The Life of the Prophet ﷺ

Sixth-century Arabia was a peninsula of desert and dry hill country, with no central government and no single ruling power. Its people lived mostly as tribes, moving with their herds or settled around oases and trading towns. Honour, lineage and loyalty to one’s tribe or clan governed daily life far more than any written law — a wrong done to one member of a tribe was answered by the whole tribe, which kept a rough order but also fed long cycles of tribal conflict.

Makkah stood at the centre of this world for a different reason: trade and pilgrimage. Sitting on a route linking Yemen in the south to Syria in the north, the city grew wealthy on the caravans passing through it — the Qur’an later refers to the Quraysh’s familiar “journey of winter and summer” (Surah Quraysh, 106:2). At the city’s heart stood the Ka’bah, already regarded across Arabia as an ancient sacred shrine, traditionally linked to Ibrahim and Isma’il, and a destination for pilgrimage and trade fairs alike. The Prophet’s own tribe, Quraysh, held the prestige of guarding it and hosting the pilgrims who came each year.

Religiously, the Arabia of this period was overwhelmingly polytheistic. Idols — reportedly numbering in the hundreds — stood in and around the Ka’bah itself, among them well-known names such as Hubal, al-Lat, al-‘Uzza and Manat, each associated with different tribes. Alongside this majority, a small number of people known as Hunafa (singular: Hanif) are recorded as having already rejected idol worship on their own, seeking the older monotheism associated with Ibrahim without yet having any revealed scripture to follow. Jewish communities were established in various parts of Arabia, most significantly in Yathrib (later Madinah) and Khaybar, and Christian communities existed in places such as Najran in the south and among some Arab tribes near the Byzantine and Sasanian frontiers — so the idea of one God was not unknown in Arabia, even if it was not what most Makkans practised.

This was the setting the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born into: a society with real strengths — hospitality, courage, eloquence, strong bonds of loyalty — alongside real harms, including tribal warfare and, as the Qur’an later condemned, the burying alive of infant daughters practised by some (Qur’an 81:8–9). It is against this specific background that the message he would carry — the oneness of God, and the equal human worth of every person regardless of tribe, wealth or status — represented such a fundamental challenge to the world around him.

Muhammad ﷺ was born in Makkah around 570 CE, into the clan of Hashim of the tribe of Quraysh. The year is remembered as the Year of the Elephant, after a failed expedition against Makkah described in Surah al-Fil. His father, Abdullah, had died before his birth, so he was born an orphan in his father’s line.

Following Makkan custom, the infant was given to a wet-nurse from the desert, Halimah of the Banu Sa’d, in whose care he spent his early years. When he was about six, his mother Aminah took him to visit relatives in Yathrib; she died on the return journey at al-Abwa. His grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, then took him in, and on the old man’s death two years later his uncle Abu Talib became his guardian. Abu Talib was not wealthy, and the boy worked, tending sheep — a task the Prophet ﷺ later noted that the prophets before him had also done.

As a young man he travelled with Abu Talib’s trading caravans to Syria. The classical seerah works also place here the story of a Christian monk, Bahira, who is said to have recognised in the boy the description of a coming prophet and to have warned Abu Talib to guard him. This account should be treated with real caution: Ibn Ishaq gives it only on unnamed authorities (“they allege”), and the version in Sunan at-Tirmidhi (no. 3620) was graded munkar — denounced — by hadith scholars including al-Albani and Ahmad Shakir. A number of scholars reject the whole story. It is mentioned here only because readers will meet it in older biographies, not because it is established.

What is not in doubt is his reputation. Long before any claim to prophethood, the people of Makkah called him al-Amin — “the trustworthy” — and as-Sadiq, “the truthful”. They left their valuables in his safekeeping. When the Ka’bah was rebuilt and the clans nearly came to blows over who would set the Black Stone in place, they agreed to accept the judgement of the next man to enter; it was Muhammad ﷺ, and his solution — laying the stone on a cloak carried by all the clans together — satisfied everyone.

He also stood apart from the worst of Makkan life. He never worshipped idols, took part as a youth in a pact (the Hilf al-Fudul) to defend the wronged, and was known for keeping ties of kinship and helping the poor. When revelation finally came and he feared for himself, it was Khadijah رضي الله عنها who reassured him by pointing to exactly this record: “Allah will never disgrace you — you keep good relations, carry the weak, and help the afflicted.”

As he approached forty, Muhammad ﷺ increasingly withdrew to a cave on the mountain of Hira, on the edge of Makkah, spending nights there in worship and reflection. It was in Ramadan, on one of these retreats, that the angel Jibril came to him and commanded, “Read.” He answered that he could not read. The angel embraced him firmly and repeated the command, three times, then recited the opening verses of Surah al-’Alaq: “Read, in the name of your Lord who created — created man from a clinging clot. Read, and your Lord is the most Generous, who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3).

