Muslim tradition describes Muhammad’s first revelation as physical compulsion

Evidence

These are the words of this ‘A’ishah: It was given to Muhammad to love solitude, and he went away and was solitary in a certain cave of Hira’, and there for many nights he gave himself to worship; and, returning to his wife Khadijah, he carried food thence to that place, and there he lived. When he was coming out of it, an angel came to him and said to him, Read. He answered, I do not know how to read. The angel took him and crushed him, by hugging him violently, and let him go. Again he said to him, Read, and he answered, I do not know how to read; and in the same way he crushed him. A third time he said to him, Read, and he answered in the same way, and a third time he crushed him. Then he said, Read in the name of the Lord thy God, Who created man from congealed blood. Read, and the Lord thy God, He shall be honoured, Who taught man with a pen what he did not know. When he heard this, he went back to his wife Khadijah, of whom we have spoken, and said to her, Cover me, and they covered him until the trembling went away from him. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 174

Categorization

• XREF: The physical crushing, trembling, and ‘Cover me’ detail connects to studies of religious experience and trance physiology — analogous to accounts in other prophetic traditions.