The life of the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ)

Sixth-century Arabia was a land of desert, tribes and trade. No single government ruled it. Rome and Persia reached into the north through Arab client kingdoms, the Ghassanids and the Lakhmids, and Yemen had its own rulers. In the interior, tribes governed themselves through chiefs, alliances and custom. Towns such as Mecca had their own councils and offices. There was no police force, so a man’s tribe was his real protection. Without one, no one would avenge him.

Benedikt Koehler, Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism (2014)Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

No empire stood behind what came next. No government paid for the message, and no army carried it at the start.

Mecca sat in a bare valley where almost nothing grew. It lived mainly on pilgrims and caravans. The Ka’bah, the house of worship built by Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Isma’il, drew tribes from all over Arabia. Merchants of the tribe of Quraysh took goods north to Syria and south to Yemen. His great-grandfather Hashim is said to have won safe passage from the tribes along the way.

Qur’an 2:127Qur’an 106:1-2Benedikt Koehler, Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism (2014)

That made Mecca the crossroads of Arabia. Anything said there would travel with the caravans and the pilgrims. A message that began in this one town could reach every tribe.

Yet the house of Ibrahim was now full of idols. About 360 stood around it. People gave worship to al-Lat, al-Uzza, Manat and Hubal, while still calling Allah (﷾) the Creator. Some walked round the Ka’bah naked. Their prayer there was little more than whistling and clapping.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4287↗Qur’an 53:19-20Sahih al-Bukhari 3039↗Qur’an 29:61Sahih al-Bukhari 369↗Qur’an 8:35

The cruelty ran deep. Some fathers buried baby girls alive and felt shame at their birth. No one knows how common this was. Some killed their children for fear of poverty. A widow could be inherited like property. Feuds between tribes passed from father to son. The Qur’an names each of these wrongs, which shows that they were real.

Qur’an 81:8-9Qur’an 16:58-59Qur’an 17:31Qur’an 4:19

A few people rejected all this. They were called hanifs, those who turned from idols to the faith of Ibrahim. One of them, Zayd ibn Amr, stood with his back to the Ka’bah and told Quraysh that none of them followed Ibrahim. He took in baby girls whose fathers meant to kill them. But he stood almost alone. He could save a few children. He could not change a people.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3828↗

Muhammad (ﷺ) was born in Mecca in about 570. Tradition places his birth in the Year of the Elephant, when an army with elephants marched on the Ka’bah. Surah (chapter) 105 of the Qur’an tells how Allah (﷾) destroyed it. Islamic tradition names its leader as Abrahah, ruler of Yemen. Some biographers give 571. He himself said he was born on a Monday.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 105:1Sahih Muslim 1162↗

He belonged to Banu Hashim, a noble clan of Quraysh that had little money. His father Abdullah died on a journey to Medina before he was born. His mother Aminah had a child with no father to provide for him. His grandfather Abd al-Muttalib, a leader of Mecca, named him Muhammad, the praised one.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Families in Mecca sent their babies to nurses in the desert. The air was cleaner and fewer children died. There they also learned the purest Arabic. The nurses wanted babies with rich fathers, who would pay them. So everyone refused the orphan. Ibn Ishaq reports that one poor woman, Halimah of Banu Sa’d, took him only because she had found no other child. She later told how her fortunes changed from that day: her weak animals grew strong, and her home had plenty in a year of famine.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

So the nurses passed him over at the start. The child who would one day be called a mercy to all people began as a baby with no one to pay for him.

One day, while he played with other boys, Jibril came and laid him down. He opened the boy’s chest, took out his heart, and removed a clot from it. He told him this was Satan’s share. He washed the heart and put it back. The frightened children ran to his foster mother, crying that Muhammad (ﷺ) had been killed. Anas, his servant, later said he saw the stitch marks on his chest. Muslims understand this as Allah (﷾) preparing him from childhood.

Sahih Muslim 162↗

At about six he returned to his mother. Ibn Ishaq reports that she took him to visit family in Yathrib, the town later called Medina. On the way home she fell ill and died at al-Abwa. He was now without either parent. Decades later he visited her grave, and he wept until those around him wept too.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih Muslim 976↗

Umm Ayman, a servant who had belonged to his father, brought him home and cared for him. He later freed her, and he still visited her late in his life. Abd al-Muttalib took him in and kept him close, even on the seat by the Ka’bah where no one else could sit. Two years later the old man died.

Sahih Muslim 1771↗Sahih Muslim 2454↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirIbn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

His uncle Abu Talib took him next. He loved the boy, and his wife Fatimah bint Asad raised him with her own children. But the house was poor. So he worked. He looked after sheep for the people of Mecca for a small wage. He later said that every prophet had tended sheep. A shepherd learns to be patient, to guard the weak, and to bring back the one that strays.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 2262↗

The Qur’an later reminded him of these years. It did not hide where he came from.

Qur’an 93:6-8

He knew hunger, grief and loss from the inside. When he later spoke for orphans, widows and slaves, he was speaking of a life he knew. Every kind of loss his followers would face, he had faced first.

As a boy of about twelve he went with Abu Talib on a caravan to Syria. Trade became his work. As a young man he saw the war of Fijar, a feud that broke the sacred months. The biographers report that he handed arrows to his uncles.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

After that war, clans of Mecca swore a pact to stand with anyone who was wronged, whoever he was. It was called the Pact of the Virtuous. The biographers report he was there, and that he said long after that he would answer such a call even in Islam. So he stood for justice before any revelation came, and revelation did not change that.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Mecca gave him a name: al-Amin, the trustworthy. People left their valuables with him. When he later stood on Safa and asked if they would believe him, they answered that they had never known him to lie. That answer came from the people who would soon call him a liar.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 4770↗

Khadijah bint Khuwaylid was a respected merchant of Mecca. She had been married twice before. She did not travel herself. She put up the money, hired men to take her goods, and shared the profit with them. That was a common way to fund a caravan, with risk and reward shared. She heard of his honesty and hired him. He took her goods to Syria with her servant Maysarah, and came back with a greater profit than she had seen before.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Benedikt Koehler, Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism (2014)

Khadijah then asked a friend to find out whether he would marry her. He said he could not afford to. When he learned who was asking, he agreed. He was 25. The biographers usually say she was 40. He gave a dowry of twenty young camels. A woman chose him, for his character, in a town where most men chased wealth and rank.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

For about twenty-five years she was his only wife. He took no other while she lived. They had two sons, al-Qasim and Abdullah, and four daughters: Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum and Fatimah. Both boys died young. He would bury almost all his children.

Sahih Muslim 2436↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Khadijah gave him a young slave, Zayd ibn Harithah, who had been kidnapped as a child. Years later Zayd’s father found him and came to buy him back. The Prophet (ﷺ) told Zayd he was free to go, with no payment at all. Zayd chose to stay. The biographers report that he then freed Zayd and adopted him. A man’s servant knows him well. This one would not leave him, even for his own father.

Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirIbn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 33:5

When he was about 35, flood and fire damaged the Ka’bah, and Quraysh decided to rebuild it. Ibn Ishaq reports that a ship wrecked near Jeddah gave them timber. They would accept only clean money for the work, nothing from usury or vice. That money ran short. So they built it smaller than Ibrahim’s house, leaving out the curved area still seen today. The Prophet (ﷺ) later told Aisha this. He carried stones with the others. When he was urged to bare himself to ease the load, he fell to the ground and called for his waist-cloth. Even as a young man he would not be uncovered.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 1584↗Sahih al-Bukhari 364↗

Then came the Black Stone. Every clan wanted the honour of setting it in place. For days they argued, and some swore to fight to the death. An old man proposed that the next person through the gate should judge. It was Muhammad (ﷺ), and they were glad. He spread a cloth, laid the stone on it, and told a man of each clan to lift a corner. Then he set it in place with his own hands.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He held no office. He commanded no army. Yet a whole town gave a dispute to him, because of his name for fairness. Remember that trust. It is what Mecca threw away a few years later.

As he neared forty, Aisha reports, true dreams began to come to him. Whatever he saw in sleep came to pass like the light of morning. He began to love being alone. He would take food and go to the cave of Hira, on a mountain near Mecca, to worship for nights at a time. He later said a stone in Mecca used to greet him before he became a prophet.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3↗Sahih Muslim 2277↗

One night in Ramadan, in about 610, an angel came to him there and told him to read. The Arabic word can also mean recite or proclaim. He answered that he could not read. The angel pressed him hard, let him go, and said it again. This happened three times. Then the angel gave him the first words of the Qur’an.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3↗Qur’an 2:185

The first word given to a man who could not read was “read”. The first subject was the pen and knowledge. The Qur’an itself points to his not reading as evidence. If he could write, it says, doubters would have had a reason to doubt.

Qur’an 29:48

He did not come down as a man who had got what he wanted. He came down shaking. He went straight to Khadijah and asked to be covered. When the fear left him, he told her what had happened and said he feared for himself.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3↗

Khadijah did not panic. She told him Allah (﷾) would never disgrace him. Then she gave her reasons. She had lived with him for fifteen years, and she knew him when no one was watching.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3↗

That is the first evidence in the whole story. It came from the person best placed to see through him, and she judged him on his conduct alone.

She took him to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, an old, blind Christian who knew the scriptures. Waraqah said this was the same angel who had come to Moses. Then he said he wished he could live to see the day Muhammad’s (ﷺ) people drove him out. The Prophet (ﷺ) was stunned, and asked if they really would. Waraqah said no man had ever brought such a message without being treated as an enemy.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3↗

So he was told on the first day what it would cost him. He was a man with a good name, a loving home and a living. He had no enemies at all. He stood to lose every one of those things.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3↗

Waraqah died soon after, and the revelation stopped for a time. Then, as he walked, he heard a voice from the sky. He looked up and saw the same angel, seated between the sky and the earth. He ran home in fear and asked to be wrapped up. Then came the command to begin.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4925↗

Some time later he fell ill and missed his night prayers for two or three nights. A woman of Mecca mocked him that his devil had left him. Surah 93 came in reply: his Lord had not forsaken him.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4950↗Qur’an 93:3

Why does the pause matter? A man making up a religion controls when the words come. He did not. Revelation came and went without his choosing. Sometimes it came like the ringing of a bell, which was the hardest for him. Sometimes the angel came as a man. On the coldest day, sweat ran from his forehead. Once his thigh grew so heavy that Zayd ibn Thabit feared his own would break under it.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2832↗

For about three years he called people quietly, one by one. Khadijah believed first. Ali, his young cousin who lived in his home, and Zayd, his adopted son, soon followed. Ibn Ishaq reports that Ali had come to live with him to ease Abu Talib’s poverty.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Abu Bakr, a merchant and his close friend, believed at once. The Prophet (ﷺ) later reminded people of this. When others called him a liar, he said, Abu Bakr told him he spoke the truth. Abu Bakr then brought his friends: Uthman, Zubayr, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas and Talhah.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3661↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Ammar ibn Yasir remembered a time when the only followers with him were five slaves, two women and Abu Bakr. That tells you who answered first. There were no armies and no chiefs. Those who came were the poor, the enslaved and the young. Sa’d was about seventeen. Ali was about ten. Later the Emperor of Rome would ask who followed him, and he would treat this very fact as the mark of a prophet.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3857↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirIbn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 7↗

They needed somewhere to learn. Al-Arqam ibn Abi al-Arqam, a young man, opened his house near Safa. The biographers report that the Muslims met there in secret. It became the first school of Islam.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The early verses were short and powerful. They spoke of Allah’s (﷾) oneness, of Paradise and Hell, and of the Day of Judgement. Almost no laws came in these years. Aisha explained why. Had the first command been to give up wine, she said, they would have refused. Faith came first, and rules came after hearts had changed.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4993↗

Then came the order to warn his nearest relatives, and to declare the message openly. The biographers report that he invited his clan to a meal. Abu Lahab, his own uncle, broke up the gathering before he could speak. So he tried again.