He returned home shaking and asked to be wrapped in a cloak. Khadijah رضي الله عنها listened, then took him to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, an old man who had studied the earlier scriptures. Waraqah recognised the description of the angel and told him: this is the same one who came to Musa; you will be driven out by your people, and if I live to see it I will support you. Waraqah died soon after, and for a time revelation paused before resuming.

Two things about this beginning are often noted. First, the content: the first revealed word was iqra’, “read”, and the passage speaks of the pen and of teaching — a striking opening for a message that would place learning and the seeking of knowledge among its central duties. Second, the manner: the Prophet ﷺ did not seek this, did not claim it eagerly, and his first reaction was fear and self-doubt, calmed by a wife who reasoned from his known character.

The early revelations that followed were short, rhythmic passages calling to the oneness of God, warning of accountability, and urging care for the orphan and the poor. For the first years the call was mostly private, spread among family and close friends. Among the earliest to accept it were Khadijah, his cousin Ali, his freedman Zayd ibn Harithah, and his friend Abu Bakr, who in turn brought others.

When the Prophet ﷺ began preaching openly — acting on the command “And warn your nearest kindred” (Qur’an 26:214) — Makkan opposition hardened. The message threatened the religious and economic order built around the idols of the Ka’bah, and the leaders of Quraysh moved against it.

Those with tribal protection, like the Prophet ﷺ himself under Abu Talib, faced ridicule, slander and pressure. Those without it — the poor, the enslaved, the foreign — faced far worse. Bilal ibn Rabah رضي الله عنه, an Abyssinian slave, was laid on the burning sand with a rock on his chest and told to renounce his faith; he answered only, “Ahad, Ahad” — “One, One” (Ibn Hisham’s Sirah) — until Abu Bakr bought and freed him, an event also recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari (no. 3754). Others, like the family of Yasir, were tortured; Sumayyah رضي الله عنها is remembered as the first to be killed for the faith.

To relieve the pressure, the Prophet ﷺ sent a group of Companions to Abyssinia, whose Christian king, an-Najashi, refused a Makkan demand to hand them back after hearing them recite from Surah Maryam. Meanwhile Quraysh imposed a social and economic boycott on the Prophet’s clan, confining them to a mountain valley for around three years of real hardship before it collapsed.

Two moments lifted the community in these years: the acceptance of Islam by Hamzah, the Prophet’s uncle, and by Umar ibn al-Khattab رضي الله عنهما, both strong and respected men. But the hardest blow came around 619 CE, the “Year of Sorrow”, when Khadijah and Abu Talib both died within a short time — the Prophet ﷺ losing at once his closest support and his protector. A journey to nearby Ta’if seeking help ended in him being stoned and driven out.

It was against this backdrop that the night journey and ascension (al-Isra’ wa’l-Mi’raj) took place, and the five daily prayers were made obligatory — a consolation and a turning of the community’s daily life towards God. The lesson the Companions drew from Makkah was not one of strategy but of character: hold to the truth, be patient, and keep your intention pure.

During the pilgrimage seasons the Prophet ﷺ had been meeting visitors from Yathrib, an oasis town north of Makkah worn down by long feuding between its two main Arab tribes, the Aws and the Khazraj. Groups of them accepted Islam and, over two meetings at the hill of al-’Aqabah, pledged to protect the Prophet ﷺ as they would their own families. Yathrib — soon called Madinat an-Nabi, “the city of the Prophet”, then simply Madinah — would be the new home.

The Companions emigrated in small groups, often secretly, leaving property and family behind. The Prophet ﷺ left last, with Abu Bakr, as the leaders of Quraysh met and agreed to have him killed by a group drawn from every clan so that no single family could be blamed. The two slipped out and hid for three nights in the cave of Thawr, south of Makkah, while trackers came so close that Abu Bakr feared they would be seen. The Qur’an refers to this moment: “when the two were in the cave, and he said to his companion, ‘Do not grieve; indeed Allah is with us’” (9:40). They then rode north by an unusual route and reached Madinah after a hard journey, welcomed by crowds who had waited for days.

In Madinah the Prophet ﷺ moved quickly on three fronts. He built a simple mosque of mud brick and palm trunks, which became the centre not only of worship but of teaching, consultation, the reception of delegations, and the care of the poor and travellers. He established a bond of brotherhood (mu’akhah) pairing each emigrant (Muhajir) with a Madinan supporter (Ansar); the Ansar shared homes, land, tools and income with people who had arrived with nothing, and the reports describe a generosity that later generations found hard to imagine. And he set down a written agreement, often called the Charter of Madinah, which treated the city’s groups — the Muslims and the Jewish tribes living among them — as one community (ummah) for the purposes of mutual defence, with each free to follow its own religion and law, and each bound to contribute to the common security.

