Working for his uncle, he gained experience in commercial trade traveling to Syria and eventually from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. In his early 20s, Muhammad began working for a wealthy merchant woman named Khadijah, 15 years his senior. She soon became attracted to this young, accomplished man and proposed marriage.
He accepted and over the years the happy union brought several children. Muhammad was also very religious, occasionally taking journeys of devotion to sacred sites near Mecca.
On one of his pilgrimages in , he was meditating in a cave on Mount Jabal aI-Nour. Recite for your lord is most generous…. Islamic tradition holds that the first persons to believe were his wife, Khadija and his close friend Abu Bakr regarded as the successor to Muhammad by Sunni Muslims. Soon, Muhammad began to gather a small following, initially encountering no opposition.
Most people in Mecca either ignored him or mocked him as just another prophet. Besides going against long standing beliefs, the condemnation of idol worship had economic consequences for merchants who catered to the thousands of pilgrims who came to Mecca every year. Increasingly, the resistance to Muhammed and his followers grew and they were eventually forced to emigrate from Mecca to Medina, a city miles to the north in This event marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
Muhammad settled in Medina, building his Muslim community and gradually gathering acceptance and more followers. He was so trustworthy that they called him the Trustworthy. At the age of forty, Muhammad received his first revelation from God through the Angel Gabriel. The revelations continued for twenty-three years, and they are collectively known as the Quran.
As soon as he began to recite the Quran and to preach the truth which God had revealed to him, he and his small group of followers suffered persecution from unbelievers. The persecution grew so fierce that in the year God gave them the command to emigrate. This emigration from Makkah to the city of Madinah, some miles to the north, marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. The power of the Quraish derived from their role as successful merchants. Several trade routes intersected at Mecca, allowing the Quraish to control trade along the west coast of Arabia, north to Syria, and south to Yemen.
Mecca was home to two widely venerated polytheistic cults whose gods were thought to protect its lucrative trade. After working for several years as a merchant, Muhammad was hired by Khadija, a wealthy widow, to ensure the safe passage of her caravans to Syria.
They eventually married. Divine Revelations When he was roughly forty, Muhammad began having visions and hearing voices. Searching for clarity, he would sometimes meditate at Mount Hira, near Mecca.
On one of these occasions, the Archangel Gabriel Jibra'il in Arabic appeared to him and instructed him to recite "in the name of [your] lord. These early revelations pointed to the existence of a single God, contradicting the polytheistic beliefs of the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula. Initially overwhelmed by the significance of what was being revealed to him, Muhammad found unflinching support in his wife and slowly began to attract followers.
His strong monotheistic message angered many of the Meccan merchants. They were afraid that trade, which they believed was protected by the pagan gods, would suffer. In Medina, located in present-day Saudi Arabia, Muhammad, one of the most influential religious and political leaders in history, dies in the arms of Aisha, his third and favorite wife.
Born in Mecca of humble origins, Muhammad married a wealthy widow at 25 years old and lived the next 15 years as an unremarkable merchant. These revelations provided the foundation for the Islamic religion. Muhammad regarded himself as the last prophet of the Judaic-Christian tradition, and he adopted the theology of these older religions while introducing new doctrines.
His inspired teachings also brought unity to the Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia, an event that had sweeping consequences for the rest of the world. Muhammad fled to Medina, a city some miles north of Mecca, where he was given a position of considerable political power. At Medina, he built a model theocratic state and administered a rapidly growing empire. In , Muhammad returned to Mecca as a conqueror. During the next two and a half years, numerous disparate Arab tribes converted to his religion.
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