Qur’an 26:214Qur’an 15:94Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

One morning he climbed the hill of Safa and called out to the clans of Quraysh. They came, or sent someone. He asked: if he told them horsemen were behind that hill, would they believe him? They said yes, for they had never known him to lie. Then he told them he was a warner, before a severe punishment.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4770↗

He named the clans, then his own family. He told his aunt Safiyyah and his daughter Fatimah to save themselves, for he could not protect them from Allah (﷾). A man seeking power builds up his own family. He told his family plainly that being related to him would not save them.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2753↗

Abu Lahab shouted that he should perish, and asked if this was why they had been called. His own uncle had led the first public rejection. In reply came a surah that named him.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4770↗Qur’an 111:1-3

This surah took a risk. It said a living enemy would die in unbelief, and he lived for about ten more years. He could have said he believed, even falsely, to cast doubt on it. He never did. The verse stood in public for a decade, and it held. He died an enemy, soon after Badr.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Quraysh now needed an answer for the pilgrims. Ibn Ishaq reports that they went to al-Walid ibn al-Mughirah, their best judge of poetry. Call him a soothsayer? He said it was nothing like one. A madman? No. A poet? He knew every kind of poetry, and it was none of them. In the end they settled on calling it magic that split families. The Qur’an records that verdict.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 74:24-25

They kept changing the label because none of them fitted. People who had known him for forty years could not name one lie he had told.

Qur’an 69:41-43

Next came offers. Ibn Ishaq reports that Utbah ibn Rabi’ah came to him for Quraysh. If he wanted money, they would make him the richest. If he wanted honour, they would make him their leader. If he wanted a crown, he could be their king. He answered by reciting the Qur’an. Utbah went back shaken, and told them to leave him alone.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

They pressed Abu Talib to stop him, and threatened to fight. Ibn Ishaq reports his reply to his uncle. If they put the sun in his right hand and the moon in his left, he would not stop. He would go on until Allah (﷾) made it prevail or he died for it. The chain of this report is not strong, but it matches what he did. He turned down every offer they made.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

So why did Quraysh not simply believe? Partly pride. They could not accept that their fathers had been wrong, or that one God (﷾) could replace many. Partly rivalry. Ibn Ishaq reports Abu Jahl saying that his clan had matched Banu Hashim in everything, and now they claimed a prophet. Partly money. One God (﷾) at the Ka’bah threatened the pilgrim trade that fed the town. Ibn Ishaq also reports that Abu Jahl, Abu Sufyan and al-Akhnas each crept out at night to listen to him recite. They met at dawn and swore never to do it again.

Qur’an 38:5Qur’an 6:33Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Benedikt Koehler, Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism (2014)

Abu Talib’s protection meant Quraysh could not kill him. They could still hurt him. Once, as he prostrated at the Ka’bah, Uqbah ibn Abi Mu’ayt laid a camel’s insides on his back at Abu Jahl’s prompting. They fell about laughing. He stayed down until his young daughter Fatimah ran over and pulled it off him, and told them what she thought of them.

Sahih al-Bukhari 240↗Sahih al-Bukhari 520↗

Another time Uqbah twisted a cloth round his neck as he prayed, and choked him. Abu Bakr pushed Uqbah away, and asked if they would kill a man for saying his Lord was Allah (﷾).

Sahih al-Bukhari 3678↗Qur’an 40:28

Those with no clan to protect them suffered most. Ibn Ishaq reports that Bilal, an Abyssinian slave, was laid in the burning sun with a great rock on his chest. He kept repeating, “One, One.” Abu Bakr later bought his freedom, and Umar used to say that Abu Bakr had freed their chief.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 3754↗

Abu Jahl killed Sumayyah, the mother of Ammar, and the biographers name her the first martyr in Islam. Her husband Yasir also died under torture. Ammar, in agony, finally said what they demanded. He came to the Prophet (ﷺ) in tears. The Qur’an excused one forced to speak in this way, if his heart stayed firm.

Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirIbn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 16:106

Khabbab ibn al-Aratt, a blacksmith and a slave, was burned on his back. He came to the Prophet (ﷺ), who was resting in the shade of the Ka’bah, and asked him to pray for help. He sat up, his face red. He told Khabbab of believers before them who were torn with iron combs and sawn in two. They did not give up their faith. Then he made a promise. Allah (﷾) would complete this matter until a rider could go from San’a to Hadramawt, fearing only Allah (﷾).

Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirSahih al-Bukhari 3852↗

Think of when he said that. His followers were being burned, and he had no power at all. He spoke of peace on the roads of Arabia as a certainty. Within a few decades it had happened.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3852↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3595↗

Yet the numbers kept growing. That is the question Quraysh could not answer. These people knew him. They had seen him up close. Would a slave let himself be crushed for what he knew was a lie? Would a mother die for it? People do not give their lives for a fraud when they have met the man and can see it.

In about 615, the fifth year of his mission, he told those who could go to leave for Abyssinia, now Ethiopia. Ibn Ishaq reports that he said a king ruled there under whom no one was wronged. A small group crossed the Red Sea, among them Uthman and the Prophet’s (ﷺ) daughter Ruqayyah. He himself stayed behind in Mecca.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Not long after, he recited Surah al-Najm at the Ka’bah. When it ended he prostrated, and everyone present went down with him, Muslim and idol worshipper alike. Only one old man refused. Ibn Ishaq reports that word reached Abyssinia as if Mecca had accepted Islam. Some came home to find it was not so. A larger group then left under Ja’far ibn Abi Talib, some eighty people.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1067↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4863↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Quraysh could not bear it. They sent Amr ibn al-As with rich gifts for the king’s generals. The report comes from Umm Salamah, who was there. Amr told the Negus, the king, that these were foolish young people who had left their own religion without joining his. The generals backed him. But the Negus refused to hand anyone over without hearing them.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Ja’far spoke for them. They had been a people of ignorance, he said. They worshipped idols, ate carrion and cut family ties, and the strong ate up the weak. Then Allah (﷾) sent them a man whose honesty and family they knew. He told them to worship Allah (﷾) alone, to speak the truth, to keep their word and to protect their neighbours. They believed him, and so they were tortured. That is why they had come.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The Negus asked to hear some of the revelation. Ja’far recited the opening of Surah Maryam, about Mary and the birth of John and Jesus. The king wept until his beard was wet, and his bishops wept too. He said this and what Jesus brought came from one source. He told Amr he would never give them up.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 19:16-34

The next day Amr returned with a sharper charge: ask them what they say about Jesus. The Muslims were afraid. They agreed to say only what their Prophet (ﷺ) had taught, whatever it cost them. Ja’far said Jesus was the servant of Allah (﷾), His messenger, His spirit and His word. The Negus picked up a twig. Jesus, he said, was no more than that, not by the length of this twig. He sent the gifts back. Allah (﷾) had taken no bribe from him, he said, when He gave him his throne.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 4:171

Why does this story matter? The first refuge in Islam was a Christian land. The first ruler to protect Muslims was a Christian king who listened to both sides. The Muslims did not soften what they believed about Jesus, even in front of a man who could have sent them to their deaths. Years later the Prophet (ﷺ) told the people of Medina that a good man had died, on the very day he died far away. He called him their brother, and led a funeral prayer for him at a distance. Muslims understand from this that the Negus had accepted Islam before he died.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1245↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1320↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3877↗

This king kept his name, Ashamah, and his own land and people. The Prophet (ﷺ) never told him to become an Arab. Islam asked for his faith, not his culture.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3877↗

Ibn Ishaq reports that the Prophet (ﷺ) prayed that Allah (﷾) would strengthen Islam with one of two men: Abu Jahl or Umar ibn al-Khattab. These were the two fiercest enemies he had. He did not ask for them to be destroyed. He asked for them to be guided.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Ibn Ishaq reports that Abu Jahl once abused him at Safa, and he said nothing. Hamzah, his uncle and a famous hunter, came home with his bow and was told of it. He marched to the Ka’bah and struck Abu Jahl on the head. He asked how he dared insult his nephew, now that he too followed his religion. He had said it in anger. That night he prayed for guidance, and in the morning he came to the Prophet (ﷺ) and held to it.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Umar was the harder case. Ibn Ishaq reports that he set out with his sword to kill the Prophet (ﷺ). A man stopped him on the road. He told him to look to his own family, for his sister Fatimah and her husband had become Muslim. Umar stormed in and struck them, and she bled. Seeing that blood, he stopped. He asked to see what they were reading. It was the opening of Surah Ta-Ha.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He went to the Prophet (ﷺ) with the same sword, and accepted Islam. Ibn Mas’ud said the Muslims had been strong from that day. Umar now stood openly as a Muslim. A mob surrounded his house, until a chief of his allies, al-As ibn Wa’il, sent them away.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3863↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3864↗

A man who walked out to kill the Prophet (ﷺ) became the second caliph of Islam. No past closes the door. That has given hope to anyone who has ever felt too far gone.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3863↗

With Hamzah and Umar on his side, Quraysh grew desperate. They could not kill him while his clan protected him. So they turned on the whole clan. Quraysh and Banu Kinanah swore an oath at a place the Prophet (ﷺ) pointed out years later. No one would marry, buy from or sell to Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib, unless they gave him up. Ibn Ishaq reports they wrote it down and hung it in the Ka’bah.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1590↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

