A Concise Guide to the Life of Muhammad (Introducing Islam)

Answering Thirty Key Questions

Ayman S. Ibrahim

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781540965073
• eBook ISBN: 9781493436613
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Vergleichende Religion

An expert in the study of Islam answers thirty important questions about Muhammad, offering a clear and concise guide to his life and religious significance. This companion volume to the author's A Concise Guide to the Quran answers many of the key questions non-Muslims have about Muhammad, reveals the importance of Muhammad for Christian-Muslim and Jewish-Muslim interfaith relations, and examines Muslim and non-Muslim primary sources. This introductory guide is written for anyone with little to no knowledge of Islam who wants to learn about Muslims, their beliefs, and their prophet.

Part 1: Muhammad’s History

1
Who Was Muhammad?

In world history, Muhammad is known as the founder of the religion of Islam. He reportedly lived in Arabia between 570 and 632, being born in Mecca and dying in Medina. Muslims believe he was a prophet sent by the deity to the Arabs to exhort them to abandon idolatry and to bring them to monotheism. Muslims claim that before becoming a prophet, he, like most Bedouins, traveled throughout Arabia as a trader. Islam is unique among world religions in that we know a great deal about its founder. The credibility of this information is questionable, but this is what Muslims generally believe about their prophet. Some two centuries after Muhammad’s death, numerous Muslim authors began claiming precise details about Muhammad: his height, appearance, habits, wives, and even specific conversations he had behind closed doors. While most scholars are skeptical of these traditions, as they appear religiously and politically driven, Muslims tend to trust their reliability. In answering this question, we will focus on what Muslims claim about their prophet before we analyze the various traditions critically in later questions.

Muhammad was born in 570 in Mecca in the western region of the Arabian Peninsula known as the Hijaz. His mother, Amina, gave birth to him months after his father, Abdullah, died. Muhammad was from a well-known family in Mecca, Banu Hashim. The Arabic word banu means “sons of,” while Hashim is the surname of the head of this family or clan. In Arabia, a man is usually identified as a member of the “Banu” so-and-so in order to refer to his larger family. Banu Hashim is rendered in English as the Hashimite clan. This clan was part of the prestigious and prosperous Quraysh tribe. The Quraysh was a powerful merchant tribe that held significant power in Mecca. Not only did the Quraysh control the trade routes that allegedly passed through Mecca, but they also managed the idol worship in the Ka’ba—the holy pagan shrine that generated ample wealth as a well-known destination for idol worshipers performing rituals and pilgrimage. While Muhammad’s family and tribe are important due to their prestigious status and role in Mecca, they are less important than is indicated by the Muslim claim that Muhammad is a descendant of Ishmael, the son of Abraham. For Muslims, Muhammad not only is a descendant of Abraham through Ishmael but also serves as a clear sign of the fulfillment of the divine promise for Ishmael to have a great nation.

In his youth and early adulthood, Muhammad worked as a shepherd and merchant. Muslims say he was known for his honesty and trustworthiness, to the extent that he was called al-Sadiq al-Amin, meaning “the honest and the faithful.” In his early twenties he worked for a wealthy and noble widow, Khadija, who needed someone to manage her reputable business, especially to lead her merchandise caravans between Mecca and Syria. Her wealth not only was obtained through her trade caravans but also came from an inheritance passed along from her previous two husbands, with whom she had several children. Because of Muhammad’s truthfulness, according to Muslim sources, she asked to marry him. They married when Muhammad was twenty-five and she was forty. Some suggest that Khadija was Christian because of her close connection to her cousin, Waraqa, who was a Christian priest with exceptional knowledge of Scripture. Muhammad and Khadija had four daughters as well as one or two sons who did not live long.

Muhammad was not satisfied with idolatry in Mecca. He did not subscribe to the pagan worship and its immoral lifestyle popular during his day. Muslim sources claim that Muhammad would isolate himself in a cave in Mount Hira and worship the true deity. When Muhammad was forty, during one of his visits to the cave, the angel Gabriel appeared to him. Muhammad was terrified and tried to climb the mountain to throw himself to his death. Gabriel rescued him and affirmed that Allah appointed him to be his messenger to the Arabs.1 With his heart beating rapidly in fear, Muhammad ran to Khadija and asked her to cover him until his fear was gone. She took him to her Christian cousin, Waraqa, who was an expert in Hebrew and the Christian gospel. Muhammad described to Waraqa what he had seen. Waraqa assured Muhammad that what he saw in the cave was the angel Gabriel, who was also sent by Allah to Moses of the Israelites. Waraqa prophesied that the Meccans would be hostile toward Muhammad and those who believed his message and that they would be expelled from Mecca. Muslims believe that this was a confirmation of Muhammad’s prophetic mission, designating him as the Prophet of the Arabs. From then on, Muhammad allegedly received divine inspirations from Allah through Gabriel. When a word came down, Muhammad would immediately proclaim it to the Meccans, who abused, persecuted, and mocked him.

For thirteen years, Muhammad continued to live in Mecca and persistently sought to proclaim what Gabriel told him. This is what became the message of Islam. The term Islam refers to devotion and submission to Allah. The followers of its message are “Muslims,” which reflects their submission to Allah. The proclamations came to be known as the Quran. Muhammad’s years in Mecca were colored by hostility and persecution toward his message and his young and newly believing community. Very few Meccans believed Muhammad’s message. Due to this harassment and abuse, Muslims claim, Allah instructed Muhammad to emigrate from Mecca to Medina, which was a small oasis about 250 miles northwest of Mecca. This move was later called the hijra, meaning “emigration,” and became significant for Muslims and the solidification of their new community of believers under Muhammad’s leadership.

