Muhammad

Muhammad (محمد; c. 570 CE – 8 June 632 CE) is the central figure of Islam and widely regarded as its founder by non-Muslims. He is known as the "Holy Prophet" to Muslims, almost all of whom consider him to be the last prophet sent by God to mankind to restore Islam, believed by Muslims to be the unaltered original monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. Muhammad united Arabia into a single Muslim polity and ensured that his teachings, practices, and the Quran, formed the basis of Islamic religious belief.

Born approximately 570CE in the Arabian city of Mecca, Muhammad was orphaned at an early age; he was raised under the care of his paternal uncle Abu Talib. Periodically, he would seclude himself in a mountain cave named Hira for several nights of prayer; later, at age 40, he reported being visited by Gabriel in the cave, where he stated he received his first revelation from God. Three years later Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" (lit. islām) to him is the only way (dīn) acceptable to God, and that he was a prophet and messenger of God, similar to the other prophets in Islam.

Muhammad gained few early followers, and met hostility from some Meccan tribes. To escape persecution, Muhammad sent some followers to Abyssinia before he and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina (then known as Yathrib) in the year 622. This event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar, also known as the Hijri Calendar. In Medina, Muhammad united the tribes under the Constitution of Medina. In December 629, after eight years of intermittent conflict with Meccan tribes, Muhammad gathered an army of 10,000 Muslim converts and marched on the city of Mecca. The attack went largely uncontested and Muhammad seized the city with little bloodshed. In 632, a few months after returning from the Farewell Pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and died. Before his death, most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam.

The revelations (each known as Ayah, lit. "Sign [of God]"), which Muhammad reported receiving until his death, form the verses of the Quran, regarded by Muslims as the "Word of God" and around which the religion is based. Besides the Quran, Muhammad's teachings and practices (sunnah), found in the Hadith and sira literature, are also upheld by Muslims and used as sources of Islamic law.