So Allah revealed:

“O you who are wrapped up,
rise and warn,
and magnify your Lord,
and purify your garments,
and shun all impurity.”
[al-Muddaththir 1–5]

He then said:

“After that the revelation grew fervent and came one passage after another. This, therefore, was the first portion of the Qur’an sent down after the interval in revelation—not the first revelation absolutely, for that was His saying, ‘Read in the name of your Lord who created.’ It is authentically reported from Jābir that the first to be revealed was ‘O you who are wrapped…,’ and the proper way to reconcile his words, as far as possible, is what we have mentioned, for the flow of his narration makes it clear that the angel who appeared to him the second time introduced himself exactly as he had done the first.

“Furthermore, his phrase ‘he is relating the pause in revelation’ itself indicates that revelation had already occurred prior to this inspiration, and Allah knows best.

“It is established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, through the ḥadīth of ʿAlī ibn al-Mubārak, and in Muslim through al-Awzāʿī—both reporting from Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr—that I asked Abū Salamah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ‘Which part of the Qur’an was revealed first?’ He answered, ‘O you who are wrapped….’ I said, ‘Was it not “Read in the name of your Lord”?’ He replied: ‘I put the same question to Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh: Which part of the Qur’an was revealed first? He said, “O you who are wrapped….” I asked, “Read in the name of your Lord?” He said:

‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “I spent a month in devotion at Ḥirā’. When my retreat ended I came down and entered the valley. I was called, so I looked ahead of me, behind me, to my right and to my left, but saw nothing. Then I looked to the sky, and there he was—seated on a throne suspended in the air. A trembling—or, he said, a fright—overtook me, so I went to Khadījah and told them, ‘Wrap me up, wrap me up.’ Then Allah revealed: ‘O you who are wrapped…’ up to ‘and purify your garments.’”

‘In another version he said, “I saw the angel who had come to me at Ḥirā’ sitting on a chair between heaven and earth, and terror seized me.”’

“This is explicit proof that his coming to him and the revelation from Allah had already taken place, just as we have explained—and Allah knows best.

“Others have claimed that the first revelation after the cessation was Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā: ‘By the morning brightness and by the night when it grows still. Your Lord has not forsaken you nor has He detested you,’ and so on. This was asserted by Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq. Some reciters added that, for this reason, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ began the Sūrah with a takbīr out of joy—an opinion that is far-fetched and is refuted by the earlier report in the two Ṣaḥīḥs that the first Qur’anic passage revealed after the pause was: ‘O you who are wrapped, rise and warn.’ Rather, Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā was sent down after another brief hiatus of only a few nights, as is recorded in the two Ṣaḥīḥs and elsewhere in the ḥadīth of al-Aswad ibn…"}