Muhammad
muhammad

(Mecca 570 or 571 AD- Madina 632) The central messenger and prophet in Islam; the receiver and transmitter of Gods message to mankind, as recorded in the Holy Koran, the prinicipal relgious text for Muslims. Muhammad has no religious importance in Christianity and Judaism, and is considered not to be a prophet by adherents of these two religions, while Muhammad's position in later religions, like Baha'i, resemble what is found in Islam.

THE SOURCES
>The sources available to us on Muhammad are Muslim, written in Arabic. They are principally in the form of the hadiths, the traditions, which are systematical efforts of choosing between good and not so good stories of Muhammad's life, often collected in the shape of sîras. Bits and pieces of Muhammad's life is also recorded in the Koran. Little is known from other sources. The siras and hadiths available are the result of work from about 100 years after Muhammad's death, but are a continuation of a very accurate and living oral tradition. The compilations where built on historical criticism not very unlike what is the method in modern historical criticism. The oldest compilation now available, are the ones of Ibn Ishaq (d. Baghdad 768).
The material is extensive, and the presentation of Muhammad in the early texts is straighforward: Different versions of stories are presented, and Muhammad himself is presented as a human being with both his good and his bad sides (the latter have been used by opponents of Islam to present Muhammad as a false prophet). Except fromcertain passages, the matierial bears few traces of being legendary, and was first told by people who knew Muhammad as a man, and told to people of the same epoque and cultural environment. These are very good reasons for us to treat the material on Muhammad's life as historical sources, and even more, as good historical sources. Sadly, many Western historians have underevaluated the efforts put down in the compilations available, but more respect is paid by scientists of our time.

MUHAMMAD AS A NORMAL MAN (570-610)
Muhammads birth is said to have been in the "year of the Elephant", which one believes is pointing to the invasion from Yemen, where an elephant was brought along in order to smash the Ka'ba, en event which is dated to 570 AD (where Muhammad's recorded age at certain times, have been used as the main source for the estimation). Muhammad's family belonged to the clan of Hashim, a branch of the Quraysh tribe. While the Quraysh was dominating Mecca, the Hashimis had little but religious prestige connected to the, at that time pagan, shrine of Ka'ba.

As Muhammad's father, Abdallah, died before the birth of his son, and his mother, Amina, when he was 6, Muhammad was in the care of his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib for two years, and then with his uncle Abu Talib, until he reached mature age. Muhammad is by Muslim thologists not believed to have received any education, and in young age he started working with the caravans. It was while working as a trader, that Muhammad came to know the widow (and divorcee) Khadija, who was the owner of a caravan company where Muhammad was employed. At the age of 25 Muhammad married Khadija, then 40. Even if Khadija had children from both of her former marriages, she got 7 children with Muhammad.
Khadija died in 619, and soon Muhammad remarried. Unlike in his marrige with Khadija, he chose to have several wifes, 9 is reported. While some of these wifes were ways of knotting closer relations with powerful people in the society, and some were widows without economical support, Muhammad did provoke the death of husbands of wives.

THE FIRST REVELATION (610)
Muhammad received his first revelation in 610, on the mountain of Hira outside Mecca. The revelation came in a time when Muhammad searched for solitude. Muhammad received the first fraction of the Holy Koran from the angel Gabriel, and experienced first great pain, and feared that he was going to die. Muhammad was ordered to recite (though the Arabic word 'iqra' more often is understood as 'read', but Muhammad is considered illiterate by Muslim theologists). The first fraction Muhammad received is believed to be the beginning of sura 96:

¹Recite in the name of your Lord, who created,
²created mankind from clots of blood,
³recite, and your Lord will be the bountiful,
⁴he who have taught by the pen,
⁵taught mankind what was not known.

After this first revelation, no new came for a period. Then they came back, and continued for the rest of Muhammad's life. The revelations changed the style during the 22 years of revelations, from more poetic in the beginning to more prosaic later, and in the content, it changed from warnings on what was to come to mankind from God if man didn't turn in direction of God's will, to regulations on behavior and rules for the society. These changes came parallel to changes in the position of Islam in the society. In the beginning when only a small group of people were Muslims, the need for spreading the message was prevailing. Later, from the time when Muhammad moved to Madina, and got a leading position in the town, the need for rules for a society was the more important. The ordering of the elements of the revelation, is not chronological to their disclosure to Muhammad, and elements from early times are often arranged together with later elements.

