The Epic of Read at Harvard

Verses from Surah Al-Alaq were recited during a graduation ceremony at Harvard University, and this literary and philosophical reflection takes that widely shared moment as a meeting between the history of revelation and the history of the modern university. It goes back to the Cave of Hira near Mecca, where the Angel Gabriel brought the Prophet Muhammad a message that began with the word “Read”, with no sword, army, palace or throne behind it, and follows the civilization that grew from it through Damascus, Baghdad, Cordoba and Samarkand, carrying libraries, astronomy, medicine, engineering, philosophy and the arts. In the ceremony itself, graduates in academic robes hear “Read in the name of your Lord who created”, and the distance between Mecca and Boston, between Hira and the university's halls, seems to tremble. The verse about the Lord who taught by the pen sounds to the narrator as if written for a place that celebrates the pen, and he reads the scene as the triumph of an idea, that knowledge is a universal language and wisdom knows no borders, with no religion or culture defeating another. The book ends on the paradox that Islam opened with the act on which great universities stand, and on the thought that the road to the future begins with a page.