong material for a historical novel about early Islam or about how communities authenticate revelation.