Mohammed receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel. Miniature illustration on vellum from the book Jami' al-Tawarikh (literally "Compendium of Chronicles" but often referred to as The Universal History or History of the World), by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 CE Now in the collection of the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland.
Gallery of Muhammad (Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh)
1315
Saudi Arabia
Miniature from Rashid-al-Din Hamadani's Jami al-Tawarikh, c. 1315, illustrating the story of Muhammad's role in re-setting the Black Stone in 605. (Ilkhanate period)
Gallery of Muhammad (Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh)
1595
Saudi Arabia
The Prophet and his companions advancing on Mecca, attended by the angels Gabriel, Michael, Israfil and Azrail.
Gallery of Muhammad (Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh)
1595
Saudi Arabia
The Prophet Muhammad and the Muslim Army at the Battle of Uhud, from the Siyer-i Nebi, 1595.
Gallery of Muhammad (Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh)
1650
Saudi Arabia
Anonymous illustration of al-Bīrūnī's The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries, depicting Muhammad prohibiting Nasī’ during the Farewell Pilgrimage, 17th-century Ottoman copy of a 14th-century (Ilkhanate) manuscript (Edinburgh codex).
Gallery of Muhammad (Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh)
1699
Saudi Arabia
This illustration is taken from La vie de Mahomet, by M. Prideaux, published in 1699. It shows Mohammed holding a sword and a crescent while trampling on a globe, a cross, and the Ten Commandments.
Gallery of Muhammad (Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh)
1808
Saudi Arabia
Muhammad's entry into Mecca and the destruction of idols. Muhammad is shown as a flame in this manuscript. Found in Bazil's Hamla-i Haydari, Jammu and Kashmir, India, 1808.
Mohammed receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel. Miniature illustration on vellum from the book Jami' al-Tawarikh (literally "Compendium of Chronicles" but often referred to as The Universal History or History of the World), by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 CE Now in the collection of the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland.
Miniature from Rashid-al-Din Hamadani's Jami al-Tawarikh, c. 1315, illustrating the story of Muhammad's role in re-setting the Black Stone in 605. (Ilkhanate period)
Anonymous illustration of al-Bīrūnī's The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries, depicting Muhammad prohibiting Nasī’ during the Farewell Pilgrimage, 17th-century Ottoman copy of a 14th-century (Ilkhanate) manuscript (Edinburgh codex).
This illustration is taken from La vie de Mahomet, by M. Prideaux, published in 1699. It shows Mohammed holding a sword and a crescent while trampling on a globe, a cross, and the Ten Commandments.
Muhammad's entry into Mecca and the destruction of idols. Muhammad is shown as a flame in this manuscript. Found in Bazil's Hamla-i Haydari, Jammu and Kashmir, India, 1808.
Muhammad is the founder of Islam and the proclaimer of the Qurʾān. He spent his entire life in what is now the country of Saudi Arabia.
Background
According to tradition, Muhammad traced his genealogy back as far as Adnan, whom the northern Arabs believed to be their common ancestor. Adnan in turn is said to be a descendant of Ismail (Ishmael), son of Ibrahim (Abraham) though the exact genealogy is disputed. Muhammad's genealogy up to Adnan is as follows: Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muttalib (Shaiba) ibn Hashim (Amr) ibn Abd Manaf (al-Mughira) ibn Qusai (Zaid) ibn Kilab ibn Murra ibn Ka`b ibn Lu'ay ibn Ghalib ibn Fahr (Quraysh) ibn Malik ibn an-Nadr (Qais) ibn Kinana ibn Khuzaimah ibn Mudrikah (Amir) ibn Ilyas ibn Mudar ibn Nizar ibn Ma`ad ibn Adnan.
Muhammad was born into a well-to-do family settled in the northern Arabian town of Mecca. Some calculate his birth date as April 20, 570 (Shi'a Muslims believe it to be April 26), and some as 571; tradition places it in the Year of the Elephant. Muhammad's father, Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muttalib, had died before he was born, and the young boy was brought up by his paternal grandfather Abd al-Muttalib, of the tribe of Quraysh (or Quraish). Tradition says that as an infant, he was placed with a Bedouin wet nurse, Halima, as desert life was believed to be safer and healthier for children. At the age of six, Muhammad lost his mother Amina, and at the age of eight his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib. Muhammad now came under the care of his uncle Abu Talib, the new leader of the Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe, the most powerful in Mecca.
