The Surah details the operational mechanics of this holy night, declaring:
Surah 97:4:
The angels and the Spirit (wal-rūḥu) descend therein by permission of their Lord...
The Identity Crisis: The introduction of Al-Rūḥ ("the Spirit") alongside the angels as a completely separate entity has triggered massive interpretive confusion across Islamic history. While later classical commentators aggressively attempted to flatten this noun to mean the Angel Gabriel (Jibril), text-critical analysis reveals that the passage assumes a distinct, ancient Near Eastern cosmology.
The Mythological Ancestry: In Gnostic, Jewish-Christian, and Zoroastrian cosmologies circulating throughout Late Antiquity, "The Spirit" or Rūḥā was viewed as a massive, autonomous cosmic hypostasis—a supreme celestial entity distinct from regular angelic hosts, acting as the living breath or direct active agent of the divine realm.
The Critique: By separating Al-Rūḥ from the angels, the text betrays its reliance on this complex, unscientific mythological hierarchy. The author is drawing a vivid literal picture of spiritual beings physically traveling downwards from a multi-layered heaven to execute bureaucratic assignments on a flat earth. This mirrors the mechanical cosmology of ancient near-eastern courts where the king's grand vizier (The Spirit) marches alongside the royal army (the angels).