So the clan was shut into the valley of Abu Talib for about three years. Believers and non-believers went together. Those who did not share his faith still stood by him, out of family loyalty. Only Abu Lahab sided with Quraysh.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The biographers report that children could be heard crying with hunger, and that people ate leaves and scraps of skin. Khadijah, once one of the richest women in Mecca, spent what she had. Her nephew Hakim ibn Hizam tried to bring in food for her, and Abu Jahl stopped him. A non-Muslim, Abu al-Bakhtari, struck Abu Jahl for it.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

It was people of conscience who ended it. Five men of Quraysh, none of them Muslim, agreed to speak out together at the Ka’bah. Ibn Ishaq names them: Hisham ibn Amr, Zuhayr ibn Abi Umayyah, Mut’im ibn Adi, Abu al-Bakhtari and Zam’ah ibn al-Aswad. He also reports that the Prophet (ﷺ) told Abu Talib a worm had eaten the document, all but Allah’s (﷾) name. This proved true.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The boycott offered one way out: hand him over. His clan refused, and he did not stop preaching. He also never forgot those who helped. Years later he spoke of the prisoners of Badr. Had Mut’im still been alive and asked for them, he said, he would have freed them all. Kindness from a non-Muslim was still kindness to him.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3139↗

Soon after the boycott ended, in about 619, Abu Talib lay dying. He had protected his nephew for over forty years. The Prophet (ﷺ) sat with him and begged him to say that there is no god but Allah (﷾). Then he could plead for him before Allah (﷾). Abu Jahl and Abdullah ibn Abi Umayyah sat there too. They asked if he would leave the religion of Abd al-Muttalib. He died without saying it.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3884↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1360↗

Abu Talib told him he would have said it, but he feared Quraysh would say he did it from fear of death. Then a verse came. It says even the Prophet (ﷺ) could not guide someone he loved. Guidance is Allah’s (﷾) alone.

Sahih Muslim 25↗Qur’an 28:56

Around that time Khadijah died too. Hisham’s father said she died three years before the Hijrah. She had been his wife for about twenty-five years. She had believed him first, and spent all she had. Biographers came to call this the Year of Sorrow.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3896↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He never stopped speaking of her. He said she was the best of the women of her time, as Mary was of hers. Jibril once told him to give her a greeting of peace from her Lord, and news of a house in Paradise. Aisha said she was never as jealous of anyone, though she never met her. He would slaughter a sheep and send it to Khadijah’s friends. Once he started at the sound of her sister’s voice at the door, because it was so like hers.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3432↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3820↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3818↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3821↗

This is not how a man treats a woman he used for her money. Her money was long gone. He loved her until he died.

With Abu Talib gone, his clan’s protection grew weak. Abu Lahab now led it. So the Prophet (ﷺ) looked for help outside Mecca. The biographers report that he went to Ta’if, a hill town south-east of Mecca, with Zayd beside him. He asked its tribe, Thaqif, to accept Islam and protect him.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

He spoke to three brothers who led the town. One said he would tear the cover off the Ka’bah if Allah (﷾) had really sent him. Another asked whether Allah (﷾) could find no one else. The third refused to speak to him at all. Then they set the town’s slaves and boys on him, and stones followed him down the road.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Years later Aisha asked if any day had been harder for him than Uhud. He said yes, and he named this one. He had offered himself to Ibn Abd Yalil, and been turned away. He walked on in such grief that he did not come to himself until he reached Qarn al-Tha’alib.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3231↗

There he looked up and saw a cloud shading him, with Jibril in it. Jibril told him Allah (﷾) had heard what his people said. He had sent the angel of the mountains to do whatever the Prophet (ﷺ) ordered. The angel greeted him. If he wished, the two mountains around Mecca would be brought down on them.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3231↗

He was bleeding, rejected and alone, and he had just been offered his revenge. He refused it. He said he hoped Allah (﷾) would bring from their children people who would worship Allah (﷾) alone.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3231↗

He wanted them saved, not destroyed. His hope came true. Thaqif sent its people to him and accepted Islam, in his own lifetime.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4072↗

Ibn Ishaq adds a quiet scene from that day. He rested in a vineyard owned by two men of Quraysh. They sent their Christian servant, Addas, with a bunch of grapes. He said “In the name of Allah” before he ate, which surprised Addas. Learning that Addas came from Nineveh, he spoke of Jonah as his brother, a prophet like himself. Addas kissed his hands.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He could not walk back into Mecca without a protector. So he asked several men, and Mut’im ibn Adi, who was not a Muslim, agreed. Ibn Ishaq reports that Mut’im armed his sons and led him in. The man Mecca had once trusted with its disputes now needed an idol worshipper’s permission to go home.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

After the worst year of his life came the greatest honour of it. One night, a year or more before the Hijrah, he was taken from the Ka’bah to Jerusalem, and then up through the heavens. The date is disputed. Scholars give several, and none can be proved. Many place it after the Year of Sorrow, when he needed it most.

Qur’an 17:1Sahih al-Bukhari 3887↗

Jibril came to him as he lay near the Ka’bah. He opened his chest and washed his heart. Then a white animal called al-Buraq was brought, smaller than a mule and larger than a donkey. Each stride reached as far as it could see. At Jerusalem the Prophet (ﷺ) led the earlier prophets in prayer.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3887↗Sahih al-Bukhari 349↗Sahih Muslim 162↗Sahih Muslim 172↗

Each prophet welcomed him as a brother. The journey shows what Muslims believe: one message, carried by one line of prophets. He did not come to replace Moses and Jesus. He came as the last of their line.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3887↗Qur’an 33:40

He was raised to the Lote-tree, with fruit like great clay jars and leaves like the ears of elephants. He was shown the Frequented House, which seventy thousand angels enter every day.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3887↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3207↗

Allah (﷾) gave him three gifts there: the five daily prayers, the closing verses of Surah al-Baqarah, and forgiveness of the great sins for those who do not worship anything beside Allah (﷾). The prayers began as fifty. On the way back Musa told him his people could not bear so many. He went back again and again, until they stood at five, with the reward of fifty.

Sahih Muslim 173↗Sahih al-Bukhari 349↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3887↗

So the prayer is the one duty given directly, with no angel between. A Muslim who prays five times a day is keeping the gift of that night.

In the morning he told Quraysh. They laughed, and some people’s faith was shaken. They asked him to describe Jerusalem, a city he had never seen. He stood by the Ka’bah, and he said Allah (﷾) showed it to him, so that he could answer each question. Ibn Ishaq reports that Abu Bakr said that if he had said it, it was true. From then on Abu Bakr carried the name al-Siddiq, the one who confirms the truth.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3886↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He knew they would mock him, and he told them anyway. A man inventing a story to win followers would hardly choose this moment for it.

Each year, at the time of the pilgrimage, tribes from all over Arabia came to Mecca. He went from tent to tent. Abu Lahab often followed behind him, telling people not to listen. Ibn Ishaq reports that Banu Amir offered to back him if they could rule after him. He said that matter belonged to Allah (﷾). A man after support would have said yes. It was the offer he needed most, and he turned it down.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Then help came from a place no one expected. Yathrib was an oasis town more than 300 kilometres to the north. Its two Arab tribes, Aws and Khazraj, had fought each other for generations. Their last battle, at Bu’ath, had killed many of their chiefs. Three Jewish tribes also lived there: Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir and Banu Qurayzah. Aisha called Bu’ath a day Allah (﷾) had prepared for His Messenger. It left the town tired of war and without its old leaders.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3777↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Ibn Ishaq reports that in about 620 he met six men of Khazraj at Aqabah, near Mina. They had heard from their Jewish neighbours that a prophet was coming. They listened, believed, and went home to spread the word.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The next year twelve came, two of them from Aws. Men of rival tribes now stood together. They gave a pledge: to worship only Allah (﷾), not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to kill their children, not to slander, and to obey him in what is good. He sent Mus’ab ibn Umayr, a young man of Mecca, back with them to teach the Qur’an.

Sahih al-Bukhari 18↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3892↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3925↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Mus’ab’s method was simple. Ibn Ishaq reports that when Usayd ibn Hudayr came at him with a spear, Mus’ab asked him to sit and listen. If he liked it he could accept it, and if he disliked it they would stop. Usayd sat, and accepted Islam. So did Sa’d ibn Mu’adh, a chief of Aws, and soon his whole clan.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

So Islam spread through Yathrib before he ever arrived, with no army and no power. One young teacher and the Qur’an did it.

In 622, seventy-three men and two women met him at night at Aqabah. Ibn Ishaq reports that they slipped out of their camp in secret. His uncle al-Abbas, not yet a Muslim, came with him to make sure they meant it. They pledged to protect him as they protected their own families. When they asked what they would get in return, he said: Paradise.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

One man asked if he would leave them once he had won. He smiled and said their blood was his blood. Ten years later, when he had won, he kept that word.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih Muslim 1780↗

He had seen in a dream the land of his emigration: a place of palm trees between two tracts of black stone. He told the Muslims to go, and they left Mecca in small groups, by night and in secret. Some were held back by force. He stayed until nearly all had gone. A captain leaves his ship last.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3905↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3925↗

Leaving meant losing everything. Suhayb, a trader, was stopped by Quraysh, and he bought his way out with all his money. Ibn Ishaq reports that the Prophet (ﷺ) told him the trade had been a good one. Ibn Ishaq also reports that Umm Salamah’s family tore her and her baby son away from her husband. She wept for a year before they let her go.

Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirIbn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 2:207

Quraysh met in their council house and argued over what to do. Should they chain him, drive him out, or kill him? Ibn Ishaq reports that Abu Jahl’s plan won: a young man from every clan would strike him at once, so that his clan could not take revenge on them all. The Qur’an records this plot.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 8:30

At noon, a time he never normally came, he went with his head covered to Abu Bakr’s house. He said he had been given permission to leave. Abu Bakr asked if he could go with him, and he said yes. Aisha reports the scene. Abu Bakr had kept two camels ready for months. He offered one as a gift. The Prophet (ﷺ) would take it only if he paid.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3905↗

Ibn Ishaq reports that he left Ali in his own bed, under his green cloak, to deceive the men at the door. Ali also had a job to do. He was to stay behind and hand back the valuables that people of Mecca had left with him.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

These same people wanted him dead. Yet they still left their money with him, and he made sure every coin went back. Mecca’s actions said what its words denied: they knew he was honest.

He and Abu Bakr did not head north to Medina. They went south, to a cave in Mount Thawr, and stayed three nights. Every detail was planned.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3905↗

A believer plans as if everything depends on him, then trusts Allah (﷾) with the result. That is the lesson of this table. He also hired a skilled guide who did not share his faith. His honesty was what counted, and he did not betray them.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3905↗

Quraysh offered a reward of a hundred camels for each of them. Trackers reached the mouth of the cave. Abu Bakr whispered that if one of them looked down at his feet, he would see them. The Prophet (ﷺ) asked what he thought of two people whose third was Allah (﷾).

Sahih al-Bukhari 3906↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3653↗

Many have heard that a spider spun a web across the cave’s mouth. That story’s chain is weak, and neither Bukhari nor Muslim carries it. The Qur’an needs no such detail. It says only that Allah (﷾) helped him with forces no one saw.

Before he left his city he stood at al-Hazwarah and spoke to it. He said it was the best of Allah’s (﷾) land, and the land Allah (﷾) loved most. Had he not been driven out, he would never have left. The Qur’an gave him a promise: he would return. Ibn Abbas said this meant to Mecca.

Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 3925↗Qur’an 28:85Sahih al-Bukhari 4773↗

Suraqah ibn Malik, chasing the reward, caught up with them on the road. His horse’s legs sank into the ground. He understood, asked for safety, and turned back. He had set out to capture the Prophet (ﷺ), and he ended the day protecting him.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3906↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3911↗

Each morning the people of Medina walked out to the edge of the lava fields, and went home when the sun grew hot. One day a Jewish man on a fort saw travellers in white. He called out that the person they were waiting for had come. The Muslims rushed out with their weapons to greet him. He stayed at Quba for about two weeks, and there he built his first mosque.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3906↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3932↗

Many have also heard that the people sang the song Tala’a al-Badru as he arrived. No authentic report says so of this day.

His companions later chose this event as the start of the Muslim calendar. They did not count from his first revelation or from his death. They counted from the move that turned believers into a community.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3934↗

Yathrib became known as Medina, the City of the Prophet (ﷺ). Every family wanted him as a guest. He let his camel walk on, and she knelt on a plot that belonged to two orphans. He would not take the land as a gift, and paid for it. He stayed nearby with Abu Ayyub, and the Muslims began to build.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3906↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3932↗

The mosque was mud brick with palm trunks for pillars and palm leaves for a roof. He carried bricks with his own hands. It was the place of prayer, and also the school, the court and the guest house. Those with no home slept along one side, on a raised area called the Suffah. Abu Hurayrah saw seventy of them, none with a full set of clothes.

Sahih al-Bukhari 446↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3906↗Sahih al-Bukhari 442↗

Medina now held refugees with nothing. So he paired each emigrant from Mecca with one of the Ansar, the helpers of Medina, as a brother. Sa’d ibn al-Rabi’ offered Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf half of all he owned. Abd al-Rahman thanked him, and asked only to be shown the market. The brothers at first even inherited from each other, until revelation ended that.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3780↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2292↗

People have rarely treated refugees this way. A whole town shared its homes and date palms with strangers. In a land of tribes, faith had become a stronger bond than blood.

He then settled how the town would live together. Ibn Ishaq preserved the text of an agreement, now often called the Constitution of Medina. It made the believers one community, and it set out terms with named Jewish groups, who kept their own religion. Each side would help defend the town, and disputes would come to him. Scholars discuss whether it was one document or several agreements joined together. He declared Medina a sacred place.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 1867↗

People who had mostly trusted blood now had a written agreement, and it covered people of more than one religion.

Next to the mosque came the market. The economic historian Benedikt Koehler points out that the mosque and the market were the two things he set up first. Some reports, which are not strong, add that it paid no tax. His rules for trade are well attested, and he had been a merchant himself.

Benedikt Koehler, Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism (2014)

These were rules for a real economy, set down by someone who knew one. They show that this faith was not only for the mosque. It ruled how people sold grain.

Abdullah ibn Salam, a Jewish scholar of Medina, went to see the newcomer for himself. He said that when he looked at the Prophet’s (ﷺ) face, he knew it was not the face of a liar. He remembered the first words he heard from him: spread peace, feed people, pray at night while others sleep, and you will enter Paradise in peace. He came back with his questions, and accepted Islam.

Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 2485↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3329↗

He had just reached safety after thirteen years of attacks. He did not speak of revenge. He spoke of peace and of feeding the hungry.

The Muslims needed a way to call people to prayer. Some suggested a bell, as the Christians used, and others a horn, as the Jews used. In the end Bilal, the freed slave from Abyssinia, was told to stand and call. The man Quraysh had crushed under stones now had the voice that called Medina to prayer.

Sahih al-Bukhari 604↗

For sixteen or seventeen months they prayed towards Jerusalem. He longed to face the Ka’bah, and would turn his face to the sky. Then the order came. A group of Muslims turned around in the middle of a prayer when they heard. The change tested who truly followed him, and it tied Islam back to Ibrahim’s house.

Sahih al-Bukhari 399↗Qur’an 2:144Qur’an 2:143

The practice of Islam was now laid down step by step: the fast of Ramadan, the yearly charity of zakat, taken from the rich and given to the poor, and later the Hajj. Mecca had built faith. Medina built a society on it.

Qur’an 2:183Qur’an 9:60Sahih al-Bukhari 1395↗Qur’an 3:97

Not everyone was glad he had come. Abdullah ibn Ubayy, a chief of Khazraj, had been about to be crowned as king of the town. His crown never came. He joined the Muslims in public, but he worked against them for the rest of his life. The Qur’an calls such people hypocrites. He would appear again and again in this story.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4566↗Qur’an 63:1

For thirteen years in Mecca the Muslims were told to hold back their hands. Now they had lost their homes and their goods, and Quraysh wrote threats to Medina.

Qur’an 4:77Qur’an 59:8Sunan Abi Dawud 3004↗

Then came permission to fight, and the verses gave the reason.

Qur’an 22:39-40

The first verse on fighting names churches and synagogues beside mosques. The reason it gives is that people are being wronged, and that places of worship need protection. Whether each later campaign fits that reason is a fair question, and it has its own page.

Qur’an 22:40

In Ramadan of the second year after the Hijrah, in 624, a large Quraysh caravan under Abu Sufyan was coming home from Syria. The Prophet (ﷺ) set out to stop it with about 319 men. They had come to meet a caravan, not an army. Abu Sufyan took another route, and sent to Mecca for help. Quraysh marched out with about a thousand men. Abu Jahl refused to turn back even after the caravan was safe.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3951↗Sahih Muslim 1763↗Sahih Muslim 1779↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

His men were as many as those who crossed the river with Talut (Saul) in the Qur’an, and his companions noted it. They shared a camel between every few men. They had not set out for war. So he would not order them on. He asked them what they thought.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3958↗Qur’an 2:249Sahih Muslim 1779↗

Al-Miqdad stood. He said they would not say what Moses’ people had said, that he and his Lord should go and fight alone. They would fight on his right and his left, in front of him and behind him. The Prophet’s (ﷺ) face lit up. Then a leader of the Ansar spoke, for their pledge had been to protect him at home. He said that if he told them to ride into the sea, they would ride.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3952↗Sahih Muslim 1779↗

Ibn Ishaq reports that when they camped, al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir asked if the spot had been chosen by revelation or by judgement. He was told it was judgement. So he proposed a better site, by the wells, and the Prophet (ﷺ) moved the army. He drew a clear line between what Allah (﷾) had revealed and his own opinion, and he listened to a good idea.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The whole night before the battle he prayed. He stretched out his hands until his cloak fell from his shoulders, and Abu Bakr put it back. He said that if this small band were destroyed, Allah (﷾) would not be worshipped on earth. The Qur’an answered his plea.

Sahih Muslim 1763↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3953↗Qur’an 8:9

He told the archers to hold their arrows until the enemy was near. After three duels in single combat, the armies met. Hamzah, Ali and Ubaydah had stood for the Muslims, and Ubaydah was fatally wounded. The Prophet (ﷺ) came out reciting a verse revealed years before in Mecca, when the Muslims had no power to fight anyone.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2900↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3985↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3965↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3966↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3953↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4875↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4876↗

Ali said that in the worst of the fighting the Muslims took shelter behind him, because he stayed closest to the enemy. He had pointed out beforehand where each leader of Quraysh would fall, and not one fell anywhere else.

Musnad Ahmad 654↗Sahih Muslim 1779↗

Two boys of the Ansar asked Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf to show them Abu Jahl. They had sworn to find the man who had insulted the Prophet (ﷺ). They ran at him and struck him down. Ibn Mas’ud found him dying. The man who had tormented Muslims for years fell to two boys. The Qur’an says that when the Prophet (ﷺ) threw a handful of dust at the enemy, the act was really Allah’s (﷾). It gave him no credit for the win.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3141↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3961↗Qur’an 8:17

He had told his men not to kill Abu al-Bakhtari, because he had helped end the boycott. Ibn Ishaq reports that Abu al-Bakhtari chose to fight beside his friend, and fell. Even in battle, he remembered a debt to a man who was not a Muslim.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Seventy of Quraysh were killed and seventy captured. About fourteen Muslims died. Abu Jahl and many other leaders of the persecution were now dead, though others, such as Abu Sufyan, lived on. Their bodies were put in a well, and he stood over it and called them by name. He asked if they had found true what their Lord promised, as he had.

Sahih Muslim 1763↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 3976↗

Now he had prisoners, among them men who had tortured his followers. Umar wanted them killed. Abu Bakr wanted them ransomed, hoping they might yet believe. He took the gentler view. The Qur’an then corrected him for it, and he wept.

Sahih Muslim 1763↗Qur’an 8:67

If he were composing a scripture to raise his own standing, these would be strange verses to include. Yet he recited them in public, and he wept. The Qur’an corrects him more than once.

Qur’an 80:1-2Qur’an 9:43

Ibn Sa’d reports the ransom for a prisoner who could read but could not pay. He would go free if he taught ten children of Medina to read. A man who could not read himself set the price of freedom at literacy.

Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

Victory did not end his sorrow. His daughter Ruqayyah was so ill during the campaign that he told Uthman, her husband, to stay and nurse her. She died before the army came home. The news of the victory reached Medina as they were burying her.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3130↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Another daughter, Zaynab, was still in Mecca with her husband Abu al-As, who was not a Muslim. He had fought at Badr and been captured. Ibn Ishaq reports that Zaynab sent money for his ransom, and with it a necklace. It had been Khadijah’s, and she had given it to Zaynab when she married. The Prophet (ﷺ) saw it and his heart was moved. He asked the Muslims if they would free Abu al-As and return it. They agreed, and he agreed to let Zaynab come to Medina.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Ibn Ishaq reports that Abu Lahab was not at Badr, and died in Mecca days after the news came. So the man Surah 111 had named died in unbelief, as it said he would.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 111:1-3

There was happiness too. Fatimah, his youngest daughter, married Ali, his cousin. Their home was simple, and the wedding gift was Ali’s armour, as the biographers report. Their sons Hasan and Husayn would be the delight of his old age.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3091↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirSahih al-Bukhari 3753↗

The victory changed the politics of Medina. The Muslims were now a power, and some who had accepted the pact grew uneasy. The biographers report that a quarrel in the market of Banu Qaynuqa left two men dead, and that the tribe then broke the agreement. The chain of that story is not strong. After a siege of about two weeks they surrendered. Abdullah ibn Ubayy pleaded for them. Their lives were spared, and they left Medina with their goods. Ibn Umar confirms that this tribe was sent away.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 4028↗

Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf, a chief and poet of Medina, went to Mecca after Badr. Ibn Ishaq reports that he mourned Quraysh’s dead in his poems and stirred them up to fight again. The Prophet (ﷺ) asked who would deal with him, and a small party killed him by a trick. Critics call this killing a man for his poems. Muslims answer that he was a wartime enemy, dealt with by the head of state, so no private person may copy it. Its own page sets out the case.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 4037↗

These events are about broken treaties, not about Jews as a people. His own wife Safiyyah was the daughter of a Jewish chief. He traded with Jewish people to the end of his life. On the day he died, one of them held his armour. Ibn Ishaq reports that a rabbi, Mukhayriq, fell fighting on the Muslim side at Uhud, and that he called him the best of the Jews.

Sahih al-Bukhari 371↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2916↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Quraysh wanted revenge. In 625 about 3,000 men marched on Medina, with Abu Sufyan leading them and Khalid ibn al-Walid commanding their horsemen. Ibn Ishaq reports that the Prophet (ﷺ) wished to stay and defend the city. The younger men, who had missed Badr, wanted to meet the enemy in the open. He followed the majority, and put on his armour.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Some of them regretted pressing him and said so. Ibn Ishaq reports his answer. A prophet who has put on his armour does not take it off until Allah (﷾) has decided the matter. He did not overrule his people when he could have. And the Qur’an, after the disaster that followed, still told him to keep consulting them.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 3:159

On the way, Abdullah ibn Ubayy turned back with about a third of the army. The Prophet (ﷺ) went on with about 700 men, one for every four of the enemy. He placed fifty archers on a small hill under Abdullah ibn Jubayr, to guard the army’s back. He told them not to move even if they saw birds snatching at the Muslims.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4050↗Qur’an 3:167Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 3039↗

The day began well. He held out a sword and asked who would give it its right. Abu Dujanah took it and fought through the enemy line. Quraysh broke and fled. The women who had come to urge them on ran for the hills.

Sahih Muslim 2470↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3039↗

Then the archers saw the spoils. Abdullah ibn Jubayr reminded them of the order. Most went down anyway. Khalid saw the hill empty, and his horsemen swept round behind the Muslims. In the chaos Satan cried out to the Muslims that the enemy was behind them, and they turned on each other. Hudhayfah saw Muslims kill his own father by mistake. He called out, then forgave them.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3039↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4043↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4065↗

The Prophet (ﷺ) himself was struck. A tooth was broken and his face was cut. Rings from his helmet were driven into his cheek. Word spread that he had been killed, and many lost heart. Anas ibn al-Nadr went on fighting. He said he could smell Paradise this side of Uhud. They found more than eighty wounds on his body, and only his sister knew him, by his fingertips.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2911↗Sahih Muslim 1791↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2805↗

Few stayed with him. Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas shot arrow after arrow beside him. Talhah used his hand to shield him, and it stayed paralysed for life. Seven men of the Ansar died defending him, one after another. Ibn Sa’d reports that a woman, Nusaybah bint Ka’b, fought over him and took many wounds.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4055↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3724↗Sahih Muslim 1789↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirSahih al-Bukhari 3039↗

With blood on his face he said: how can a people succeed when they have wounded their prophet? Then a verse came, telling him the matter was not his to decide. Some of those who fought him that day, such as Khalid, later became Muslims.

Sahih Muslim 1791↗Qur’an 3:128Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Hamzah fell. Wahshi, a slave who had been promised his freedom for it, threw a spear from behind a rock. Hamzah’s body was later mutilated. Abu Sufyan said he had not ordered that, but he was not sorry. Years later the Prophet (ﷺ) still could not bear to look at the man who killed his uncle. The Qur’an told the Muslims to take no more than like for like, and said that patience was better.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4072↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3039↗Qur’an 16:126

Abu Sufyan called up the hill to ask if Muhammad (ﷺ) was alive, then Abu Bakr, then Umar. He was told not to answer. Abu Sufyan cheered his idol Hubal. Then the Prophet (ﷺ) told them to reply: Allah (﷾) is higher and greater. They had their idol al-Uzza, Abu Sufyan shouted, and the Muslims had none. He told them to answer: Allah (﷾) is our protector, and you have none.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3039↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4043↗

He stayed silent about himself. He spoke up only when Allah’s (﷾) name was at stake. That is what he cared about, wounded on a hillside.

The dead were buried on the field, two to a grave, in their bloodstained clothes. Mus’ab ibn Umayr, once the best-dressed young man of Mecca, had one short sheet. If it covered his head, his feet showed. So they covered his head and put grass on his feet.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1343↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1276↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

The Qur’an spoke to the rumour of his death, and left the Muslims a lesson that would matter again.

Qur’an 3:144

The very next day he called the fighters out again and chased Quraysh, so they would not think the Muslims were broken. The wounded came too. About seventy answered the call. Aisha named her father and Zubayr among them. The verse below describes these men. They were hurt, tired and grieving, and they went anyway.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4077↗Qur’an 3:172-173

The Qur’an did more than record this defeat. It told the Muslims that the fault lay in their own disobedience. Being on the side of the truth did not cancel the rules: disobey, and you lose, even with a prophet among you.

Qur’an 3:165Qur’an 3:152

After Uhud, tribes across Arabia lost their fear of Medina. Two betrayals followed. Ibn Ishaq reports that men from two tribes asked for teachers. Ten Muslims went out, and most were killed at al-Raji. Khubayb was sold to Quraysh, whose men had lost family at Badr. Before they killed him he asked to pray two units of prayer. He kept them short so no one would think he feared death. A Quraysh woman said she had never seen a better captive.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 3045↗

Then at Bi’r Ma’unah about seventy Muslims, men who knew the Qur’an, were killed by tribes they had come to teach. As the spear passed through Haram ibn Milhan, he cried out that he had won, by the Lord of the Ka’bah. The Prophet (ﷺ) felt this deeply, and for a month he prayed against those who had done it. These men had gone out to teach, and they were killed for it.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4092↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4095↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2801↗

Banu Nadir, the second of the Jewish tribes, were next to break with him. Ibn Ishaq reports that he came to them about a shared payment under their treaty. Some of them planned to drop a rock on him from a wall. He left, and he gave them notice to leave. Abdullah ibn Ubayy told them to stand firm and promised help, which never came. After a siege they left with what their camels could carry, and pulled down their own homes. Surah 59 of the Qur’an speaks of it.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sunan Abi Dawud 3004↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4028↗Qur’an 59:2Qur’an 59:11-12

On one campaign in these years he lay down at midday under a tree and hung up his sword. He woke to find a desert Arab standing over him with it, asking who could save him now. He said: Allah (﷾). His men came, and he did not punish the man. The Qur’an had promised that Allah (﷾) would protect him from people. Many tried to kill him, and none did.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2910↗Qur’an 5:67

Around this time came the ban on wine. It came in stages. First the Qur’an said wine had some benefit but greater sin. Then it told people not to come to prayer drunk. Finally it told them to give it up altogether.

Qur’an 2:219Qur’an 4:43Qur’an 5:90

Anas was pouring drinks for friends when the caller announced the ban. They told him to pour it out at once. He says wine ran in the streets of Medina. Arabs had loved wine and written poems about it for centuries. In the twentieth century the United States banned alcohol by law, and repealed the ban in 1933. Here a whole society stopped in a day, because they believed the voice that told them.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2464↗US Constitution, 21st Amendment↗

Leaders of Banu Nadir, now living at Khaybar, went to Quraysh and to the tribes of Ghatafan. Ibn Ishaq reports that they urged them to finish Medina together. In 627 they marched on the town. The traditional count is about 10,000 men, against perhaps 3,000 in Medina.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 4028↗

Salman al-Farisi was with the Muslims. Ibn Ishaq tells how this Persian had left his home to search for the truth. He went from teacher to teacher, was sold as a slave, and ended up in Medina, where he recognised what he was looking for. Ibn Sa’d reports that he now suggested something Arabs had not used in war: a trench across the open side of the town.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

The whole town dug, in the cold, on empty stomachs. The Prophet (ﷺ) dug with them. Dust covered the skin of his stomach. He recited verses as he carried earth, and the Ansar sang back that they had pledged themselves to him. When the men complained of hunger, they found he had a stone tied to his own stomach to ease his.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2837↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2834↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4101↗

A leader who digs beside his men, and goes hungrier than they do, needs no one to tell them to follow him. Jabir saw how hungry he was, and went home to find what food he could. He had one small goat and a little barley, and he quietly invited him. Instead the Prophet (ﷺ) called out to everyone. Jabir tells us that all of them ate, and the food was not used up.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4101↗

A rock defeated the diggers, and they called for him. He struck it, and it crumbled to sand. Ibn Ishaq reports that with each blow he spoke of the lands that would open to the Muslims: Syria, Persia and Yemen. The hypocrites laughed. These men were afraid to step outside to relieve themselves, they said, and he was promising them empires. Within a generation all three had happened.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4101↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 33:12

The army arrived and stopped, baffled, at the trench. The siege lasted about a month. Then came the worst news. Banu Qurayzah, the last of the three large Jewish tribes in Medina, whose homes lay behind the Muslims, had broken their treaty. Zubayr rode to see, and brought back word. The women and children of Medina now had no one to protect them from that side.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 2846↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3720↗Qur’an 33:26

Ibn Ishaq reports that a few horsemen forced a crossing at a narrow point. Ali met their champion, Amr ibn Abd Wudd, in single combat and killed him.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The pressure was so great that one day they missed a prayer until after sunset. Yet the believers said this was what Allah (﷾) and His Messenger had promised them. The Qur’an says it only added to their faith.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2931↗Qur’an 33:22

Ibn Ishaq reports that Nu’aym ibn Mas’ud, a man of Ghatafan who had secretly become Muslim, spread distrust among the allies. Then came the wind. One bitter night the Prophet (ﷺ) asked who would go and bring news of the enemy, and no one rose from the cold. So he called on Hudhayfah by name. Hudhayfah crept into their camp and saw Abu Sufyan warming his back at a fire. He could have shot him, but he had been told not to stir anything up. He found the army breaking up, and they were gone by morning.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih Muslim 1788↗Qur’an 33:9

The Prophet (ﷺ) said: from now on we will go to them, and they will not come to us. It proved true. This was the last time Quraysh attacked Medina.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4110↗

The army of allies had gone, but the treaty had been broken during the siege. The Prophet (ﷺ) marched to Banu Qurayzah the same day. Jibril told him that the angels had not laid down their arms. He told his men to pray the afternoon prayer only when they got there. When the time came on the road, some prayed and some waited, each reading his words differently. He blamed neither group.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4117↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4122↗Sahih al-Bukhari 946↗

Muslims have differed over how to apply his words since that afternoon, and he allowed it.