For ten years, Muhammad lived with his community in Medina and continued to teach them the basics of Islam. Here, Muhammad became known as a commander and statesman. Muslim sources portray him as a skillful warrior and a clever leader who mastered the creation of tribal alliances and also knew when to break political treaties. He knew when to fight his enemies and when to withdraw. From Medina, Muhammad and his companions launched raids and expeditions to consolidate their political power in Arabia. Some raids targeted the Meccan pagans, whereas others dealt with Arab and Jewish tribes and settlements throughout Arabia. As time passed, Muhammad grew in power and military prowess. His enemies grew weaker, while he grew stronger. Eight years into his time in Medina, Muhammad successfully led a campaign of about ten thousand of his believing warriors to conquer Mecca, his homeland, from which he was earlier forced to emigrate. After his successful raid against Mecca, he became the sole leader of West Arabia. Some of his enemies called him the King of Arabia.2 Muslims believe that this turning point marked Islam’s victory since all Arabs submitted to Muhammad and his religious message. Before his death in 632, he organized military expeditions against Mu’ta and Tabuk—two strategic locations on the frontier of the Christian Byzantine Empire—but these campaigns were less successful.

Muhammad died in 632 in Medina. He was poisoned, according to the most trusted Sunni and Shiite traditions—although they differ regarding who actually poisoned him. Sunni traditions accuse a Jewish woman of poisoning Muhammad because he killed her husband, father, and uncle; Shiite reports point to Muhammad’s close companions and his young wife Aisha as conspirators who murdered Muhammad to gain power. The choice of the Sunnis to blame the Jewish woman may reflect a recurring pattern in Muslim tradition of accusing the Jews of a crime to cover up the ambiguity of a specific historical incident. The Shiite preference to accuse Muhammad’s companions and his wife is also understandable because it follows the major Shiite claims that Muhammad was betrayed by his own people, who stole power from the rightful heir, Ali. Since martyrdom is valued and revered in religious terms, both Sunni and Shiite Muslims still insist on depicting Muhammad as a martyr who gave his life for the sake of Islam.3 It should also be noted that the Sunnis’ favored tradition indicates that before Muhammad finally felt a deadly pain—described in the sources as the cutting of his aorta—the poison remained in his blood for three or four years, and then he died. This claim is usually dismissed by secular scholarship, which rejects the unreasonable time interval. The favored narratives of the Shiites, on the other hand, portray a conspiracy to poison Muhammad immediately prior to his painful death.4

After Muhammad’s death, Abu Bakr’s succession as the first caliph in Islam was controversial. Shiite Muslims believe that Ali should have been the immediate successor to lead the Muslim community politically and religiously. They reject Abu Bakr and his elevation, describing it as a coup. According to Muslim sources, many abandoned Islam after Muhammad’s death and refused to submit to Abu Bakr. Consequently, he launched the so-called Apostasy Wars to fight the apostates and the Arab tribes who abandoned Islam. Since wars lead to wars, the Apostasy Wars served as the launching pad for more conquests, which reached beyond Arabia. Within a few decades, the Arab Muslim warriors had conquered major lands in today’s Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. During the first century of Islam, the Muslim empire stretched from Central Asia to the Iberian Peninsula.

This is a summary of Muhammad’s life and career. However, it is important to note that the accuracy and reliability of its details are questionable. While it is the traditional story accepted by Muslims, most of the information provided above has been contested by many thinkers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Before we examine the major problems in the Muslim sources, we should first identify literature that claims to provide the story of Muhammad’s life. What are the major Muslim sources? Where can one begin to study Muhammad’s life? We discuss these matters in the next question.

1. Ibn Hisham and Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 106; and Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, book 1, hadith 3 (hereafter Bukhari, 1.1.3). Unless otherwise indicated, all hadith references in this book are from https://sunnah.com, which includes original Arabic texts and English translations of the hadith collections that are, according to Sunni Islam, the most trusted.

2. Ibn Hisham and Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 515; and Tabari, History, 8:122.

3. Ibn Hisham and Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 210, 516; and Shoemaker, Death of a Prophet, 301–2.

4. Bukhari, 5.59.713; and Sunan Abi Dawud, book 40, hadith 4499 (hereafter Sunan Abi Dawud, 40.4499).

2
What Are the Major Muslim Sources for Muhammad’s Life?

Most of what we know about Muhammad comes from Muslim sources written over a century after his death. Not one Muslim source can be traced to his generation, nor do we have any eyewitness testimonies from his time. Some Muslim reports were recorded several decades after Muhammad’s death, but none are extant. They were either lost or destroyed by later political leaders who sought to advance their views against those of their rivals. Nonetheless, in the second century of Islam (over one hundred years after Muhammad’s death), Muslims were the rulers in a vast region of conquered lands where most of the population was still non-Muslim. Muslim rulers—also known as caliphs—realized the need to establish a distinct religious identity unique to Islam. They sought to present Islam to non-Muslims, especially Christians and Jews who had already established solid traditions and had used their religious texts for centuries. Because Christians and Jews had Jesus and Moses, respectively, Muslims felt the need to introduce Islam’s prophet to Muslims and non-Muslims in their growing territory. This triggered the writing of numerous works in the second century of Islam.

Under the instruction of powerful caliphs, Muslim writers began to documen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Ayman Ibrahim’s A Concise Guide to the Quran
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chronological Events in Muhammad’s Life
• Introduction
• Part 1: Muhammad’s History
• Part 2: Muhammad’s Message
• Glossary
• Sources Consulted
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover