Who Was Prophet Muhammad?

1. The sources: Quran, hadith and the question of evidence

Scholars study the life of Muhammad from the Quran, the hadith collections and the early biographies, and they note that the earliest surviving biographies were written more than a century after his death, so details of his early life rest on traditional accounts. The Quran, which Muslims regard as the verbatim word of God revealed to Muhammad between 610 and 632 CE, is the earliest source, but it is not a biography: it contains little about his life, and its references to events are brief. The hadith, the reports of his words and actions, were collected in the generations after his death, and the most authoritative collections, including Sahih al-Bukhari, were compiled in the ninth century, two hundred years after his death.

The early biographies, above all the work of Ibn Ishaq, written in the eighth century and preserved in the recension of Ibn Hisham, are the main source for the narrative of his life. They were written by believers, for believers, and they present his life as a model for Muslims to follow. Scholars treat them with care: they accept the broad outline of the life, including the revelation, the Hijra and the battles, but they note that details, especially of the early life, cannot be verified from independent sources. The caution is not a judgement on the faith, but a statement about the evidence, and it is the same caution that scholars apply to the lives of other founders of religions.

The distinction matters for the reader of this article. Where the article says according to the traditional account, it means that the detail comes from the biographies and the hadith, written more than a century after the events, and that it is accepted by Muslims as part of the tradition. Where it says Muslims believe, it means that the statement is a matter of faith. The article does not present matters of faith as matters of history, and it does not present matters of history as matters of faith. The approach follows the profile on this site, which uses the same attributions throughout.

2. Early life in Mecca: the orphan, the merchant and the marriage

According to the traditional account, Muhammad was born in Mecca in about 570 CE, the Year of the Elephant, to the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe. His father, Abdullah, died before he was born, and his mother, Amina, died when he was about six years old. He was then raised first by his grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, and after his grandfather's death by his uncle, Abu Talib. The Year of the Elephant takes its name from the tradition that in that year an army from Yemen, with elephants, attempted to attack Mecca and was turned back, an event that is mentioned in the Quran.

As a young man he worked as a merchant and travelled with trading caravans, and he gained a reputation for honesty and trustworthiness: tradition records that he was known as al-Amin, the trustworthy. Mecca was a trading city, built around the Kaaba, a shrine that drew pilgrims from across Arabia, and its wealth came from trade and from the pilgrimage. Muhammad's work as a merchant gave him a knowledge of the tribes of Arabia and of the trade routes that linked Mecca to Syria and Yemen, and it gave him a standing in the city that would matter when he began to preach.

At about the age of twenty-five he married Khadija, a respected Meccan merchant, and they had children together. Khadija was older than Muhammad, and she had employed him to manage her trading business before their marriage. She was his first supporter, and according to the traditional account she was the first person to believe in his message when the revelation came. Islamic tradition describes him as unlettered, and no record of any formal schooling survives. Little else about his early life is documented outside the traditional accounts, which were written down more than a century after his death, and the article records that limitation openly.

3. The first revelation and the beginning of the preaching

According to the traditional account, Muhammad received his first revelation in 610 CE, at the age of about forty, while meditating in the Cave of Hira near Mecca. Muslims believe the angel Gabriel appeared to him and commanded him to recite, and the words he received became the first verses of the Quran. The first words, as recorded in the Quran, are: Recite in the name of your Lord who created. The command to recite is the origin of the name Quran, which means recitation, and the revelation continued, in passages, for the rest of his life, until 632 CE.

He began preaching publicly in 613 CE, proclaiming one God and calling for social justice and care for the poor, and his followers were few at first and faced persecution in Mecca for thirteen years. The message was simple and radical: there is one God, and all people are equal before him, and the rich have a duty to the poor. It challenged the religion of Mecca, which was built around the worship of many gods at the Kaaba, and it challenged the social order, which was built on tribe and wealth. The Quraysh, who controlled Mecca and profited from the pilgrimage, saw the message as a threat, and the early Muslims were mocked, boycotted and, in some cases, tortured and killed.