The tribe was in treaty with him, and it had gone over to the army besieging Medina. The Qur’an says they aided the enemy, and Ibn Ishaq reports how their chief was talked into it. After a siege they surrendered, on the judgement of Sa’d ibn Mu’adh, chief of the Aws, who were their own allies.

Qur’an 33:26Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 3043↗

Sa’d judged that their fighting men be put to death, and their women and children taken captive. Those who came over to the Prophet (ﷺ) were spared, and boys were let go. A sahih hadith gives the number killed as four hundred.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4121↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4028↗Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 1584↗Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 1582↗

This is one of the hardest events of his life for modern readers. Muslims understand it as a judgement for treason in wartime, by a judge the tribe itself accepted. Its own page sets out the treaty, the law of the time and the evidence.

Sa’d himself had been wounded in the siege of the Trench, and he died of that wound soon after. He had asked Allah (﷾) to keep him alive until this matter was settled.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4122↗

On the way home from a campaign against Banu al-Mustaliq, a quarrel at a well almost split the Muslims. A man of the emigrants kicked a man of the Ansar. Each cried out to his own side. The Prophet (ﷺ) told them to drop such calls, for they were rotten. Tribalism had come back in a moment, and he stamped on it.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4905↗

Abdullah ibn Ubayy saw his chance. He said that once they got back to Medina, the honourable would drive out the mean, by which he meant the Prophet (ﷺ). A boy, Zayd ibn Arqam, reported this. Ibn Ubayy swore he had not said it, and for a time people believed him over the boy. Then Surah 63 came down and confirmed Zayd.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4900↗Qur’an 63:8

Umar asked to kill him. The Prophet (ﷺ) refused. People would say, he told Umar, that Muhammad (ﷺ) kills his companions. He had the power, and an enemy within his own ranks. He would not use it.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4905↗

On the same journey, Aisha left the camp and lost her necklace. She went back to look for it. The army moved off, and her carriers lifted her covered litter without noticing she was not in it. She sat down to wait, and fell asleep. A young man at the rear of the army, Safwan ibn al-Mu’attal, found her. He did not say a word to her beyond a verse of grief. He knelt his camel for her and led it until they caught up with the army.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2661↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4750↗

Ibn Ubayy spread it around. The story grew. Aisha fell ill for a month and knew nothing, only that he seemed less warm than usual. When she found out, she wept for two nights without sleep. The Prophet (ﷺ) asked those closest to her. Her servant Barirah said the worst she knew was that Aisha would fall asleep and leave the goat to eat the dough. And the heavens were silent. For a month no revelation came.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2661↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4750↗

Aisha told him she could only say what the father of Yusuf said: patience is fitting. Then the revelation came, and cleared her. Her mother told her to go and thank him. Aisha said she would thank only Allah (﷾).

Sahih al-Bukhari 4750↗Qur’an 12:18Qur’an 24:11-12

If he wrote the Qur’an, why did he wait? His wife’s name, his friend’s honour and his own were being dragged through the town. A single verse on the first day would have ended it. Instead all of Medina watched him go a month with nothing to say. That fits a man who could not produce revelation at will.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4750↗

Abu Bakr had been supporting a poor relative, Mistah, who joined in the slander. He swore to stop. The Qur’an told him to forgive, and asked if he did not want Allah (﷾) to forgive him. Abu Bakr said he did, and he paid Mistah again. He was the father of the woman who had been wronged.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4750↗Qur’an 24:22

In 628 he saw in a dream that the Muslims entered the Ka’bah in safety. He set out for Mecca to perform Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage, with about 1,400 people. They were dressed as pilgrims and carried only the swords of travellers. They brought animals to sacrifice. They had come to worship, and everyone could see it.

Qur’an 48:27Sahih al-Bukhari 4154↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2731↗

Quraysh sent horsemen to block them. He turned off the main road by a hard route. At Hudaybiyah, on the edge of the sacred land, his camel knelt and would not get up. People said she was being stubborn. He said she was held back by the One who held back the elephant. He then said he would accept any plan from Quraysh that honoured what Allah (﷾) had made sacred.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2731↗

He told Budayl of Khuza’ah that the war had worn Quraysh down, and he offered them a truce. Quraysh sent Urwah ibn Mas’ud to talk. Urwah watched how the Muslims treated him. He went back and said he had been to the courts of Caesar, Khosrau and the Negus. He had never seen a king honoured as these men honoured Muhammad (ﷺ).

Sahih al-Bukhari 2731↗

He sent Uthman into Mecca to explain, and a rumour came that Uthman had been killed. So he gathered the Muslims under a tree, and they pledged to stand by him. For Uthman, who was absent, he struck his own hands together, saying one stood for Uthman. The Qur’an praises those who made this pledge.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 3698↗Qur’an 48:18

Quraysh then sent Suhayl ibn Amr to agree terms. When the writing began, Suhayl objected to “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious”, and he would not accept “Messenger of Allah”. The Muslims were furious. Ali refused to rub the title out. So the Prophet (ﷺ) took the page and removed it himself.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2731↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2699↗Sahih Muslim 1783↗

At that moment Suhayl’s own son, Abu Jandal, stumbled in, in chains. He had escaped and thrown himself on the Muslims. Suhayl demanded him back under the deal. The Prophet (ﷺ) asked for an exception and was refused. Abu Jandal was led away crying out to the Muslims not to return him to torture.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2731↗

Umar could not bear it. He went to the Prophet (ﷺ) and asked: are we not on the truth, and are they not on falsehood? Why then give way on our religion? He answered that he was Allah’s (﷾) Messenger, and would not disobey Him. Umar went to Abu Bakr, and got the same answer in almost the same words.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2731↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3182↗

When he told the men to sacrifice and shave their heads, no one moved. He said it three times. He went in to his wife Umm Salamah, deeply troubled. She told him to go out, say nothing, and do it himself. He did, and they all rushed to follow.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2731↗

So the leader of a nation took advice from his wife in his hardest moment, and it worked. Her name is on the record for it.

On the way home came Surah al-Fath, the Victory. Umar could hardly believe it.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4177↗Sahih Muslim 1785↗

How could this be a victory? Time gave the answer. Abu Basir escaped from Mecca to Medina. Quraysh sent two men, and he was handed back under the terms. On the way he killed one and fled. He set up on the coast, beyond Medina’s reach, and others joined him, Abu Jandal too. They raided Quraysh’s trade route, and in the end Quraysh begged the Prophet (ﷺ) to cancel the very clause they had demanded.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2731↗

Peace did the rest. Before, nobody could travel freely. Now Arabs could meet Muslims, and they did. The numbers tell the story.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

It is the clearest case in his life of giving up what people could see for what they could not. He gave up a word on a page, and the way to Arabia opened.

With peace at home he wrote to the rulers around Arabia. He had a silver ring made to seal the letters, carrying his name and his title. He had always said his message was for all people, and now he acted on it, from a mud-brick mosque, to emperors.

Sahih al-Bukhari 65↗Qur’an 34:28

His letter to Heraclius, Emperor of Rome, is preserved in Bukhari. It invited him to Islam, and it quoted this verse, which calls people to the ground they already share.

Sahih al-Bukhari 7↗

Heraclius wanted to know who this man was. Abu Sufyan, then the Prophet’s (ﷺ) chief enemy, happened to be trading in Syria. He was brought to the court at Jerusalem with his companions. They stood behind him, with orders to expose any lie. Abu Sufyan later told the story himself, and said he would have lied if he had not feared being shamed. So the report below is his evidence as an enemy at the time, given in front of witnesses.

Sahih al-Bukhari 7↗

Heraclius said that if this was true, the man would one day rule the ground beneath his feet. He said he wished he could reach him and wash his feet. Then his court rose in anger, and he drew back. He kept his throne. Within a few years of the Prophet’s (ﷺ) death, Muslims held Syria. Heraclius had seen the evidence and kept his throne.

Sahih al-Bukhari 7↗

Khosrau of Persia tore the letter to pieces. The Prophet (ﷺ) prayed that his empire would be torn to pieces too. Within a generation it was gone. Others answered politely, and some rulers on the Gulf accepted Islam.

Sahih al-Bukhari 64↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4424↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Khaybar was a rich oasis of forts to the north, home to Jewish tribes. The leaders of Banu Nadir who had gathered the army at the Trench lived there too. In 628 he marched there. He always waited for dawn before an attack, to see if he heard a call to prayer. In the morning the farmers walked out with their tools, saw the army and ran.

Sahih al-Bukhari 371↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2943↗

The forts held out for days. He announced he would give the banner to a man who loved Allah (﷾) and His Messenger, and whom they loved. Everyone hoped it would be him. It was Ali, who had sore eyes. He spat into them and they healed. As Ali left, he told him to call them to Islam first, for one person guided through him was better than the finest red camels.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4210↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2942↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3009↗

He was sending Ali to war, and his final words were about guiding people.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2942↗

Khaybar fell. Its people asked to stay on and farm the land, and he agreed. They would keep half of the harvest. Safiyyah, the daughter of a chief of Banu Nadir, was among the captives, and her husband had been killed in the fighting. He freed her and married her, and her freedom was her dowry. Ibn Sa’d reports that he gave her the choice of going back to her people, and she chose him.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2285↗Sahih al-Bukhari 371↗Sahih Muslim 1807↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

After the victory a woman of Khaybar, Zaynab bint al-Harith, served him a poisoned sheep. He took a mouthful and told the others to stop, but a companion, Bishr ibn al-Bara, had already eaten. She said he had killed her father, her uncle and her husband. His companions asked if they should kill her, and he said no. Ibn Sa’d reports that when Bishr died, she was handed to his family, who put her to death. The Prophet (ﷺ) lived for about four more years, and in his last illness he said he still felt the poison’s pain. A separate page deals with the claim that it killed him.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2617↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3169↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirSahih al-Bukhari 4428↗

Umar received land at Khaybar, the best he had ever owned, and asked what to do with it. The Prophet (ﷺ) told him he could keep the land and give its yield in charity. That is the root of the waqf, the charitable trust that runs through Muslim history. His advice to a rich man was about how to make wealth serve others.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2737↗

On the day Khaybar fell, Ja’far and the last of the Muslims from Abyssinia arrived after about thirteen years away. Asma bint Umays had left her home for Allah (﷾) twice. When Umar teased her, she took it to the Prophet (ﷺ). He told her that she and her people had two emigrations, while others had one.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4230↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4233↗

A year after Hudaybiyah, as agreed, he went to Mecca for Umrah, and Quraysh watched. They had said that the fever of Medina had made the Muslims weak. So he told his men to jog the first three rounds of the Ka’bah. Seven years after he had left in secret, he walked round the house of Ibrahim openly, and Quraysh saw it for themselves.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4252↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4256↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1602↗

The tide was turning. Amr ibn al-As, who had gone to Abyssinia to bring back the refugees, came to Medina to accept Islam. So did Khalid ibn al-Walid, the man who had turned Uhud. Amr said on his deathbed that no one had been more hateful to him. Then no one was more beloved, and he could not look at him directly out of respect. He had been told that Islam wipes out all that came before it.

