Muhammad

Muhammad ibn Abdullah was born around 570 CE in the trading city of Mecca, in the Hashim branch of the Quraysh tribe. His father died before his birth and his mother died in his early childhood, so he was raised by his grandfather and then his uncle Abu Talib. As a young man he joined caravan trade to Syria, and around twenty-five he married Khadijah, a successful older businesswoman; their marriage lasted about twenty-five years. Around 610 CE, at about age forty, Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad received his first revelation from the angel Gabriel while meditating in a cave on Mount Hira. From around 613 he preached publicly that there is one God, Allah, and that submission to God—islam—is the right way of life. A small group including Khadijah, his cousin Ali and his friend Abu Bakr accepted the message. The Quraysh leadership, whose status rested on Mecca's polytheistic shrine and pilgrimage trade, responded with mounting persecution. In 622, Muhammad and his community migrated to Yathrib, later Medina, in the event known as the Hijra, which became the start of the Islamic calendar. There he arbitrated tribal disputes and structured the Constitution of Medina, including Jewish tribes within a single political community, the umma. The next decade brought conflict with Mecca: the Battle of Badr (624) won by Medina, the defeat at Uhud (625), and the successful defense at the Battle of the Trench (627). The execution of male members of the Banu Qurayza after that battle remains a contested historical episode and the subject of ongoing scholarly debate. After the Treaty of Hudaybiyya in 628 he entered Mecca largely without bloodshed in 630 and removed the idols from the Kaaba. He died in Medina in 632, a few months after his farewell pilgrimage; by then most of Arabia had accepted Islam. The revelations he reported were later compiled as the Quran, and with hadith collections form the basis of Islamic law.