Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

A picture of the Arabian Peninsula in the late sixth century CE: its tribes, religions, trade routes, the Kaʿbah at Makkah, and the social conditions that shaped the world into which Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born in Makkah around 570 CE into Banu Hashim, a respected clan of the tribe of Quraysh. His father Abdullah died before his birth. This lesson explains his lineage, his family, and the traditional dating of his birth.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ lost his mother at around six, his grandfather at around eight, and was then raised by his uncle Abu Talib. His experience of orphanhood shaped a life that would later insist on the dignity of orphans.

As a young man Prophet Muhammad ﷺ worked as a shepherd and as a merchant, and became known to his people as al-Amin — the trustworthy one. The famous Kaʿbah arbitration story shows the reputation he had built long before revelation.

At around twenty-five, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ married Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, a respected Makkan merchant. Their partnership of about twenty-five years — until her death — supported the beginning of his prophethood.

Around 610 CE, in a cave on the mountain of Hira above Makkah, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ received the first verses of the Qur'an: 'Read in the name of your Lord who created.' This lesson traces what is known about that night, his return home, and Khadijah's response.

For roughly three years the call to Islam was quiet and private. The first Muslims — a wife, a young cousin, a close friend, an adopted son, an enslaved man freed for his belief — reveal what the message meant from the start.

After roughly three years of quiet teaching, revelation instructed Prophet Muhammad ﷺ to warn his close relatives, then to proclaim the message openly. His stand on the hill of Safa began Islam's public phase.

As the message became public, Quraysh moved from ridicule to open persecution — first of the socially unprotected, then of the wider community. Bilal was tortured, Sumayya became Islam's first martyr, and a boycott starved Banu Hashim for three years.

When persecution became unbearable, the Prophet ﷺ told a group of his followers to seek refuge with the Christian Negus of Abyssinia. Ja'far ibn Abi Talib's speech there is one of the earliest recorded explanations of Islam to a non-Muslim ruler.

In roughly the tenth year of prophethood the Prophet ﷺ lost both his wife Khadijah and his uncle Abu Talib — his emotional and social protectors. Rejected in Ta'if and returning to Makkah without a tribal shield, he did not stop.

One night the Prophet ﷺ was taken from Makkah to Jerusalem and then through the heavens. He returned with the command of the five daily prayers — a mercy given precisely in the year of his deepest sorrow.

During the pilgrimage seasons a delegation from Yathrib met the Prophet ﷺ at ʿAqaba. Two successive pledges opened the way for the migration (Hijrah) that would give the young Muslim community a home in the city later called al-Madinah.

In the first year at Madinah the Prophet ﷺ built the Prophet's Mosque, paired every muhajir emigrant with an ansari brother, and issued a written charter — sometimes called the Constitution of Madinah — that defined a single political community of Muslims and Jews.

In Ramadan of 2 AH a small Muslim force met a much larger Qurayshi army at the wells of Badr. The outcome — often called al-furqān, the 'criterion' — reshaped the Muslim community's confidence and its standing in Arabia.

One year after Badr, Quraysh returned with a larger army. At Uhud a Muslim advantage was lost when archers left their position for spoils. The Prophet ﷺ was wounded and Ḥamza was killed. The Qur'an's response distinguishes correction from despair.

A coalition (al-aḥzāb) of Quraysh, Ghatafan and allies laid siege to Madinah. On Salman al-Farisi's advice the Muslims dug a trench along the exposed northern flank of the city. Cold, hunger and a shifting wind broke the siege.

In Dhu al-Qaʿda 6 AH the Prophet ﷺ set out for ʿumra with 1,400 unarmed pilgrims. Turned back at Ḥudaybiyyah, he accepted terms many companions found humiliating. The Qur'an called it 'a clear victory' — and within two years its wisdom was visible.

In Ramadan of 8 AH the Prophet ﷺ entered Makkah at the head of 10,000 Muslims. There was almost no fighting, and almost no revenge. He forgave those who had persecuted the community for twenty years and cleared the Kaʿbah of its idols.

In Dhu al-Ḥijja of 10 AH the Prophet ﷺ led over 100,000 Muslims in Hajj. His addresses at ʿArafat and Mina summarised the ethics of Islam: sanctity of blood, wealth and honour; the end of pre-Islamic feuds and usury; the rights of women; and the equality of the descendants of Adam.

The companions preserved careful descriptions of the Prophet ﷺ — his stature, his features, his walk, his smile and his gravity — not as a portrait for veneration but as a record of a real human being whose whole life is a model.

The Prophet ﷺ prayed at night until his feet swelled, fasted often, and kept his tongue moist with the remembrance of Allah. His worship set the pattern for every later Muslim: continuous, unshowy and rooted in gratitude.

The Prophet ﷺ led a growing state from a mud-walled house. He mended his own sandals, milked his own goat, served his family, and refused to be treated as anything more than a servant of Allah.

The Qur'an calls him a mercy to the worlds. His mercy reached his family, his community, his enemies, children, women, slaves, animals and the earth itself. This lesson gathers the narrations that make that mercy concrete.

The Prophet ﷺ insisted that justice apply to friend and enemy, rich and poor, family and stranger alike. He told his own community that earlier peoples were destroyed for making the law bend to status, and that his own daughter would have been punished had she stolen.

Before revelation, Quraysh nicknamed him The Truthful, The Trustworthy. After revelation, even those who fought him deposited their valuables with him. This lesson traces sidq and amāna as the twin habits of his life.

The Prophet ﷺ said the best of people are those best to their families, and he was the best of his family. This lesson looks at his marriages, his fatherhood and his tenderness with his grandchildren — with the sources kept honest.

The Prophet ﷺ was tortured, boycotted, exiled and hunted. When he had legal power over his opponents he pardoned nearly all of them. This lesson traces the restraint that ran through every stage of his response.

The last weeks of the Prophet's ﷺ life in Madinah: his final illness, his instructions on prayer and the treatment of non-Muslims in Arabia, his death in the chamber of ʿA'isha, and the community's response led by Abu Bakr.

What the Prophet ﷺ left behind: the preserved Qur'an, the recorded Sunnah, a community of Companions, and a moral and civilisational current whose ripples are still measurable fourteen centuries later.