Rebecca Masterton, Dr Rebecca Masterton graduated with a BA in Japanese Language and Literature; an MA in Comparative East Asian and African Literature and a PhD in Islamic literature of West Africa. She has been... Answered 6 years ago
The scholars say that the Qur'an was revealed in its entirety on Laylat al-Qadr to the heart of Prophet Muhammad (s), but the occasions on which he was to utter the revelation were done so step by step.
If you look at all the different places in the Qur'an where it uses the root word related to 'revelation', you can see that 'tanzil' means 'revelation' (or is translated as such, but really means 'something which is sent down') or 'tanzilan', meaning 'in stages'. A 'manzil' is a stage or station (as well as meaning home/house):
http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=nzl#(97:1:2)
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