Who was Muhammad? The Prophet of Islam's life, explained

Muhammad was the Arab religious leader, born in Mecca about 570 CE, through whom Muslims believe God revealed the Quran, beginning around 610. He preached one God in a city of many gods, moved with his followers to Medina in 622, returned to Mecca as its leader in 630, and died in 632. Muslims revere him as the last of God's prophets, the "seal of the prophets", but do not worship him.

In short

• Muhammad's life is known from the Quran, from collections of his sayings and deeds, the hadith, and from biographies written from about a century after his death.
• The migration to Medina in 622, the Hijra, is so central that it marks year 1 of the Islamic calendar.
• Muslims honor Muhammad as God's final messenger and the model of a good life, and say "peace be upon him" after his name; they worship God alone.

What happened in Muhammad's life?

The outline below is the life as the Muslim sources record it, and most historians accept its main events and dates, while treating many details as uncertain (BBC Religions).

Year (CE)	Event
c. 570	Born in Mecca, in the Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe. His father has already died; his mother dies when he is about six, and he is raised by his grandfather and then his uncle Abu Talib
c. 595	Marries Khadija, a widowed merchant who had employed him in the caravan trade; she is his only wife for about 25 years
c. 610	Meditating in a cave on Mount Hira, near Mecca, he experiences the first revelation, brought, Muslims believe, by the angel Gabriel (Jibril), beginning with the word "Recite"
c. 613	Begins to preach publicly: one God, care for the poor, and a coming judgment. Mecca's leaders, whose city drew pilgrims to its shrine of many gods, oppose him
c. 615	Some Muslims take refuge with the Christian king of Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
619	The "Year of Sorrow": Khadija and Abu Talib both die, leaving him without his main protector
622	The Hijra: Muhammad and his followers migrate to Yathrib, later called Medina, "the city", where he becomes leader of a mixed community of Muslims, Jews and others
624–627	War with Mecca: the battles of Badr (624), Uhud (625) and the Trench (627); conflicts with some of Medina's Jewish tribes
628	The Treaty of Hudaybiyya with Mecca
630	Mecca surrenders with little fighting; the idols in the Kaaba are removed, and it becomes the center of Muslim worship
632	The Farewell Pilgrimage, then his death in Medina, where he is buried

By his death, much of the Arabian Peninsula had accepted Islam or his authority. In Medina he was not only a preacher but the head of a community, its judge, lawgiver and military leader, which is why his example shapes Islamic law as well as personal devotion. Who should lead after him was the question that later divided Sunni and Shia Muslims, a story told in what Islam teaches.

What are the sources for his life?

Four kinds of source tell Muhammad's story, and they differ in date and purpose.

1. The Quran. Muslims hold it to be God's word, not Muhammad's, and it rarely names him or narrates events directly, but it reflects his preaching and struggles. A manuscript held by the University of Birmingham was radiocarbon-dated in 2015 to between 568 and 645 CE, with 95.4% probability, close to his lifetime (University of Birmingham).
2. The hadith. Reports of what he said and did, each with a chain of narrators. The great Sunni collections, such as al-Bukhari's, were compiled in the 9th century, about 200 years after his death, by scholars who sifted many thousands of reports for reliability.
3. The sira, the biography. The earliest full life was written by Ibn Ishaq, who died about 767. His work does not survive on its own: it is known mainly through the edition of Ibn Hisham, who died about 833 and says he left out material he thought unsuitable (Wikipedia).
4. Non-Muslim writers. A few Christian texts from the 630s to the 660s, in Greek, Syriac and Armenian, mention an Arab prophet or "the Arabs of Muhammad". They confirm that he existed and led the early Arab movement, and little more.

How do historians weigh those sources?

Historians agree that Muhammad existed, preached in Mecca, led a community in Medina and died around 632. They differ on how much of the detail to trust, because the full narratives were written down a century or more after the events they describe, by believers, in a period of fierce political and religious argument.

Still argued

Many historians, following scholars such as W. Montgomery Watt, take the sira and hadith as a broadly reliable framework, to be read critically for later additions. A more skeptical school, from the 1970s on, argued that much of the traditional account was shaped by later generations and that the Quran and the early tradition must be tested against outside evidence; a few went further and questioned the traditional picture of where and how Islam arose. Most specialists today take a middle position: the outline holds, many details are uncertain, and the Quran itself is an early text. Muslims generally regard the authenticated hadith and the core of the sira as trustworthy.

Some episodes in the sources, such as the conflicts with Medina's Jewish tribes, are read differently by Muslim and non-Muslim historians, and among Muslims too: about what happened, how many were involved, and how events should be judged in their 7th-century setting. Careful accounts say which source reports each detail.

Why do Muslims revere Muhammad but not worship him?

Muslims believe Muhammad was a human being chosen by God, not a divine one. The Quran says plainly that "Muhammad is no more than a messenger" (3:144), and tradition records that when he died, his companion Abu Bakr told the grieving community: whoever worshipped Muhammad, Muhammad is dead; whoever worships God, God is alive and does not die. To pray to Muhammad, or to treat him as divine, would break Islam's central rule, that God alone is worshipped.

Reverence takes other forms. Muslims see his life, the sunna, as the example of how to live: how to pray, give, eat, treat family and neighbors. They invoke blessings on him in every daily prayer, following the Quran's call to do so (33:56). When Muslims say or write his name, they usually add "peace be upon him", in Arabic sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, "God bless him and grant him peace", often abbreviated PBUH or SAW in English. It is a sign of respect, also used, in a shorter form, for other prophets such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Most Muslims also avoid making pictures of him, so that he is never worshipped as an image and his likeness is never misrepresented.

How does Muhammad fit with earlier prophets?

In Islamic belief Muhammad was not the founder of a new religion but the last in a line of prophets that began with Adam and included Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, all of whom, Muslims believe, taught the same faith in one God. The Quran retells stories known from the Hebrew Bible and speaks of Jesus as a great prophet born of Mary, a view set side by side with the Christian and Jewish ones in who Jesus was. Muslims believe that the message given to earlier prophets had been partly forgotten or altered, and that through Muhammad it was given in its final form, which is why he is called the seal of the prophets. How historians of religion compare founders of faiths, and why Muslims object to calling Islam "Muhammadanism", follows from the same point: in Islam he is the messenger, and God is the center.

Check yourself

• Why does the Islamic calendar begin in 622, and what happened that year?
• What are the four kinds of source for Muhammad's life, and why do historians treat the sira with care?
• Without looking back, explain why Muslims revere Muhammad and say "peace be upon him" but do not worship him.

Sources

• Prophet Muhammad (570–632) — BBC Religions, 2011
• Birmingham Qur'an manuscript dated among the oldest in the world — University of Birmingham, 2015
• Ibn Ishaq — Wikipedia
• Historiography of early Islam — Wikipedia
• Surah Al-Imran, 144 — Quran.com
• Muhammad — Wikipedia