Prophet Muhammad was the last prophet sent by Allah, and was the founder of Islam.

He was born in 570 CE in the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. He was orphaned at a young age and was brought up by his uncle, later worked mostly as a merchant, and was married by age 26.

Discontented with life in Mecca where idol worshipping was common, he used to retreat to caves in the surrounding mountains for meditation and reflection.It was in one of these caves that at age 40, in the month of Ramadan, he received his first revelation from Allah through the angel Jibrain (Gabriel). Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" to Him (lit. islām) is the only way (dīn) acceptable to God, and that he, Muhammad, was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and other prophets. Muhammad gained few followers early on, and was largely met with hostility from the tribes of Mecca; he was treated harshly and so were his followers.

To escape persecution Muhammad and his followers migrated to Madina (then known as Yathrib) in the year 622. This historic event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. In Madina, Muhammad managed to unite the conflicting tribes, and after eight years of fighting with the Meccan tribes, his followers, who by then had grown to ten thousand, conquered Mecca.

In 632 a few months after returning to Madina from his Farewell pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and died. By the time of his death most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam.

Inter-Islam - www.inter-islam.org

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