Muhammad

Muhammad was born, according to the conventional dating, around 570 in Mecca within the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh. Islamic tradition describes the early loss of his parents and his upbringing by his grandfather and subsequently his uncle Abu Talib. This family history is known chiefly through biographies written down later. Historians use these sources critically and differ over the certainty of individual childhood details.

According to Islamic tradition, he worked in trade and married Khadija, who became an important early supporter. His position within the Quraysh provided family connections, but did not make him Mecca's ruler. His formal education and literacy are debated. The traditional portrayal of a prophet without scriptural schooling also carries religious significance and is not a straightforwardly recoverable educational biography in the modern sense.

According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad received his first revelations through the angel Gabriel around 610 near Mount Hira. Muslims regard the Qur'an as God's revelation and Muhammad as the final prophet. Historical scholarship studies preaching and textual transmission without establishing divine origin as a historical conclusion. His message emphasised one God, responsibility before judgement, prayer and care for vulnerable people.

His preaching in Mecca attracted followers and encountered opposition. In 622 he and his community moved to Medina, the hijra that subsequently became the starting point of the Islamic calendar. There he also acted as mediator and leader of a political community. Agreements associated with Medina illuminate relationships between different groups, although scholars discuss the composition, dating and interpretation of these texts.

Leadership in Medina encompassed religious prescriptions, treaties, adjudication and armed conflicts with opponents. Battles and changing alliances together shaped the process of community formation. In 630 Muhammad took Mecca, after which his authority in Arabia expanded further. Sources describe policies towards different tribes and religious groups; these varied situations should not be reduced to one uniform attitude or a solely military explanatory model.

Islamic tradition places the Night Journey (isra) and the ascension (mi'raj) around 621, shortly before the hijra. The Qur'an mentions the journey briefly: sura 17 opens by praising God, 'who carried his servant by night from the sacred place of worship to the farthest place of worship'. The detailed accounts are in the hadith and in the biography by Ibn Ishaq. There the angel Gabriel brings the mount al-Buraq, a white animal 'larger than a donkey and smaller than a mule' whose every stride reaches as far as it can see. Muhammad rides it from Mecca to Jerusalem and there leads the earlier prophets in prayer.

From Jerusalem, according to the tradition, he ascends with Gabriel through the seven heavens, where he meets Adam, Jesus, Joseph, Moses and Abraham among others, as far as the 'lote tree of the utmost boundary'. There the ritual prayer is imposed: fifty times a day at first, reduced to five on the advice of Moses. Even among the earliest Muslims there was disagreement about the nature of the journey: most Sunni scholars regard it as a bodily journey made while awake, whereas a report attributed to Aisha says that only his spirit travelled. The depiction of al-Buraq with a human face comes from later Persian and Indian miniature painting, not from the early texts. Historians treat the story as a tradition of faith; the event is commemorated on the 27th of the month of Rajab, and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (completed in 691–692) was later associated with it.

Western Arabia possessed tribal relationships, trade and sanctuaries that supported social and political connections. Mecca held a distinctive position centred on the Kaaba, but the extent of its trading networks remains under investigation. Different religious communities, including Jews and Christians, lived in and around Arabia alongside other cults. Muhammad's preaching therefore emerged in an environment already familiar with monotheistic ideas and diverse ritual traditions.

The late antique world was shaped in part by rivalry and warfare between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Arab groups maintained different connections with these powers. Religion, law and political loyalty were not separated as they are in many modern models of the state. The formation of an Islamic community must therefore be read within circumstances of kinship, treaties and authority, rather than solely as religious doctrine or solely as state formation.

After the death of Khadija, around 619, Muhammad married, among others, Aisha, the daughter of his closest companion Abu Bakr. The most authoritative Sunni hadith collections, those of al-Bukhari and Muslim, contain reports traced back to Aisha herself: she is said to have been six years old (seven in some versions) when the marriage was contracted in Mecca, and nine when, shortly after the hijra, she moved into his house in Medina and the marriage was consummated. Early historians such as Ibn Sa'd and al-Tabari give the same ages, and classical Islamic jurisprudence generally accepted them. The marriage also sealed the alliance with Abu Bakr, later the first caliph.

These reports were written down about two centuries after the events, in a society without birth records. Some modern Muslim authors argue from other data, such as the age of her sister Asma, that Aisha must have been older; most hadith scholars and historians do not find those calculations convincing. Part of recent academic research, by contrast, doubts whether the report itself goes back to the seventh century and places its circulation in eighth-century Iraq. Marriages of girls around or before puberty were common in the late antique world: Roman-Byzantine law set the limit for girls at twelve, and the sources do not show that contemporaries, Muhammad's opponents included, took offence. Criticism of it dates mainly from modern times. By present-day standards and law a marriage at that age is a child marriage; the historical context explains the practice but is not a judgement on it, and the tradition plays a part in present-day debates about the age of marriage.

During his lifetime, a community emerged that connected shared religious practices with new forms of loyalty and mutual obligation. Attention to almsgiving, family relationships and social responsibility acquired a place in preaching and communal rules. Their application occurred within existing society and did not immediately transform every relationship. Slavery persisted, while prescriptions concerning treatment and manumission became part of the early Islamic normative tradition.

His leadership reorganised alliances and power relationships across much of Arabia. Mecca and Medina became enduring centres of Islamic practice and memory. Further expansion beyond Arabia occurred principally after his death under subsequent leaders and must be distinguished from his own activities. Historians investigate the interaction of belief, social solidarity and political organisation rather than attributing the development to a single cause.

Muhammad died in 632 in Medina. Different traditions recount his final illness and the events surrounding his death. Disputes subsequently arose over leadership and succession, later helping shape differing Sunni and Shia traditions of memory. These later distinctions should not automatically be projected onto every early participant. His tomb in Medina acquired an important place in the religious history of the community.

The Qur'an and sayings and actions attributed to him became foundations for Islamic theology, law and everyday practice. Hadith collections and detailed biographies received their surviving forms later. Muslim scholars developed their own methods of assessing reports; modern historians also investigate dating, textual history and other early testimony. Recognition of him as the final prophet is a statement of faith, while his role in early Islamic community formation is studied historically.

The core of Islamic doctrine is tawhid, the absolute oneness of God (Allah). Sura 112 sums it up: God is one, eternal, 'He begets not, nor was He begotten, and there is none comparable to Him'. In this doctrine God has no parents, children, consort or partners and cannot be captured in a form or image: 'there is nothing like Him' (42:11). How Qur'anic passages about God's 'hand' or 'face' should then be read is a point on which the theological schools differ. Setting anything or anyone beside God (shirk) counts as the gravest sin. That is why the Islamic tradition never depicts God and why the Qur'an expressly rejects the idea that God could have a son.

In that doctrine Muhammad is solely a human being: 'Say: I am only a human being like you, to whom it is revealed that your God is one God' (18:110). The profession of faith calls him God's servant and messenger, and the Qur'an stresses that he is mortal. According to tradition Abu Bakr said at his death: 'Whoever worshipped Muhammad: Muhammad is dead. Whoever worships God: God lives and does not die.' Muslims therefore do not worship Muhammad and for that reason reject the old Western term 'Mohammedans'. He is nonetheless honoured as an example and as the final prophet, with blessings after his name and in many countries the celebration of his birthday; how far that veneration may go is debated among Muslims themselves, as is the question of whether he may be depicted.