Sahih Muslim 121↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

His messenger al-Harith ibn Umayr was killed by Shurahbil ibn Amr, a Ghassanid chief allied to Rome. Killing an envoy was an act of war. In 629 he sent about 3,000 men north, to Mu’tah in what is now Jordan. He named three commanders in turn: Zayd, his adopted son, then Ja’far, then Abdullah ibn Rawahah.

Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirSahih al-Bukhari 4261↗

They met a far larger force. All three fell, one after another. Ibn Umar counted more than fifty wounds on Ja’far’s body, none of them in his back. Khalid ibn al-Walid took the banner and brought the army out.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4260↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4261↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4262↗

In Medina the Prophet (ﷺ) told the people the news before any messenger came, with tears in his eyes. He told them the banner had passed from one to the next, and that a sword of Allah (﷾) had taken it. He sat in the mosque with grief on his face. Zayd had been the slave who chose him over his own father, and Ja’far his cousin. Leadership did not spare his own people. It sent them first.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4262↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1299↗

The truce of Hudaybiyah let tribes choose sides. Khuza’ah had chosen him, and Banu Bakr had chosen Quraysh. Ibn Ishaq reports that late in 629, Banu Bakr attacked Khuza’ah by night, even in the sacred area. Men of Quraysh helped them. The treaty was dead. Abu Sufyan rode to Medina to repair it, and no one would speak for him.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The Prophet (ﷺ) prepared in silence. One Muslim, Hatib, sent a secret letter to warn Quraysh, for he had family there. The Prophet (ﷺ) learned of it and had the letter stopped on the road. Umar wanted Hatib killed. He said Hatib had fought at Badr, and forgave him. Even a betrayal in the middle of a campaign was judged on the whole of a man’s record.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3007↗Qur’an 60:1

In Ramadan of 630 he left Medina with 10,000 men. Outside Mecca he told each man to light a fire, and the valley blazed. Abu Sufyan came out to look, and was caught by the guards. Ibn Ishaq reports that he was brought to the Prophet (ﷺ). He was asked if it was not time he knew there was no god but Allah (﷾). He said that if there were any other, it would have helped him by now. He accepted Islam.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4276↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4280↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Then the Prophet (ﷺ) gave him something few conquerors offer. He sent word into the city. Whoever entered Abu Sufyan’s house would be safe. Whoever shut his own door would be safe. Whoever entered the Sacred Mosque would be safe. Abu Sufyan, the man who had led armies against him, was now his way of saving the town.

Sahih Muslim 1780↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

As the columns marched past, Sa’d ibn Ubadah called out that today was a day of slaughter. The Prophet (ﷺ) heard, and said Sa’d was wrong: this was a day on which the Ka’bah would be honoured. He took the banner from Sa’d and gave it to Sa’d’s son, the biographers say, so that he did not shame him.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4280↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He entered riding his camel, reciting Surah al-Fath, with a helmet on his head. Biographers say he bowed so low that his beard touched the saddle. He had left this town by night, hunted, eight years before. There was almost no fighting.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4281↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1846↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He went to the Ka’bah. About 360 idols stood around it. He struck them with a stick, reciting the verse below, and they fell. He would not enter the Ka’bah until the images inside were taken out. Among them were pictures of Ibrahim and Isma’il, drawn with divining arrows. He said Quraysh knew those two had never done such a thing.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4287↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1601↗

The house of Ibrahim was clean again, after centuries. Ibn Ishaq reports that Bilal climbed onto the Ka’bah and gave the call to prayer. In the year of the Prophet’s (ﷺ) birth, an army from Abyssinia had come to destroy this house. Now an Abyssinian freed slave stood on top of it, calling Mecca to one God (﷾).

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Ibn Ishaq reports that he stood at the door of the Ka’bah. Before him stood the town that had mocked him, starved his family, tortured his followers, driven him out and fought him for years. He asked what they thought he would do to them. Then he gave them the words of Yusuf to his brothers.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirQur’an 12:92

He told them to go, for they were free. Quraysh had done nearly everything to him that a people can do to a man. He had them in his hands, and he let them go.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The pardon had exceptions: four men and two women in Abu Dawud’s report, and a few more in Ibn Sa’d’s, named for particular crimes. Ibn Khatal, who had killed, was one, and he was put to death. Others on the list were later forgiven.

Sunan Abi Dawud 2683↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1846↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-KabirIbn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Conquerors usually settle their accounts. He settled none of his own. Aisha said he never took revenge for his own sake. Mecca is the proof of that.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3560↗

Ibn Ishaq reports that he took the keys of the Ka’bah and gave them back to Uthman ibn Talhah. That family had always kept them. Even this honour he did not take for his own family.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

The people of Mecca came to pledge themselves to him, and the rest of Arabia would soon follow. A short surah describes those days. Ibn Abbas understood from it that his work was nearly done, and his death was near.

Qur’an 110:1-3Sahih al-Bukhari 4970↗

The Ansar watched him with fear. Mecca was his home, the place he loved, and he had won it back. Would he stay? They said so among themselves, and he was told. He said to them: I live with you, and I will die with you. He stayed nineteen days, and he never made Mecca his home again. He had kept the word he gave that night at Aqabah.

Sahih Muslim 1780↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4298↗

Within weeks of Mecca’s fall, Hawazin and Thaqif gathered to strike first. Ibn Ishaq reports that their young commander, Malik ibn Awf, brought their women, children and herds to the field. That way no man would run. The Prophet (ﷺ) marched with about 12,000 men, the largest army the Muslims had ever had. Some said they could not be beaten now.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Qur’an 9:25

On the road, some new Muslims from Mecca saw a tree that idol worshippers hung their weapons on, and asked for one like it. He was shocked. He said they had spoken as Moses’ people had when they asked for an idol. Faith does not arrive all at once, and he kept teaching it, even on the march.

Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 2180↗Qur’an 7:138

At dawn, in the narrow valley of Hunayn, archers on the slopes struck from ambush. The army broke and ran. The Qur’an says their great numbers did them no good.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4315↗Qur’an 9:25-26

He did not run. He sat on his white mule and urged it towards the enemy, calling out: I am the Prophet, no lie. I am the son of Abd al-Muttalib. Al-Bara, who was there, said that in the heat of battle the bravest of them were the ones who stood beside him. He told his uncle al-Abbas, a man with a huge voice, to call back those who had made the pledge under the tree. They came back crying, “Here we are!”, and the battle turned.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2864↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4315↗Sahih Muslim 1775↗Sahih Muslim 1776↗

Ibn Ishaq reports that after the battle he saw a woman lying dead, and sent word to Khalid not to kill women or hired men. He had forbidden the killing of women and children.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 3015↗

The enemy’s survivors fled to Ta’if, the town that had stoned him. He besieged it, then decided to leave. Any slave who came out to him would be free, and some did. His men were unhappy to leave, so he let them attack once more. They were wounded, and next day they were glad to go. He smiled. He had no need to take Ta’if by force. Its people came to him within a year, and his prayer on that hard road was answered.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4325↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4326↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4072↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3231↗

Hawazin had lost their families and their herds. He waited more than ten nights before dividing the captives, hoping they would come. When their delegation arrived as Muslims, he asked his men to give the captives back. Anyone who would not give up his share for nothing was promised payment from the next spoils. Ibn Ishaq counts about six thousand people who went home free. The commander Malik ibn Awf himself became a Muslim.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2307↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4318↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He then gave huge gifts from the spoils to the leaders of Mecca who had only just accepted Islam. Safwan ibn Umayyah, who had hated him, said he kept on giving until no one was dearer to him. It was a way of winning hearts. But the Ansar received little, and some of them were hurt. Young men among them said he had gone back to his own people.

Sahih Muslim 2313↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4330↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4337↗

He gathered them alone. He reminded them of what Allah (﷾) had given them through him, and said they could answer back. They could say they had taken him in when he was driven out. Then he asked: are you not content that people go home with sheep and camels, while you go home with the Messenger of Allah (﷾)? If all people took one valley and the Ansar another, he said, he would take the valley of the Ansar. Ibn Ishaq reports that the men wept until their beards were wet.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4330↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4337↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He answered their hurt by naming what they had done for him. A ruler who had just won Mecca sat down with his people and put their side of the case for them.

In 630 word came of a Roman army gathering in the north. It was harvest time and fiercely hot, and the road was long. For once he told people openly where they were going, so that they could prepare. Ka’b ibn Malik said he had never been so well equipped, or so slow to go.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4418↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

The army needed funds. Uthman equipped much of it. A poor man who carried loads for a living brought a small measure of dates. The hypocrites mocked both the rich giver and the poor one, and the Qur’an answered them. Other men, too poor to find a mount, went away in tears. The Qur’an remembers them.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2778↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1415↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4668↗Qur’an 9:79Qur’an 9:92

He marched to Tabuk and found no army. There was no battle. Instead, towns on the border, such as Aylah, made treaties with him. His reach now touched the frontier of Rome.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3161↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

Back in Medina, more than eighty men who had stayed behind came with excuses. He accepted what they said and left their hearts to Allah (﷾). Ka’b ibn Malik could have done the same. He was a skilled speaker. Instead he told the truth: he had no excuse. So did Hilal ibn Umayyah and Murarah ibn al-Rabi.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4418↗

The Prophet (ﷺ) told the Muslims not to speak to the three. For fifty days no one answered Ka’b. He would greet the Prophet (ﷺ) and watch his lips to see if they moved. A king of Ghassan sent him a letter inviting him over, and Ka’b burned it. On the fiftieth morning a man on a hilltop shouted the news that Allah (﷾) had forgiven them.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4418↗

Ka’b later said that after Islam itself, no blessing had been greater for him than having told the truth that day. The liars got easy words and lost their standing. The truth-tellers got fifty hard days, and a place in the Qur’an for ever.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4418↗

The hypocrites had built a mosque of their own in Medina to divide the Muslims. The Qur’an told him never to stand in it, and Ibn Ishaq reports that it was pulled down. A building called a mosque can still be used against the faith.

