Muhammad

Muhammad

Muhammad was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet, sent to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. Muhammad united Arabia into a single Muslim polity, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis of Islamic religious belief. He died in 632, a few months after returning from the Farewell Pilgrimage.

About Muhammad in brief

Summary MuhammadMuhammad was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet, sent to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is believed to be the final prophet of God in all the main branches of Islam, though some modern denominations diverge from this belief. Muhammad united Arabia into a single Muslim polity, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis of Islamic religious belief. He died in 632, a few months after returning from the Farewell Pilgrimage, and by the time of his death, most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam. The revelations that Muhammad reported receiving until his death form the verses of the Quran, regarded by Muslims as the verbatim ‘Word of God’ on which the religion is based. The name Muhammad means ‘praiseworthy’ and appears four times in the Quran. The Quran also addresses Muhammad in the second person by various appellations; prophet, messenger, servant of God, announcer, witness, bearer of good tidings, warner, reminder, one who calls , light personified, and the light-giving lamp. Muhammad was orphaned at the age of six. He was raised under the care of his paternal grandfather Abd al-Muttalib, and upon his death,. In later years, he would periodically seclude himself in a mountain cave named Hira for several nights of prayer. Muhammad’s followers were initially few in number, and experienced hostility from Meccan polytheists.

To escape ongoing persecution, he sent some of his followers to Abyssinia in 615, before he and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina later in 622. This event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar, also known as theHijri Calendar. In December 629, after eight years of intermittent fighting with Mecca tribes, Muhammad gathered an army of 10,000 Muslim converts and marched on the city of Mecca. He seized the city with little bloodshed, and Muhammad died in June 632. Some Western academics cautiously view the collections of Hadith as accurate historical sources, such as Muhammad al-Bukhari, Muhammad ibn al-Hajjaj, Muhammad at-Tirmidhi, Abd ar-Rahman al-Nasai, Abu Dawood, Malik ibn Anas al-Daraqni, Majah ibn Majah, Malik al-Rasid, and Anwar al-Taraqneh. Many scholars accept these early biographies as authentic, though their accuracy is unascertainable. Recent studies have led scholars to distinguish between traditions touching matters that are purely legal and purely historical. In some cases, traditions could have been invented while historic events may have been only subject to exceptional cases. The earliest surviving written sira is Ibn Ishaq’s Life of God’s Messenger written c. 767 CE. Although the work was lost, this sira was used at great length by Ibn Hisham and to a lesser extent by Al-Tabari.