Education
As a teenager, Muhammad began accompanying his uncle on trading journeys to Syria. He thus became well-traveled and gained some knowledge of life beyond Mecca.
Career
At the age of 25, Muhammad is employed by a rich woman, Khadījah, to oversee the transportation of her merchandise to Syria. He so impresses her that she offers marriage. Khadījah is said to have been about 40, but she bears Muhammad at least two sons, who die young, and four daughters. The best known of the latter is Fāṭimah, the future wife of Muhammad’s cousin ʿAlī, whom Shiʿi Muslims regard as Muhammad’s divinely ordained successor. Until Khadījah’s death some three years before Muhammad’s emigration (hijrah) to Medina in 622, Muhammad takes no other wife, even though polygamy is common.
Muhammad’s prophetic initiation occurs at the age of 40. During a period of devotional withdrawal atop one of the mountains in the vicinity of Mecca, the angel Gabriel appears to him in an awe-inspiring encounter and teaches him the opening verses of sūrah 96 of the Qurʾān: "Recite in the name of your Lord who creates, / creates man from a clot! / Recite for your lord is most generous…."
Muhammad is greatly perturbed after this first revelation but is reassured by Khadījah and her cousin, Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a learned Christian who confirms Muhammad’s prophetic status. Muhammad continues to receive revelations but for three years limits himself to speaking about them in private. When God finally commands him to take up public preaching, he initially encounters no opposition. However, after the Qurʾānic proclamations begin to deny the existence of gods other than Allāh and thereby to attack the religious beliefs and practices of the Quraysh tribe, tensions arise between Muhammad and his small circle of adherents, on the one hand, and the remaining inhabitants of Mecca, on the other. As a result, some of Muhammad’s followers are forced to seek temporary refuge with the Christian ruler of Ethiopia. For some years, the other chief clans of Mecca even refuse to trade and intermarry with Muhammad’s clan, since the latter continues to offer him protection. Sometime after the end of this boycott, one of the most famous events in the Prophet’s ministry takes place: his so-called Night Journey, during which he is miraculously transported to Jerusalem to pray with Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. From there Muhammad continues to ascend to heaven, where God imposes on him the five daily prayers of Islam.
About 619, both Khadījah and Muhammad’s uncle Abū Ṭālib die, and another uncle, Abū Lahab, succeeds to the leadership of the clan of Hāshim. Abū Lahab withdraws the clan’s protection from Muhammad, meaning that the latter can now be attacked without fear of retribution and is therefore no longer safe at Mecca. After failing to win protection in the nearby town of Al-Ṭāʾif, Muhammad secures a pledge of protection from a representative number of the inhabitants of the oasis town of Yathrib, also known as Medina (from its Qurʾānic appellation al-madīnah, "the town"). This promise enables Muhammad and his followers to leave Mecca for Medina, which, unlike Mecca, is partly inhabited by Jewish tribes. Together with Abū Bakr, the future first caliph, Muhammad is the last to depart. It is only because he is warned by Gabriel that he narrowly escapes an assassination plot by the Quraysh.
At Medina, Muhammad has a house built that simultaneously serves as a prayer venue for his followers. He also drafts a covenant that joins together "the Believers and Submitters [or Muslims] of Quraysh and of Yathrib" as well as some of Medina’s Jewish tribes into a community (ummah) recognizing Muhammad as the "Messenger of God." However, relations with the Jews of Medina steadily worsen. Eighteen months after the emigration, a revelation bids the Muslims to pray in the direction of the Meccan Kaʿbah, rather than to continue facing toward Jerusalem as is Jewish practice. At about the same time, the Medinan Muslims begin raiding Meccan caravans. When, during one of these raids, they are surprised by a Meccan relief force at Badr in 624, the Muslims, aided by angels, score a surprising victory. In response, the Meccans try to capture Medina, once in 625 in the Battle of Uḥud and again in 627 in the so-called Battle of the Trench; both attempts to dislodge Muhammad are ultimately unsuccessful. After each of the three major military encounters with the Meccans, Muhammad and his followers manage to oust another of the three main Jewish tribes of Medina. In the case of the last Jewish tribe to be displaced, the Qurayẓah, all adult males are executed, and the women and children are enslaved.
