Moses—exalted be his glory—came to them in a time when the majority of its people adhered to the science of the stars, talismans, sorcery, engineering, and enchantments (al-nayranajat)¹. These sciences had persisted since the ancients; it was Idris—exalted be his glory—who had established them, and their judgments remained firm in the world as people practiced them, taught them, and validated their reality. This continued until Moses—exalted be his glory—appeared with the Staff. By his manifestation, the realities of these sciences were nullified; the Staff swallowed what they had fabricated of their sorcery, and those sciences faded from the era of that manifestation as their practitioners vanished.

Likewise, our Lord Muhammad—exalted be his glory: his manifestation occurred in a time when its people magnified the masters of poetry, eloquence, strength, and courage. Their poet, upon composing a poem, would hang it on the door of the Kaaba to take pride in it. A man of the Age of Ignorance was counted as equal to a thousand fighters, and Amr ibn Abd Wudd was counted as ten such men—thus they regarded him as equal to ten thousand fighters. One of them would take the jawbone of a camel and crush it with his hand². Then Lord Muhammad—exalted be his glory—manifested the dazzling miracle which is the Quran, the word of God the Almighty, which {Falsehood cannot approach from before it or from behind it; [it is] a revelation from a Wise, Praiseworthy One}³. At that moment, the eloquent were silenced and were incapable of producing its like. The miraculous address came to them in His word—the Mighty and Sublime: {Say, "If mankind and the jinn gathered in order to produce the like of this Quran, they could not produce the like thereof, even if they were to each other assistants."}⁴