The Life and Works of Muhammad

Muhammad was born around  570 CE in Mecca, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia]

He died in Medina on June 8, 632 CE.

His full name was  ABU AL-QASIM MUHAMMAD IBN ABD ALLAH IBN ABD AL-MUTTALIB IBN HASHIM,

Muhammad was born after the death of his father, 'Abd Allah. 

At first he came under the care of his paternal grandfather, 'Abd al-Muttalib. 

Because the climate of Mecca was considered to be unhealthful, he was given as an infant to a wet nurse from a nomadic tribe and spent some time in the desert.

At six mother, Aminah of the clan of Zuhra, died, and his grandfather died when he was eight.  Though his grandfather had been head of the prestigious Hashem (Hashim) clan and was prominent in Mecca politics, he was probably not the leading man in Mecca, as some sources suggest.  

Muhammad came under the care of the new head of the clan, his uncle Abu Talib, and is reputed to have accompanied him on trading journeys to Syria. 

About 595 CE, on such a journey, he was in charge of the merchandise of a wealthy woman, Khadijah of the clan of Asad.  She was so impressed by Muhammad that she offered to marry him. 

She is said to have been about 40, but she bore Muhammad at least two sons, who died young, and four daughters, of whom the best known was Fatimah

Fatimah married Muhammad's cousin 'Ali, who is regarded as Muhammad's divinely ordained successor by the Shi'ah branch of Islam. 

Until Khadijah's death in 619 CE, Muhammad took no other wife.

His marriage to Khadijah was a turning point in Muhammad's life. 

Prophetic and Preaching Activity

Muhammad appears to have been of a reflective turn of mind and is said to have adopted the habit of occasionally spending nights in a hill cave near Mecca.

The poverty and misfortunes of his early life doubtless made him aware of tensions in Meccan society.

Mecca, inhabited by the tribe of Quraysh (Koreish), to which the Hashim clan (Muhammad's clan) belonged, was a mercantile center formed around a religious sanctuary, the Ka'bah (Kaaba), which assured the safety of those who came to trade at the fairs.

In the later 6th century there was extensive trade by camel caravan between the Yemen and the Mediterranean region (Gaza and Damascus), bringing goods from India and Ethiopia to the Mediterranean; and the great merchants of Mecca had obtained monopoly control of this trade. Mecca was thus prosperous, but most of the wealth was in a few hands.

Tribal solidarity was breaking up; merchants pursued individual interests and disregarded their traditional duties to the unfortunate.

About 610 CE, as he reflected on such matters, Muhammad had a vision of a majestic being (later identified with the angel Gabriel) and heard a voice saying to him, "You are the Messenger of God."

This marked the beginning of his career as messenger (or apostle) of God (rasul AllaH), or Prophet (nabi).

From this time, at frequent intervals until his death, he received "revelations"--that is, verbal messages that he believed came directly from God.

Sometimes these were kept in memory by Muhammad and his followers, and sometimes they were written down.

About 650 CE, after his death) Muhammad's were collected and written into the Qur'an (or Koran, the sacred scriptures of Islam) in the form that has endured as the Quran or Holy Scriptures of Islam.

Muhammad is said to have been distressed after the vision and first revelation had been reassured by his wife, Khadijah.

In his later experiences of receiving messages there was normally no vision. (Occasionally there were physical concomitants, such as perspiring on a cold day, and these gave rise to the suggestion, now agreed to be unwarranted, that he was an epileptic.)

Sometimes he heard a noise like a bell but apparently never a voice.

The essence of such an experience was that he found a verbal message in his heart--that is, in his conscious mind.

With the help of Khadijah's Christian cousin Waraqah, he came to interpret these messages as in general identical with those sent by God through other prophets or messengers to Jews, Christians, and others and to believe that by the first great vision and by the receipt of the messages he was commissioned to communicate them to his fellow citizens and other Arabs.

In addition to proclaiming the messages he received, Muhammad must have offered explanations and expositions of them in his own words, as is evident in the large body of prophetic traditions that the community has preserved.

Soon he gathered some sympathetic friends who accepted his claim to be a prophet and joined him in common worship and prayers.

These culminated in an act of prostration in which they touched the ground with their foreheads in acknowledgment of God's majesty--still a cardinal act in Islamic worship.

In about 613 CE, Muhammad began preaching publicly, and he and his followers spent their days together in the house of a young man named al-Arqam.

It is probable that they sometimes worshipped together in the Ka'bah, a sanctuary of the Arab pagans.

The people of Mecca at the time were polytheistic and nominally worshipped many gods, but few believed that man was dependent on supernatural powers.

The merchants thought most things could be accomplished by wealth and by human planning. 

Some regarded Allah as a "high god" who stood above lesser deities, but nevertheless, Allah was a distant god. (Allah, the Arabic word for God, is used by Christian Arabs as well as by Muslims.)

The earliest passages of the Qur'an revealed to Muhammad emphasize the goodness and power of God as seen in nature and in the prosperity of the Meccans and call on the latter to be grateful and to worship "the Lord of the Ka'bah," who is thus identified with God.

Gratitude is to be expressed in generosity with one's wealth and avoidance of selfishness.

As a injunction, men are warned that they will appear before God on the Last Day to be judged according to their deeds and assigned to heaven or hell.

It is said that by proclaiming this message publicly, Muhammad had gained 39 followers before he moved to stay in the house of al-Arqam.

The names of 70 followers are known prior to the appearance of Meccan opposition to the new religion, but by this time there were probably more than 70 adherents.

Most were young men under 30 when they joined Muhammad.

The converts included sons and brothers of the richest men in Mecca, though they might be described as persons excluded from the most lucrative forms of commerce.

A handful of Muhammad's early followers are spoken of as "weak," which merely means that they were not of the tribe of Quraysh and so not effectively protected by any clan.

The new religion was eventually called Islam, that is, "surrender [to the will of God]," and its adherents were called Muslims, that is, "those who have surrendered."