The preaching was not only a matter of belief but of social reform. The Quran, as Muslims believe it was revealed, contains commands about the treatment of orphans, widows and the poor, about honesty in trade, and about the equality of believers. The early community was small, drawn from the poor, from slaves and from younger members of the Quraysh, and it was held together by the belief that Muhammad was the messenger of God. The thirteen years in Mecca were the hardest of his life, and they ended with the decision to leave the city altogether.

4. The Hijra: the move to Medina and the first Muslim community

In 622 CE Muhammad and his followers migrated to Medina, then called Yathrib, in the event known as the Hijra, which marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. The Hijra was not a flight but an invitation: the people of Medina, divided by feuds between their tribes, had asked Muhammad to come and arbitrate between them, and the move gave the Muslims a city in which they could live openly. The Islamic calendar is counted from the Hijra, and the year 622 CE is the year 1 in the Islamic calendar, a sign of how central the event is in Muslim memory.

In Medina he united the tribes under the Constitution of Medina, built the first mosque, and led the Muslim community through conflict with Mecca. The Constitution of Medina was an agreement between the Muslim migrants from Mecca, the Muslim converts of Medina and the Jewish tribes of the city, setting out their rights and duties to each other. It is often cited by scholars as one of the earliest written constitutions, and it shows that the community in Medina was not only a religious group but a political one, governed by law and treaty rather than by tribal custom alone. The mosque he built was both a place of prayer and a centre of government, where the community met, where decisions were taken, and where the poor were fed.

The move to Medina changed the character of the movement. In Mecca, Muhammad had been a preacher with a small following; in Medina, he was the leader of a community, a lawgiver, a judge and a military commander. The change is the central fact of his biography, and it is the reason why his life is studied not only as a religious story but as a political one. The community he built in Medina became the model for the Muslim societies that followed, and the sunna, the example of his life in Medina, remains the guide for Muslim conduct. The Hijra is therefore not only a date but a turning point, and it is commemorated by Muslims every year.

5. Conflict with Mecca: battles, treaty and the return

In Medina, Muhammad led the Muslim community through conflict with Mecca, including the battles of Badr in 624 CE, Uhud in 625 CE and the Trench in 627 CE. The Battle of Badr, fought in March 624, was a victory for the Muslims against a larger Meccan force, and it is remembered in Muslim tradition as a sign of divine support. The Battle of Uhud, a year later, was a defeat, in which the Muslims suffered heavy losses and Muhammad himself was wounded. The Battle of the Trench, in 627, was a siege of Medina by a coalition of Meccan and tribal forces, which the Muslims survived by digging a trench around the city, a tactic suggested by a Persian companion. The three battles are the central military events of his life, and they are recorded in the Quran and in the biographies.

The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah in 628 CE brought a truce, and in 630 CE he entered Mecca peacefully. The treaty, concluded after the Muslims had set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca and been stopped by the Quraysh, was seen by many of his followers as a disappointment, because it required the Muslims to return without completing the pilgrimage. In retrospect it was a turning point: the truce gave Islam time to spread, and within two years the balance of power had shifted so far that the Quraysh could not resist. When Muhammad entered Mecca in 630, it was without a battle, and according to the traditional account he granted a general amnesty to the people of the city, including those who had persecuted the Muslims for thirteen years.

The entry into Mecca brought the Arabian Peninsula under one religious and political order, and the Kaaba, which had been a shrine to many gods, became the centre of Muslim worship. The traditional account records that the idols in the Kaaba were removed, and that Muhammad declared the end of the old order. The event is remembered in Muslim tradition as a moment of forgiveness, and it is often cited as an example of his character. Historians note that the unification of Arabia under Islam was a political achievement as well as a religious one, and that it created the conditions for the expansion of Islam beyond Arabia in the decades after his death.

6. The Farewell Sermon and the final months

In 632 CE Muhammad made the Farewell Pilgrimage and delivered the Farewell Sermon, and a few months later he fell ill and died in Medina on 8 June 632 CE. The Farewell Sermon, delivered on the plain of Arafat during the pilgrimage, set out principles of equality, justice and the rights of women that Muslims still cite today. According to the traditional account, he told the assembled pilgrims that no Arab is superior to a non-Arab, and no white person is superior to a black person, except by piety and good action, and he reminded them of the sanctity of life and property and of the duty to treat women well. The sermon is one of the most widely quoted texts in Islam, and it is the summary of his teaching that Muslims remember.