In 628 Muhammad makes the bold move of setting out to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Meccans are determined to prevent the Muslims from entering the city, and Muhammad halts at Al-Ḥudaybiyyah, on the edge of the sacred territory of Mecca. A treaty is concluded between the two parties: hostilities are to cease, and the Muslims are given permission to make the pilgrimage to Mecca in 629. Two months later Muhammad leads his forces against the Jewish oasis of Khaybar, north of Medina. After a siege, it submits, but the Jews are allowed to remain on condition of sending half of their date harvest to Medina. The following year, Muhammad and his followers perform the pilgrimage as stipulated by the treaty of Al-Ḥudaybiyyah. Subsequently, however, an attack by Meccan allies upon allies of Muhammad leads to the latter’s denunciation of the treaty with the Meccans. In 630 he marches a substantial army on Mecca. The town submits, and Muhammad declares an amnesty.
After his return to Medina, Muhammad receives deputations from various Arabian tribes who declare their allegiance to the Muslim polity. Still, in 630, Muhammad embarks on a campaign to the Syrian border and reaches Tabūk, where he secures the submission of various towns. Muhammad personally leads the pilgrimage to Mecca in 632, the so-called Farewell Pilgrimage, the precedent for all future Muslim pilgrimages. He dies in June 632 in Medina. Since no arrangement for his succession has been made, his death provokes a major dispute over the future leadership of the community he has founded.
Muhammad did not completely reject Judaism and Christianity, the two other monotheistic faiths that were known to the Arabs and which are referred to in the Qur'an; he said to have been sent by God in order to complete and perfect their teachings. He soon acquired a following by some and rejection and hatred by others in the region.
In contrast to the pagans who were given the stark choice to convert or be expelled, Jewish and Christian settlements within Muslim territories were tolerated and taxed. Muhammad drafted a document now known as the Constitution of Medina (c. 622-623), which laid out the terms on which the different factions, specifically the Jews, could exist within the new state. In this system, the Jews and other "Peoples of the Book" were allowed to keep their religions as long as they paid tribute. This system would come to typify Muslim relations with their non-believing subjects and that tradition was one reason for the stability of the later Muslim caliphate. In this, the Islamic empire was more tolerant than the other great powers of the area, the Byzantine and Sassanid empires, which were actively hostile to any religions or sects other than the state-sponsored religions (Orthodox Christianity and Zoroastrianism).
Although Islam supersedes or completes the earlier religions of Judaism and Christianity, Muslims recognize a family relationship between all three Abrahamic faiths. Abraham is an important character in the Qur’an, which describes him as neither a Jew nor a Christian but a Muslim. Christians and Jews are criticized for claiming that only they are saved and for corrupting the originally pure messages they had received. Christians are wrong to make Jesus into God (or God's son) since he had pointed to God, not to himself. The category of protected minority (dhimmi) established by Muhammad was permitted to retain their faith in return for relinquishing arms and payment of a tax (Muhammad stipulated that they should not be taxed too heavily). Muhammad said that whoever harms a dhimmi, harmed him. On one occasion, when a Christian delegation from Najran visited him in Medina, he allowed them to pray in his own mosque, as there was no church available.
Politics
The capitulation of Mecca and the defeat of an alliance of enemy tribes at Hunayn effectively brought the greater part of the Arabian world under Muhammad's authority. This authority was not enforced by any formal governments, however, as he chose instead to rule through personal relationships and tribal treaties. For his followers, Muhammad combined temporal and spiritual leadership and recognized no distinction between the sacred and the secular.
Views
Muslim feminists contend that Muhammad was a champion of women's rights but that most of his male followers were unprepared to accept this aspect of his teaching, and subsequently altered it. Mernissi (1991) described her The Veil and the Male Elite as a vessel journeying back in time in order to find a fabulous wind that will swell our sails and send us gliding towards new worlds, towards the time both far away and near the beginning of the Hejira, when the Prophet could be a lover and a leader hostile to all hierarchies when women had their place as unquestioned partners in a revolution that made the mosque as open place and the household a temple of debate.
Muslims are not embarrassed by the fact that Muhammad liked women or indeed sex, regarding this as healthy and also as providing guidance on how men should treat women, indeed on how they should engage in intimacy (praying before doing so).
