The Prophet Muhammad was born at Mecca on Monday, 12th Rabi’al-Awwal in the year A.D 570. He was of the tribe of the Quraish of the line of Ibrahim through his son Isma’il. He was born posthumously: His father Abdullahi bin Abd-al Muttalib died while returning home from Syria with a Meccan caravan. He lost his mother Amina, daughter of Walib, when he was only six years old. As a result, this orphan boy had to be brought up for a short while by his grandfather, Abdal Muttalib, and then by his uncle, Abu Talib, after his grandfather’s death. Abu Talib trained him in tending his sheep and in his small business.

Our main knowledge of his life comes from the work of Ibn IShaq, who narrated Muhammad’s career under four periods namely:

(i) His first forty years as a thoughtful mediator at Mecca before he received revelations.

(ii) The first three years of his career as a Prophet, preaching within his own circle.

(iii) Ten years of public mission at Mecca and

(iv) The rest of his life spent at Medina

During his boyhood and youth, he was so very well known for his politeness, honesty and good character that he was given the title Al-Amin, the trustworthy. Two main events are worthy of note during the first period of his life: his journey to Syria at the age of twelve and his marriage at the age of twenty five. According to Ibn Ishaq, there was an old man of Lihb who was 122 years of age and was a seer. Whenever, he came to Mecca, the Quraish used to bring their boys before him, so that he could look at them and tell their fortunes. Abu Talib brought Muhammad along with some other boys to the seer who looked at him and struck by his appearance and cried ‘Bring me that boy”. When Abu Talib saw his eagerness, he hid him and the seer began to say, “woe to you, bring me that boy I saw just now, for by Allah he has a great fortune”. But Abu Talib went away.

At the age of twelve, Muhammad went with his uncle Abu Talib on a caravan journey to Syria. When the caravan reached Basra in Syria, Muhammad met a monk named Bahira who wanted to know all about him. Many caravans had often passed by him in the past and he never spoke to them or took any notice of them. He made a great feast for the members of the caravans. Bahira said that he saw a cloud overshadowing Muhammad. After some enquiry from Abu Talib, the Monk said to him, “Go back home, with your nephew and keep an eye on him, if the Jews see him and get to know about him what I know, they will certainly do him harm for a great future lies before this nephew of yours, so take him home quickly”. It is therefore clear that from an early age, Muhammad had been marked as a future great personality. His good manners coupled with his physical charms made him dear to all those people who came in contact with him.

At the age of twenty five, Muhammad got married to a widow named Khadija, whom he had been serving as a trader, travelling with her merchandise from Mecca to Syria. Muhammad’s honesty and skill made him a successful businessman. The success achieved by him in this business and his worthy character so impressed Khadija that she offered to marry him and he accepted. Although Khadija was fifteen years older than Muhammad, yet the two of them live together happily till death separated them. As long as Khadija lived, Muhammad never married any other woman. The couple was respected in Mecca because of their happily family life. As a result of his marriage to Khadija, Muhammad’s financial position thereby became more stable. As Muhammad became older, his wisdom was recognized by people and he was consulted in the matters of conflicts in some families.

The second period of his life began with the revelations which were start off his prophetic career. From an early age, Muhammad had developed the habit of spending some periods of meditation on Mount Hira near Mecca. It was during one of such periods, at about the age of forty (A.D 610) that he received his first revelation whereby he was selected by God to be the prophet of Islam. He heard a voice telling him to: “Read in the name of the Lord, who createth. Createth man from a clot of blood. Read, and thy Lord is the most bounteous, Who teacheth by the pen, teacheth man what he knew not”. (Surah 96, VV.1-5)

It was an angel, Gabriel that appeared unto Muhammad in this vision. It was a strange experience by Muhammad. He became confused and frightened, he returned home shivering with fear and related his experience to his wife, Khadija. He then learnt that the strange visitor he had in cave Hira was the Messenger of Allah, the creator of the World, the only One God who had no partner. Those revelations were to form the main principles of the new religion –Islam, which Muhammad was about to preach.

Before Muhammad began his preaching, the people of Arabia were great idolators, they worshipped Al-Uzza, al-Lat and al-Manat whom they considered to be the three daughters of Allah and idols they had placed in the Ka’bah. Their women used to dance naked and some of them who were poets used to compose poems concerning every part of their body. They used to bury their daughters alive because their men would not like to be addressed as father-in-law and because of poverty. Blood feuds were quite common amongst them. When a father died, he used to instruct his son to take revenge which was due from another tribe.