The Quran contains a verse that Muslims regard as central to his message of gratitude and remembrance: So remember Me; I will remember you. And be grateful to Me and do not deny Me. The verse, from the second chapter of the Quran, is often quoted in Muslim worship, and it expresses the relationship between God and the believer that the Quran presents throughout. The opening hadith of Sahih al-Bukhari, the most authoritative collection of hadith, records a saying attributed to Muhammad: The reward of deeds depends upon the intentions and every person will get the reward according to what he has intended. The saying is the foundation of Muslim ethics, because it places the intention behind an action at the centre of its moral value.

A few months after the Farewell Pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and died in Medina on 8 June 632 CE, at the age of about sixty-two. He was buried in Medina, in the room of his wife Aisha, where his tomb remains, and the mosque that grew around it is one of the holiest sites in Islam. His death raised a question that had not been settled: who would lead the community after him? The question was answered by the selection of Abu Bakr, his closest companion, as the first caliph, and the succession became the origin of the division between Sunni and Shia Muslims, a division that continues to this day. The death itself, like the life, is recorded in the traditional account, and the article presents it as the tradition records it.

7. Legacy: the second-largest religion and a life still studied

Muhammad is the founder of Islam, and Muslims believe him to be the final prophet of God, the Seal of the Prophets. Islam is the world's second-largest religion, with nearly two billion adherents, and the Quran and the example of his life, the sunna, remain the two foundations of Muslim faith, law and ethics. His life shaped the civilisation of Muslim societies across the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and beyond, in law, scholarship, art, architecture and science. The Islamic calendar is counted from the Hijra, and his name is honoured by Muslims around the world. Islamic tradition discourages the depiction of prophets in images, and this profile therefore carries no portrait, and this article contains no description of any image.

The influence of his life goes beyond religion. The Muslim societies that grew from the community he founded in Medina produced advances in medicine, astronomy, mathematics and philosophy that shaped the world, and the Arabic language, in which the Quran was revealed, became the language of scholarship across a vast region. The law that grew from the Quran and the sunna, known as Sharia, governs the lives of Muslims in matters of worship, family and commerce, and it is studied in universities around the world. The legacy is therefore not only a matter of faith but of civilisation, and it is studied by historians who are not themselves Muslim.

Scholars study his life from the Quran, the hadith collections and the early biographies, and they note that the earliest surviving biographies were written more than a century after his death, so details of his early life rest on traditional accounts. The caution is part of the scholarly study of his life, and it does not diminish his importance. Like Jesus Christ, whose life is also studied as the founder of a world religion, Muhammad is a figure whose importance goes beyond the religion he founded: he is a part of the shared history of the world, known to people of every faith and of none. The article has presented his life as the traditional account records it, with beliefs attributed throughout, and the reader is left to judge the history and the faith, as scholars themselves do.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Muhammad
• Wikipedia — Muhammad
• Quran.com — Quran 96 (The Clot)
• Sunnah.com — Sahih al-Bukhari 1

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• Who Was Albert Einstein? — Albert Einstein rewrote physics with relativity and won the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect. This explains his ideas, his life and his legacy.
• Who Was Alexander Graham Bell? — Alexander Graham Bell patented the first practical telephone in 1876. This explains his work with the deaf, the patent fight and his wider inventions.
• Who Was Alexander the Great? — Alexander the Great built one of history's largest empires before dying at 32. This explains his conquests, his cities and the debate over his legacy.
• Who Was Alfred Nobel? — Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, held 355 patents and founded the Nobel Prizes. This explains his explosives empire, his will and the prizes' legacy.
• Who Was Allama Iqbal? — Allama Iqbal was Pakistan's national poet, whose ideas shaped the case for Pakistan. This explains his poetry, his philosophy and his legacy.
• Who Was Benazir Bhutto? — Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim-majority country, serving as prime minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 1993-96.
• Who Was Bob Marley? — Bob Marley took reggae from Jamaica to the world and became a symbol of peace, resistance and unity. This explains his life, his music and his legacy.
• Who Was Bruce Lee? — Bruce Lee was the martial artist and actor who carried Hong Kong action cinema to the world and founded Jeet Kune Do, leaving a lasting influence.
• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.