Mohammed

Muhammad (محمد; muħammad; Latinized as Mahometus c. 570 CE – 8 June 632 CE) was the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet and Gods messenger, sent to present and confirm the monotheistic teachings preached previously by Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is viewed as the final prophet of God in all the main branches of Islam, though some modern denominations diverge from this belief. Muhammad united Arabia into a single Muslim polity, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis of Islamic religious belief.Born in approximately 570CE (Year of the Elephant) 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 and Abu Talibs wife Fatimah bint Asad. 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, in 610, Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that God is One, that complete submission (islām) to him is the right course of action (dīn), and that he was a prophet and messenger of God, similar to the other prophets in Islam.Muhammad gained few early followers, and experienced hostility from Meccan polytheists. To escape ongoing persecution, he sent some followers to Abyssinia in 615, before he and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina (then known as Yathrib) later in 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 wars with Meccan tribes, Muhammad gathered an army of 10,000 Muslim converts and marched on the city of Mecca. The conquest went largely uncontested and Muhammad seized the city with little bloodshed. In 632, a few months after returning from the Farewell Pilgrimage, he fell ill and died. By 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 verbatim Word of God and around which the religion is based. Besides the Quran, Muhammads teachings and practices (sunnah), found in the Hadith and sira (biography) literature, are also upheld and used as sources of Islamic law (see Sharia).

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