COVERSIONS AND RESISTANCE (610-619)
The first person to be converted to Islam, was a woman, Khadija, Muhammad's wife. What was the first, is disputed, as there are contradicting stories on this. Khadija was all through the 9-10 years from the first revelation to her death, a very important support and protection for her husband, especially economically, but she appears to have had little importance beyond this. Muhammad also enjoyed the protection of his uncle and earlier guardian, Abu Talib. But Abu Talib and Khadija both died in 619, and from this time on, Muhammad's position was under strong threat.
The process of converting was slow in the early years, and he was strongly opposed by other Meccans, who accused him of little respect for the religion of the forefathers, which had some resemblance with Islam, but was a polytheistic religion. One story, rejected by many Muslims, yet our sources are Muslim, is the one of the "Satanic verses". Muhammad once added one aya where three former Meccan goddesses, Al-Lat, Al-'Uzza and Manat, were mentioned as intermediaries, in sura 53.

¹⁹Have you though of Al-Lat and Al-'Uzza,
²⁰and Manat, the third of the?
²¹These are intermediaries exalted whose intercession is to be hoped for.
²²Such as they do not forget

The ayats 21-22 are not in our present Koran, where this text now is found:

²¹Is it the male for you, and female for him?
²²That would have been a crooked division!

There are two interpretations of this: Many Muslim scholars doubt the sources, yet they do not totally reject that there is something to the story. Many other, among them Western scholars, believe that the first version was an attempt, and a successful one, to entice the Meccans to join Islam. The name of the verses "Satanic verses" come from an explanation found among some Muslim scholars, that the two first verses were given to Muhammad by Satan.
No matter how one interprets this, all scholars seem to agree that the difficult conditions of the first few Muslims are reflected in this story.

THE HIJRA (622)
A large part of Muhammad's followers had to seek refuge in Abyssinia in 615, due to the resistance among the Meccans to the message of Muhammad. This resistance continued, and was so firece, that Muhammad had to escape in 622, and arrived in Yathrib, 300 km north of Mecca, on September 20 (=6. Rabi^cu l-'awwal),- we have no account telling which day Muhammad and his flock escaped Mecca itself. About 15 years later this year was fixed as the first year of Muslim era (meaning that the date of escape is not the first day of the Muslim era).
Muhammad is believed to have been invited to Yathrib, as a hakim, a judge, and here he could establish the first Muslim community, and Muhammad served as the head of the leaders of the other communities of Yathrib. Soon after, Yathrib started to be called madinatu r-rasûl, 'the city of the messenger'.

MADINA AND THE RISE TO POWER (622-630)
Many of the inhabitants of Yathrib converted to Islam, but among the large Jewish community that lived here, only few converted. A large part of the converts are called hypocrites, by the first Muslim sources. After only two years, Muhammad's relationship with them had begun to deteriorate, and the remaining Jewish believers were later expelled, and some even executed, for co-operating with Muhammad's enemies.
Muhammad enforced his position in the region, and in particular in Yathrib, through successful military campaigns, like the one at Badr in 624, and the defence battles in Uhud (where the Muslims faced a slight defeat) in 625 and Ditsh in 627. Neighbouring tribes started to enter into agreements with Muhammad, and in 628, after Muhammad tried to perform the pilgrimage, Hajj he concluded a treaty with the Meccans, that allowed the Muslims to enter Mecca the following year for performing. In 630 Muhammad managed to take control over Mecca without any resistance. A general amnesty was granted to all Qurayshis, Muhammad's former enemies, even if they did not convert to Islam.

RULER OF HIJAZ AND THE MUSLIMS (630-632)
This increased Muhammad's importance even more, and in 632 he was able to perform the hajj. Soon after his return to Madina, he died in the presence of his favourite wife, 'A'isha and her father Abu Bakr, and Muhammad was buried in his own house, which had already served as a mosque for some years. The mosque still lies there, and is counted as the second most important mosque in Islam, and Madina the second most holy city.
Muhammad is equally considered a manifestation of God in Baha'i and Babism, two religions that has grown out of Islam. Both of these religions revere Muhammad highly, but has their focus on the later revelations of Bab and Baha'ullah, both of the 19th century.