Both before the rise of Islam and during the Islamic period,Arab tribes paid great attention to genealogy and guarded their knowledge of it with
meticulous care. In fact, during Islamic history a whole science of genealogy (
ʿilm al-anṣāb) developed that is of much historical significance. In the pre-Islamic period, however, this knowledge remained unwritten, and for that very reason it has not been taken seriously by Western historians relying only on written records. For Muslims, however, the genealogy of Muhammad has always been certain. They trace his ancestry to Ismāʿīl (Ishmael) and hence to the prophet Abraham. This fact was accepted even by medieval European opponents of Islam but has been questioned by modern historians
According to traditional Islamic sources, Muhammad was born in Mecca in “the Year of the Elephant,” which corresponds to the year ad 570, the date modern Western scholars cite as at least his approximate birth date. A single event gave the Year of the Elephant its name when Abrahah, the king of Abyssinia, sent an overwhelming force to Mecca to destroy the Ka'bah, the sanctuary Muslims believe to have been built by Adam and reconstructed by Abraham and which Abrahah viewed as a rival to his newly constructed temple in Sanaa in Yemen. According to tradition, the elephant that marched at the head of Abrahah’s army knelt as it approached Mecca, refusing to go farther. Soon the sky blackened with birds that pelted the army with pebbles, driving them off in disarray. Thus, the sanctuary that Muslims consider an earthly reflection of the celestial temple was saved, though at the time it served Arab tribes who (with the exception of the ḥanīfs, or primordialists) disregarded Abrahamic monotheism.
Soon after this momentous event in the histroy of Arabia, Muhammad was born in Mecca. His father,
ʿAbd Allāh, and his mother,
Āminah, belonged to the family of the Banu Hashim, a branch of the powerful Quraysh, the ruling tribe of Mecca, that also guarded its most sacred shrine, the Kaʿbah. Because ʿAbd Allāh died before Muhammad’s birth, Āminah placed all her hopes in the newborn child. Without a father, Muhammad experienced many hardships even though his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib was a leader in the Meccan community. The emphasis in Islamic society on generosity to orphans is related to the childhood experiences of Muhammad as well as to his subsequent love for orphans and the Qurʾānic injunctions concerning their treatment.
In order for Muhammad to master Arabic in its pure form and become well acquainted with Arab traditions, Āminah sent him as a baby into the desert, as was the custom of all great Arab families at that time. In the desert, it was believed, one learned the qualities of self-discipline, nobility, and freedom. A sojourn in the desert also offered escape from the domination of time and the corruption of the city. Moreover, it provided the opportunity to become a better speaker through exposure to the eloguet Arabic spoken by the Bedouin. In this way the bond with the desert and its purity and sobriety was renewed for city dwellers in every generation. Āminah chose a poor woman named Halimah from the tribe of Banū Saʿd, a branch of the Hawāzin, to suckle and nurture her son. And so the young Muhammad spent several years in the desert.
It was also at this time that, according to tradition, two angels appeared to Muhammad in the guise of men, opened his breast, and purified his heart with snow. This episode, which exemplifies the Islamic belief that God purified his prophet and protected him from sin, was also described by Muhammad: “There came unto me two men, clothed in white, with a gold basin full of snow. Then they laid upon me, and, splitting open my breast, they brought forth my heart. This likewise they split open and took from it a black clot which they cast away. Then they washed my heart and my breast with the snow” (Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life, Based on the Earliest Sources, 1991). Muhammad then repeated the verse, found in the Hadith, “Satan toucheth every son of Adam the day his mother beareth him, save only Mary and her son.” Amazed by this event and also noticing a mole on Muhammad’s back (later identified in the traditional sources as the sign of prophecy), Ḥalīmah and her husband, Ḥārith, took the boy back to Mecca.
Muhammad’s mother died when he was six years old. Now completely orphaned, he was brought up by his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib, who also died two years later. He was then placed in the care of Abd Talib, Muhammad’s uncle and the father of ʿAlī, Muhammad’s cousin. Later in life Muhammad would repay this kindness by taking Ali into his household and giving his daughter Fatimah him in marriage.
It is believed that Muhammad grew into a young man of unusual physical beauty as well as generosity of character. His sense of fairness and justice were so revered that the people of Mecca often went to him for arbitration and knew him as al-Amīn, “the Trusted One.” His striking appearance is the subject of countless poems in various Islamic languages. Muhammad, according to ʿAlī,
was neither tall nor lanky nor short and stocky, but of medium height. His hair was neither crispy curled nor straight but moderately wavy. He was not overweight and his face was not plump. He had a round face. His complexion was white tinged with redness. He had big black eyes with long lashes. His brows were heavy and his shoulders broad. He had soft skin, with fine hair covering the line from mid chest to navel. The palms of his hands and the soles of his feet were firmly padded. He walked with a firm gait, as if striding downhill. On his back between his shoulders lay the Seal of Prophethood [a mole], for he was the last of the prophets. (Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti, The Name & the Named: The Divine Attributes of God, 2000)
Islamic sources indicate that others recognized the mole as the sign of prophethood, including the Christian monk Baḥīrā, who met Muhammad when the Prophet joined Abū Ṭālib on a caravan trip to Syria.
When he was 25 years old, Muhammad received a marriage proposal from a wealthy Meccan woman, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, whose affairs he was conducting. Despite the fact that she was 15 years older than he, Muhammad accepted the proposal, and he did not take another wife until after her death (though polygyny was permitted and common). She bore him two sons, both of whom died young. It is from the first son, Qāsim, that one of the names of the Prophet, Abūʾ al-Qāsim (“the Father of Qāsim”), derives. She also bore him four daughters, Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum, and Fatimah. The youngest, Fāṭimah, who is called the second Mary, had the greatest impact on history of all his children. Shīʿite imams and sayyids or sharifs are thought to be descendants of Muhammad, from the lineage of Fāṭimah and ʿAlī. Khadījah herself is considered one of the foremost female saints in Islam and, along with Fāṭimah, plays a very important role in Islamic piety and in eschatological events connected with the souls of women.
By age 35, Muhammad had become a very respected figure in Mecca and had taken ʿAlī into his household. When he was asked, according to Islamic tradition, to arbitrate a dispute concerning which tribe should place the holy black stone in the corner of the newly built Ka'bah, Muhammad resolved the conflict by putting his cloak on the ground with the stone in the middle and having a representative of each tribe lift a corner of it until the stone reached the appropriate height to be set in the wall. His reputation stemmed, in part, from his deep religiosity and attention to prayer. He often would leave the city and retire to the desert for prayer and meditation. Moreover, before the advent of his prophecy, he received visions that he described as being like “the breaking of the light of dawn.” It was during one of these periods of retreat, when he was 40 years old and meditating in a cave called
al-Ḥirāʾ in the Mountain of Light (Jabal al-Nūr) near Mecca, that Muhammad experienced the presence of the archangel Gabriel and the process of the Qurʾānic revelation began.
