The tradition holds that Muhammad was unlettered, which makes the first command — Iqra, read or recite — a demand he could not meet, and the Quran's literary quality is offered as evidence of its source. He came down from the cave terrified, convinced he was possessed, and it was Khadija who steadied him and her cousin Waraqa, a Christian, who identified what had happened. The revelation then paused for a period the tradition remembers as agonizing before resuming, and continued in fragments for twenty-three years.