Such was Arabia before Muhammad began his preaching. Arab historians call it the period of Jahilliyya (i.e. period of darkness or ignorance) it was to such people that Muhammad brought his message of the Oneness of Allah. Muhammad lived an ordinary life among his fellow Arabs. He was not known as a Prophet, Preacher, Orator or a statement. None had hear Muhammad imparting gems of wisdom as he did thereafter, he was never seen discussing the principle of metaphysics, ethics, law, politics, economics and sociology. He was not even known as an ordinary soldier not to think of being a great general. He had uttered no word about God, Angels, the revealed Books, the early Prophets, the by gone nations, the day of judgement, the life after death, e.t.c. But when the divine revelation came to him and was commissioned with the mission of reforming humanity by God, he was a changed man. With the new message from Allah, he was imbused with qualities that were unique.

His transformations was so great that when he began to preach the Message from Allah, the whole of Arabia stood in awe and wonder and what was bewitched by his wonderful eloquence and oratory. It was so impressive and captivating that his worst enemies were afraid of hearing it lest it should penetrate deep into the recesses of their hearts or the very marrows of their bones and carry them off their feet and make them bid good-bye to their old religion and culture.

Now he appeared before his people as a reformer, a revolutionary, an illustrious politician, a great leader, a judge of the highest eminence and an incomparable general. This was really a miracle of Divine Calling. He succeeded in uniting the unruly, uncultured, warlike, ignorant and tribalistic people under one banner, one law, one religion, one culture and one civilization and one form of government.

The doctrine of faith that he preached has been summed up in the follow ward “I testify that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”. This simple confession of faith is so important in Islam that its mere utterance enough to make one a Muslim. It is so important because it contained not less than seven article of faith which are as follows:

(1) belief in Oneness of Allah

(2) the existence of Angels

(3) the Divine origin of books from God especially the Qur’an

(4) Messengers (Prophets) from God

(5) the Hereafter

(6) the premeasurement of good and evil and

(7) the Resurrection after death.

The second part of his teaching comprises the five obligatory duties of Muslims, otherwise known as the “five pillars of Islam”. The first of those five duties is the confession of faith in the Oneness of Allah and in the divine Messengership of Muhammad. The Qur’an tells us that Allah created everything-animals, sun, moon, star, stone, tree, e.t.c for our benefit and therefore none of those things should be worshipped. God has no partner, no adviser, no helper, no son, no daughter. He is the Only One and not one in three.

The second pillar of Islam is prayer. Every Muslim is required to pray five times a day and in so doing he must face in the direction of the Ka’aba in Mecca. He must also perform the ritual washing of the face, hands, feet and the head, clean his mouth, nostrils and ear before praying. Prayer are better said together congregationally in the mosque. The third pillar of Islam is Almsgiving. A Muslim should give away 21/2% of his annual saving either in cash or in kind. The alms collected would be used to support the poor and the needy. Fasting during the month of Ramadan form the fourth major duty of every Muslim. Muslims are expected to abstain from all food, drink and sexual union from dawn to sunset throughout the month.

The fifth and last of those obligatory duties is the Holy Pilgrimage to Mecca which every Muslim should aspire to undertake once in his/her lifetime provided he or she is capable of doing so. These were the main items of teachings of Muhammad. At the beginning of his preaching, Muhammad made it clear to his hearers that he was no more than an ordinary human being like any of them; that he was merely a Messenger of Allah. He succeeded in gaining the support of some of his relatives and friends to start with. Those include Khadija, his wife and Ali. For the first three years of his career, Muhammad engaged in preaching for winning some adherents in his own family among his private friends and some among the humble classes in the town.

By the fourth year of his prophecy, Muhammad had entered the third phase of his career. He could now declare his message publicly. And for the next ten years, Muhammad taught the Meccans the religion of Islam which was going to be their “way of life”. Since God is Righteous, he declared, He demands righteousness of His people. Muhammad’s preaching as it began to gain ground in Mecca, aroused the jealousy and hatred of the Meccans, who considered his teachings as an attack on the Ka’abah temple and their ancestral religion. The Meccans had been making much money from the proceeds they derived from pilgrims who came to Mecca annually to participate in the annual fairs. Naturally they would not want this source of their revenue to be destroyed or cut off.