Personality
Muhammad earned a reputation for honesty and the nickname, al-amin ("the trustworthy"). During the rebuilding of the Ka'bah after a flood (some sources say fire), a fight almost broke out over whom would have the honor of putting the Black Stone back in its place. Abu Umayyah, Makkah's oldest man, suggested that the first man to enter the gate of the mosque the next morning would decide the matter. That man was Muhammad. The Makkans were ecstatic. "This is the trustworthy one (al-amin)," "they shouted in a chorus, "this is Muhammad." He came to them and they asked him to decide on the matter. Muhammad proposed a solution that all agreed to - putting the Black Stone on a cloak, the elders of each of the clans held on to one edge of the cloak and carried the stone to its place. The Prophet then picked up the stone and placed it on the wall of the Ka'ba. The precise date of this incident is not known.
Even at the height of his power, Muhammad only ever used the title 'messenger' (rasul) or prophet (naby) and always lived very modesty (when he died he left almost no personal property). He recited, "I am just a human being like you," except "to me is given the revelation that your God is God alone." He dressed modestly and disliked ostentatious clothes.
Because his example was understood to represent the highest ideal for human conduct, many details of his life, his likes and dislikes were preserved so that a great deal of information is available to anyone who is interested to know what his opinions were on a range of topics. We know that he loved cats and horses, hated bad smells, disliked music, and loved the color green (hence it is the color for Islam). Muslims believe that he was inspired when acting in his capacity as a prophet but that when he was not fulfilling that role he did so as a fallible human, so for example when he advised on farming he might not necessarily have given sound advice. Asked what Muhammad was like, his wife Aisha once said, "read the Qur'an," suggesting that Muhammad lived by what he preached.
Connections
From 595 to 619, Muhammad had only one wife, Khadijah. She was Muhammad's first wife and the mother of the only child to survive him, his daughter Fatima.
After Khadija's death, Muhammad married again, to Aisha, daughter of his friend Abu Bakr (who later emerged as the first leader of the Muslims after Muhammad's death). In Medina, he married Hafsah, daughter of Umar (who would eventually become Abu Bakr's successor). Later he was to marry more wives, for a total of 11 (nine or ten living at the time of his death). Some of these women were recent widows of warriors in battle. Others were daughters of his close allies or tribal leaders. These marriages sealed relations between Muhammad and his top-ranking followers. These men played important roles, advising Muhammad, who always consulted on important matters.
Some say that he also married his slave girl Maria al-Qibtiyya, but other sources speak to the contrary. She bore him a son, Ibrahim, who died in infancy.
Muhammad's daughter Fatima married Ali, Muhammad's cousin. According to the Sunni, another daughter, Umm Kulthum, married Uthman. Each of these men, in later years, would emerge as successors to Muhammad and political leaders of the Muslims. Thus all four of the first four caliphs were linked to Muhammad by blood, marriage, or both. Sunni Muslims regard these caliphs as the Rashidun, or “Rightly Guided.”
His marriage to Aisha is often criticized today, citing traditional sources that state she was only nine years old when he consummated the marriage. Critics also question his marriage to his adopted son's ex-wife, Zaynab bint Jahsh, and his alleged violation of the Qur'anic injunction against marrying more than four wives alleging that he fabricated the verses that allowed this, which also abolished adoption. Such criticism is almost exclusively non-Muslim. Muslims take a different view, believing that Muhammad was protected as a prophet from any major error and that his life represents the highest standard of human behavior. It is a noble (hasan) sunnah.
Muhammad was survived only by his daughter Fatima and her children (some say that he had a daughter, Zainab bint Muhammad, who had borne a daughter, Amma or Umama, who survived him as well).
In Shi'a Islam, it is believed that Fatima's husband 'Ali and his descendants are the rightful leaders of the faithful. The Sunni do not accept this view, but they still honor Muhammad's descendants.
The descendents of Muhammad are known by many names, such as sayyids, syeds سيد, and sharifs شريف (plural: ِأشراف Ashraaf). Many rulers and notables in Muslim countries, past and present, claim such descent, with various degrees of credibility, such as the Fatimid dynasty of North Africa, the Idrisis, the current royal families of Jordan and Morocco, and the Agha Khan Imams of the Ismaili branch of Islam. In various Muslim countries, there are societies that authenticate claims of descent; some societies are more credible than others.