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Muhammad [a] ( Arabic: مُحَمَّد, romanized : Muḥammad; English: /moʊˈhɑːməd/; Arabic: [mʊˈħæm.mæd]; c. 570 – 8 June 632 CE) [b] was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. [c] According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings ...
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Muhammad was the founder of Islam and the proclaimer of the Qurʾān, Islam’s sacred scripture. He spent his entire life in what is now the country of Saudi Arabia, from his birth about 570 CE in Mecca to his death in 632 in Medina. According to Islamic tradition, the Qurʾān, understood as a literal transcription of the speech of God (Allah), was revealed to Muhammad in stages by the archangel Gabriel, beginning in 610.
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What family did Muhammad have?
According to Islamic tradition, his father died before Muhammad was born, and his mother died when he was a young child. He is usually said to have had 14 wives or concubines during his lifetime. Although polygamy was then prevalent in Arabic society, he was monogamously married to his first wife, Khadījah, until her death after about 25 years of marriage. He had four daughters and at least two sons (both of whom died as infants) with Khadījah and probably another son (who also died young) by a later wife or concubine, Māriyah. His youngest daughter, Fāṭimah, married Muhammad’s cousin ʿAlī, the fourth of Muhammad’s successors as leader of the Muslim community.
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The Qurʾān yields little concrete biographical information about the Islamic Prophet: it addresses an individual “messenger of God,” whom a number of verses call Muhammad (e.g., 3:144), and speaks of a pilgrimage sanctuary that is associated with the “valley of Mecca” and the Kaʿbah (e.g., 2:124–129, 5:97, 48:24–25). Certain verses assume that Muhammad and his followers dwell at a settlement called al-madīnah (“the town”) or Yathrib (e.g., 33:13, 60) after having previously been ousted by their unbelieving foes, presumably from the Meccan sanctuary (e.g., 2:191). Other passages mention military encounters between Muhammad’s followers and the unbelievers. These are sometimes linked with place-names, such as the passing reference to a victory at a place called Badr at 3:123. However, the text provides no dates for any of the historical events it alludes to, and almost none of the Qurʾānic messenger’s contemporaries are mentioned by name (a rare exception is at 33:37). Hence, even if one accepts that the Qurʾānic corpus authentically documents the preaching of Muhammad, taken by itself it simply does not provide sufficient information for even a concise biographical sketch.
Most of the biographical information that the Islamic tradition preserves about Muhammad thus occurs outside the Qurʾān, in the so-called sīrah (Arabic: “biography”) literature. Arguably the single most important work in the genre is Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq’s (died 767–768) Kitāb al-maghāzī (“Book of [the Prophet’s] Military Expeditions”). However, this work is extant only in later reworkings and abridgements, of which the best known is ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Hishām’s (died 833–834) Sīrat Muḥammad rasūl Allāh (“Life of Muhammad, the Messenger of God”). Ibn Isḥāq’s original book was not his own composition but rather a compilation of autonomous reports about specific events that took place during the life of Muhammad and also prior to it, which Ibn Isḥāq arranged into what he deemed to be their correct chronological order and to which he added his own comments. Each such report is normally introduced by a list of names tracing it through various intermediaries back to its ultimate source, which in many cases is an eyewitness—for example, the Prophet’s wife ʿĀʾishah. Variants of the material compiled by Ibn Isḥāq, as well as further material about events in Muhammad’s life, are preserved in works by other authors, such as Abd al-Razzāq (died 827), al-Wāqidī (died 823), Ibn Saʿd (died 845), and al-Ṭabarī (died 923).
The fact that such biographical narratives about Muhammad are encountered only in texts dating from the 8th or 9th century or even later is bound to raise the problem of how confident one can be in the sīrah literature’s claim to relay accurate historical information. This is not to suggest that there was necessarily an element of deliberate fabrication at work, at least at the level of a compiler like Ibn Isḥāq, who was clearly not inventing stories from scratch. Nonetheless, some accretion of popular legend around a figure as seminal as Muhammad would be entirely expected. At least to historians who are reluctant to admit reports of divine intervention, the problem is reinforced by the miraculous elements of some of the material included in Ibn Isḥāq’s work. Moreover, some of the narratives in question are patently adaptations of biblical motifs designed to present Muhammad as equal or superior to earlier prophetic figures such as Moses and Jesus. For example, before Muhammad’s emigration to Medina he is said to have received an oath of allegiance by twelve inhabitants of the city, an obvious parallel to the Twelve Apostles, and during the digging of a defensive trench around Medina Muhammad is said to have miraculously sated all the workers from a handful of dates, recalling Jesus’ feeding of the multitude. Finally, it is distinctly possible that some reports about events in Muhammad’s life emerged not from historical memory but from exegetical speculation about the historical context of particular verses of the Qurʾān.
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By carefully comparing alternative versions of one and the same biographical narrative, scholars have been able to show that a certain number of traditions about Muhammad’s life—for instance, an account of the Prophet’s emigration from Mecca to Medina—were in circulation already by the end of the 7th century. An important collector of such early traditions was ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr, a relative of ʿĀʾishah who was probably born in 643–644 and who is plausibly viewed as having had firsthand access to former companions of the Prophet. Moreover, a number of rudimentary details about Muhammad are confirmed by non-Islamic sources dating from the first decades after Muhammad’s traditional date of death. For instance, a Syriac chronicle dating from about 640 mentions a battle between the Romans and “the Arabs of Muhammad,” and an Armenian history composed about 660 describes Muhammad as a merchant who preached to the Arabs and thereby triggered the Islamic conquests. Such evidence provides sufficient confirmation of the historical existence of an Arab prophet by the name of Muhammad. Certain tensions with the Islamic narrative of the Prophet’s life remain, however. For example, some of the non-Islamic sources present Muhammad as having still been alive when the Arab conquerors invaded Palestine (634–640), in contrast to the Islamic view that the Prophet had already passed away at this point.
Apr 10, 2024 · Learn about the life and story of Muhammad, the prophet who received revelations from Allah and founded Islam. Explore his early years, his migration to Medina, his battles, his death and his legacy.
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Muhammad. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ( Arabic: مُحَمَّد بْن عَبْد ٱللَّٰه بْن عَبْد ٱلْمُطَّلِب; c. 570 – 8 June 632 CE) is believed to be the Seal of the Prophets in all of the main branches of Islam. Muslims believe that the Quran, the central religious text of Islam, was ...
The Prophet's Mosque (al-Masjid al-Nabawī), site of the tomb of Muhammad, Medina, Saudi Arabia. Muhammad, or Mohammed, (born c. 570, Mecca, Arabia—died June 8, 632, Medina), Arab prophet who established the religion of Islam. The son of a merchant of the ruling tribe, he was orphaned at age six. He married a rich widow, Khadījah, with whom ...
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Learn about the life, revelations, and legacy of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, from this unit by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Explore how he rose to power in Mecca, spread his message in Medina, and died in 632. See depictions of his life and his journey to Jerusalem in various artistic media.
Dec 2, 2019 · Definition. Muhammad ibn Abdullah (l. 570-632 CE) is venerated today as the Prophet of Islam and the “seal of Prophets” by his followers – the Muslims. Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last – hence the “seal” – of many prophets before him in Judaism and Christianity such as Adam, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jesus Christ ...
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