The first year was spent settling the emigrants, learning to live as neighbours across old divides, and organising the daily rhythm of the five prayers, the call to prayer, the Friday gathering and the fast of Ramadan, which was made obligatory in this period. The migration was so decisive that, years later under ’Umar, the Companions chose to date the Islamic calendar from it rather than from the Prophet’s birth or the first revelation — marking the moment the faith became a community able to order its own life.

The Madinan decade was a period of building a society and defending it against repeated attempts to destroy it. Quraysh did not accept the loss of the emigrants or the threat the new community posed to their trade and standing. At Badr, in 2 AH, a Muslim force of about 313 met a Makkan army roughly three times its size and won a decisive victory that steadied the young community and shook Makkah. At Uhud, in 3 AH, the Muslims held the advantage until a group of archers left the position they had been ordered to hold; the Makkan cavalry turned the flank, and the Muslims suffered heavy losses, among them the Prophet’s uncle Hamzah رضي الله عنه. The Qur’an devotes a long passage of Surah Al ’Imran to the causes and lessons of that day, chiefly obedience and reliance on God. At al-Khandaq, in 5 AH, a large coalition besieged Madinah, which held behind a defensive trench dug on the advice of Salman al-Farisi رضي الله عنه until weather and division broke the siege.

Alongside the fighting there was diplomacy. In 6 AH the Prophet ﷺ set out with about 1,400 Companions to perform ’umrah, unarmed for war, and was stopped at Hudaybiyyah on the edge of the sacred area. The treaty signed there required the Muslims to turn back that year and return the next, and to hand back anyone who came to them from Quraysh without permission — terms so lopsided that some Companions were openly distressed. Its wisdom appeared within two years: the truce created a space in which people met the Muslims freely and Islam spread faster than at any point before, and the Qur’an named it “a clear victory” (48:1). In the same period the Prophet ﷺ sent letters carried by envoys to rulers beyond Arabia — the Byzantine and Persian emperors, the ruler of Egypt, the Negus of Abyssinia and others — inviting them to Islam.

When Quraysh broke the treaty by backing an ally against a tribe allied to the Muslims, the Prophet ﷺ marched on Makkah in 8 AH with around ten thousand men. The city that had tortured the weak among his followers, boycotted his clan and fought him for years surrendered with almost no bloodshed. Standing at the Ka’bah before the people responsible for all of it, he asked what they thought he would do with them; they said, “good — a noble brother, the son of a noble brother.” He answered, “Go, for you are free,” a near-quotation of the words of Yusuf to his brothers. He cleared the Ka’bah of its idols, confirmed the custodianship of the sanctuary in the hands that had held it, and left the running of the city largely unchanged.

The consistent pattern the Companions recorded from these years was firm defence when attacked, willingness to accept an unequal peace for a greater good, and, at the moment of complete victory, amnesty rather than revenge.

In 10 AH the Prophet ﷺ led the pilgrimage for the only time in his life, joined by a very large gathering of Companions. Standing at Arafah he delivered the address remembered as the Farewell Sermon, whose contents are preserved across several authentic reports. He declared the life, property and honour of every person inviolable; abolished the blood-feuds and the interest-bearing debts of the pre-Islamic age, beginning with those owed to his own family; enjoined the good treatment of women and of those under one’s authority; reminded the people that they would meet their Lord and be asked about one another; and stated that no Arab has any superiority over a non-Arab, nor white over black, except by piety. He asked them to convey his words to those absent, and reminded them that he had left among them that which, if they held to it, would keep them from going astray. Around this time the verse was revealed: “This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favour upon you” (5:3).

Soon after returning to Madinah he fell ill with a fever. In his final days he continued to lead or attend the prayer as long as he was able, then asked Abu Bakr to lead it in his place. He freed his servants, gave away the little money in the house, and repeatedly urged those around him to guard the prayer and to be careful of the rights of people under their care. He died in the room of ’Aishah رضي الله عنها, on a Monday in Rabi’ al-Awwal, 11 AH — the date most often given as the 12th — at the age of about 63.

The community was overwhelmed, and several of the strongest Companions could not at first accept that he was gone. ’Umar رضي الله عنه stood and denied it. Abu Bakr رضي الله عنه, arriving from the outskirts of the city, confirmed the death, then came out to the people and said: “Whoever used to worship Muhammad — Muhammad is dead. Whoever worships Allah — Allah is alive and never dies,” and recited: “Muhammad is no more than a messenger; messengers have passed away before him. If he dies or is killed, would you turn back on your heels?” (3:144). The report is in Sahih al-Bukhari. It is said that it was as though the people had not known the verse until Abu Bakr recited it that day.

What the Prophet ﷺ left was not wealth, land or a dynasty — his estate was given away as charity — but a completed revelation and a documented way of life. He is reported to have said that he left behind two things: the Book of Allah and his Sunnah, and that whoever holds to them will not be misguided. The scholarship, law, spirituality and history of Islam that followed are, in large part, the ongoing work of understanding and living by those two.