Beside the doctrine of equality of all men as preached by Muhammad contradicted the Quraish belief in their right to rule their countrymen from North to South of Arabia Peninsula. They also resented the restrictions made upon their heavy drinking, adultery, gambling and exhibitions of the naked women in the annual fairs, e.t.c. Above all there was an age-old rivalry between the House of the Banu Umyya and the Hashimites. This explains why Abu Sufiyan, a member of the house of the Banu Umyya became an enemy of Muhammad who was a Hashimite. It was Abu Sufiyan who led the attack on Muhammad and his preaching. Whenever the new Muslims went to pray their enemies would disperse them. The Quraish would drown the voice of Muhammad by singing coarse songs and by making a tremendous noise whenever he tried to preach. One of them, Abu Jahl, his distant uncle, threw a camel’s placenta at the back of Muhammad’s neck when once he was absorbed in his prayers. Muhammad said nothing, he simply asked his daughter to clean him.

The Quraish spat on his face, threw stone at him and committed all sorts of evil deeds against him. They even called him a mad man. Rather than frighten him into silence, all those acts of hostility merely emboldened Muhammad to start preaching his message openly. To the annoyance of his enemies, he continued to gain more and more followers. The Quraish intensified their persecution so much that about eleven families had to migrate to Abyssinia (Ethiopia, Africa). Those were followed in 615 A.D by eighty-three families. In spite of all this, Muhammad continued to preach the Message from Allah fearlessly until at last, in the face of persistent opposition, he had to migrate from Mecca to Medina in the year A.D. 622. This migration is known as the Hijrah. The year A.D 622 has since marked the first year of the Muslim era and it is abbreviated as A.H (Meaning ‘After Hijrah”) and from it Islam counts its date. The rest of Muhammad’s life was spent at Yathrib now called Medina i.e the city of the Messenger, the city per excellence.

At Medina, Muhammad built his model state where all were treated equal in the eyes of the law without any clannish distinctions. Meanwhile the struggle between Muslims and the Quraish continued on more violent scale. This struggle eventually led to the Battle of Badr (A.D. 624). Abu Sufiyan, who was at that time a great enemy of Muhammad but later became a Muslim himself, led the Quraish from Mecca while the Prophet himself led the Muslims from Medina. In the battle that ensued, Muhammad’s 300 Muslims triumphed over 1,000 Meccans. This decisive victory of an inferior force from the poorer city over the Men of Mecca gave Islam great Prestige in South West Arabia. Other battle followed during the succeeding years and at last in the year A.D 630, Muhammad and his men marched on Mecca. Mecca fell without or with little fighting and the Prophet entered the city victoriously. It is remarkable that the people of Mecca, through non-Muslims were treated with a special magnanimity. Muhammad gave liberal gifts but he demanded the destruction of all the idols in the Ka’abah. Thus Arabia was totally won.

In the last year of his life (A.D 632), Muhammad again entered Mecca, this time to offer his “Farewell Pilgrimage” during which he gave a noble sermon. In it, Muhammad talked on fifteen points regarding man’s duty towards his fellow men. He encourages peaceful co-existence among Muslims and preached the principle of equality of all men in Islam. He condemned bloodshed and usury whilst he urged the people to safeguard the right of women and the right of slave as well, e.t.c. Three month after his return to Medina from the farewell pilgrimage, the Prophet suddenly took ill and died on the 13th day of the month of Rabi’ Awwal in the year 10. A.H (i.e. Monday June 8th 632 A.D). Thus ended the life of the last (or the seal) of Prophets of Allah. One characteristics that distinguishes his life from the lives of many of us today is that it was an open one. Everybody had something to hide from others. A father would normally keep mute over certain question coming from his son whilst a mother keep her daughter in dark regarding certain matters which are considered to be the mysteries of life. Even friends, however intimate they might be, sometimes would not let each other into certain secret in their live. In short humanity in general is to an extent individualistic.

Questions about one’s privacy usually receive the “mind your business” answer. We also try to explain some of our actions by attributing them to “reasons best known to ourselves”. In contrast, as far as Muhammad was concerned, he hardly had anything to hide from his people. He had many companions (or Sahaba) who wrote down his sayings and deeds. His wives reported about his prayers, fasting and as they saw in his private life. He was always prepared to answer questions put to him by any enquirer. In this way, there came into existence a body of information regarding his everyday life, his sayings and deeds which came to be known as the ‘Tradition of the Prophet or Hadith”.

Baba Ali Mustapha is with the Department of Planning and Research, Ministry of Environment, Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria.


Reference:

For further knowledge look for the Book ‘Introduction to the Hadith by A. RAHMAN.I. Doi, published by Islamic Publication Bureau, 136a, Isolo road, Mushin, Lagos ,Nigeria.

Muslims always trying to repackage mohammed in attempting to make him appear as a decent person whereas the opposite is the case How can one write a credible biography of mohammed and deliberately omit his numerous caravan raids, paedophilia, raping of sex slaves, genocide against defenseless tribes and numerous other despicable crimes too many to list here.