Qur’an 9:107-108Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Abdullah ibn Ubayy died soon after. He had undermined the Prophet (ﷺ) for nine years. His son, a sincere Muslim, asked for the Prophet’s (ﷺ) shirt to wrap him in, and asked him to lead the funeral prayer. He agreed to both. Umar pulled at his robe to stop him. He said he had been given a choice, and that if asking forgiveness more than seventy times would help, he would do it. Then revelation told him not to pray for such people again.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1269↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4670↗Qur’an 9:80Qur’an 9:84

He gave his shirt to the man who had tried to destroy him. Here, again, the Qur’an corrected him, and here again the correction was for being too kind.

With Mecca won and Rome’s border quiet, tribes from all over Arabia sent delegations to Medina. People called it the Year of Delegations. Many accepted Islam, Thaqif of Ta’if among them. Others made terms and kept their own faith.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 4072↗

Christians from Najran came to discuss Jesus. The Qur’an told him to invite them to a solemn prayer, each side calling on Allah (﷾) to judge between them. They chose not to, and they made terms instead. He sent with them a trusted man, Abu Ubaydah, to deal with them fairly. Their faith stayed theirs.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4380↗Qur’an 3:61

In 631 he sent Abu Bakr to lead the Hajj, and an announcement was made at Mina. No idol worshipper would come for Hajj after this year, and no one would ever again walk round the Ka’bah naked.

Sahih al-Bukhari 369↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4363↗

He sent teachers across Arabia. When Mu’adh ibn Jabal left for Yemen, he told him how to proceed: call them first to one God (﷾), then to prayer, then to charity taken from their rich and given to their poor. Beware the prayer of someone wronged, he said, for nothing stands between it and Allah (﷾). Those words went out as a governor’s instructions.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1395↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4347↗

In 632 he announced he would perform Hajj. It was the only one he made after the Hijrah. People came from across Arabia to go with him. Jabir, who described the journey in detail, said he saw riders and walkers as far as his eye could reach, on every side.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4404↗Sahih Muslim 1218↗

On the plain of Arafat he spoke to them from his camel, and he spoke again in the days that followed. Jabir and others recorded what he said. He told them they might not meet him after this year.

Sahih Muslim 1218↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1739↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1741↗

He cancelled the feuds and the debts of his own family first, so no ruler’s family stood above the law.

He asked the crowd if he had delivered the message. They said they bore witness that he had. He raised a finger to the sky, and pointed it at the people. He said: O Allah (﷾), bear witness. O Allah (﷾), bear witness.

Sahih Muslim 1218↗

That day a verse came, and it marked the end of the work. A Jewish man later told Umar that if such a verse had come to his people, they would have made that day a festival.

Sahih al-Bukhari 45↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4606↗

At Mina he sacrificed sixty-three camels with his own hand, and Ali the rest of the hundred. Sixty-three was the number of his years. He told the people to learn their rites from him, for he might not make Hajj again. He had less than three months left.

Sahih Muslim 1218↗Sahih Muslim 1297↗

He knew. He told Fatimah that Jibril used to go over the Qur’an with him once a year. This year he had done so twice. He took it as a sign that his time had come. He went out to the graves of the Muslims at al-Baqi and prayed for them.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3624↗Sahih Muslim 974↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

He told his companions he wished to see his brothers. They asked if they were not his brothers. He said they were his companions. His brothers were those who had not yet come. He was speaking of believers not yet born.

Sahih Muslim 249↗

He had one more thing to arrange. He put young Usamah, son of Zayd, in charge of an army going north, and some people complained about his age. He said they had complained about his father too, and that Zayd had been fit to lead. A freed slave’s son would command men of Quraysh. In his last weeks he was still breaking the old order.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3730↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4469↗

Then the fever came. Ibn Mas’ud touched him and felt the heat. He said he suffered as much as two men, and that illness makes a believer’s sins fall like leaves from a tree. He kept asking where he would be the next day. His wives understood, and they gave him leave to stay in Aisha’s room. He walked there leaning on two men, his feet dragging on the ground.

Sahih al-Bukhari 5647↗Sahih al-Bukhari 5648↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4450↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4442↗

When the fever eased he had water poured over him and came out to speak. He said Allah (﷾) had given a servant the choice between this world and what is with Him. The servant had chosen what is with Him. Abu Bakr wept. People wondered why. He was the only one who understood that the servant was the Prophet (ﷺ) himself. He told them how much he owed Abu Bakr’s friendship and wealth.

Sahih al-Bukhari 466↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3654↗

The Ansar sat weeping for him. He came out with a cloth tied round his head, and it was the last time he climbed the pulpit. He told the Muslims to look after the Ansar, for they had done their duty and were owed their due.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3799↗

He warned against turning his grave into a place of worship, as people had done with the graves of earlier prophets. Aisha said that this was why his grave was kept from public view. He also told his followers not to overpraise him, as the Christians had the son of Mary. He was only a servant, and they should call him Allah’s (﷾) servant and Messenger.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1390↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3445↗

He was too weak to lead the prayer, and he told them to let Abu Bakr do it. Aisha said her father wept too much to be heard. He insisted. One day he felt better and came out between two men. Abu Bakr stepped back, and he signalled to him to stay in his place.

Sahih al-Bukhari 664↗Sahih al-Bukhari 687↗

On Monday morning the Muslims were in rows for the dawn prayer. He lifted the curtain of Aisha’s room and looked at them. Anas said his face was like a page of the Qur’an, and he smiled. They almost broke their prayer in their joy. He signalled to them to carry on, and let the curtain fall.

Sahih al-Bukhari 680↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4448↗

That was his last look at them, and it was enough. The community he had built was praying in rows, and it did not need him to lead it.

Fatimah came in, and he whispered to her, and she wept. He whispered again, and she smiled. She said nothing until after his death. He had told her first that he would die of this illness. Then he told her she would be the first of his family to follow him. Six months later she did. When she cried out at his pain, he told her that her father would have no more pain after this day.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3623↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3624↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4433↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4240↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4462↗

His last instructions to his people were two things: keep up the prayer, and fear Allah (﷾) in how you treat your slaves. Aisha held him against her chest. He dipped his hand in a bowl of water and wiped his face. He said there is no god but Allah (﷾), and that death has its pains. He looked up. His last words were a prayer: O Allah (﷾), the Highest Companion.

Sunan Abi Dawud 5156↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4449↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4435↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4440↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4436↗

He died on a Monday in June 632, in Aisha’s room, at the age of sixty-three.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3536↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1387↗

Medina was stunned. Umar stood in the mosque and insisted he had not died. Abu Bakr rode in, went to the room, uncovered his face and kissed him. He said he was sweet in life and sweet in death. Then he went out, told Umar to sit down, and spoke to the people.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1241↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3667↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3668↗

He said that whoever worshipped Muhammad (ﷺ) should know that Muhammad (ﷺ) had died. Whoever worshipped Allah (﷾) should know that Allah (﷾) is alive and never dies. Then he recited the verse revealed years before, at Uhud. The people said it was as if they had never heard it. Umar’s legs gave way and he fell to the ground.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1241↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3668↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4454↗Qur’an 3:144

That moment shows what he had taught. His closest friend stood up, in the worst hour its people had known, and made sure no one worshipped the Prophet (ﷺ). The religion would not die with him, because it was never about him.

The Ansar met at the hall of Banu Sa’idah to discuss who should lead. Abu Bakr, Umar and Abu Ubaydah went to them, and Abu Bakr received the pledge. Ali gave his pledge too. The question has its own page.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3668↗Sahih al-Bukhari 6830↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4240↗

Ali and his family washed the body. He was buried in Aisha’s room, on the spot where he died, because he had said prophets are buried where they die. People prayed over him in small groups, with no one leading.

Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 1018↗Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)

Everything above happened in public. His family knew another side of him, and they left a full record of it. Few people in history have had their private life told in such detail.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4750↗

Asked what he did at home, Aisha said he served his family, and left when it was time to pray. Anas served him for ten years as a boy. He said the Prophet (ﷺ) never once told him off, or even said “uff”.

Sahih al-Bukhari 676↗Sahih al-Bukhari 6038↗

He loved children, at a time when many men thought that beneath them. He kissed his grandson Hasan, and a man said he had ten children and had never kissed one. He answered that those who show no mercy receive none. Once he made a prostration last so long that the people grew worried. His grandson had climbed on his back, and he did not want to hurry him. He raced Aisha on a journey. She won the first time. Years later he won, and he told her that made them even.

Sahih al-Bukhari 5997↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3753↗Sunan an-Nasa'i 1141↗Sunan Abi Dawud 2578↗

He wept openly. His baby son Ibrahim, born late in his life, died as a toddler. He held him as he died and tears ran down his face. He said the eyes shed tears and the heart grieves, but we say only what pleases our Lord.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1303↗

That same day there was an eclipse of the sun. People said the sky was grieving for the Prophet’s (ﷺ) son. Here was a chance a false prophet would never have let go. He had just buried his child. He stood up and told them the sun and moon do not eclipse for anyone’s death. They are signs of Allah (﷾). So he corrected a miracle that the people had offered him.

Sahih al-Bukhari 1043↗Sahih al-Bukhari 1063↗

After Khadijah’s death he married several women. All but Aisha had been married before, and many were widows. These marriages joined tribes and cared for women who had lost their husbands. They also gave the world teachers of his private life: Aisha taught for decades after his death. The questions people raise about these marriages have their own page.

Sahih al-Bukhari 5077↗Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir

One marriage needs a word of its own. He had arranged the marriage of his cousin Zaynab bint Jahsh to Zayd, his adopted son. It failed, and Zayd divorced her. In Arabia an adopted son counted as a son by blood, so no man could marry his former wife. The Qur’an ended that custom and told him to marry her. The same verse corrects him for fearing what people would say. Aisha said that if he had ever hidden a verse, it would have been this one.

Qur’an 33:37Qur’an 33:5Sahih al-Bukhari 7420↗

He treated rich and poor alike before the law. When a noblewoman of Banu Makhzum stole, people asked Usamah to plead for her. He was angry. He said nations before them had fallen because they punished the weak and let the powerful go. If his own daughter Fatimah stole, he said, he would apply the law to her.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3475↗

He lived with very little. Aisha said two months could pass with no fire lit in his homes, and that they lived on dates and water. Umar once found him lying on a mat that had marked his side. His room held almost nothing. Umar wept. He told Umar that the kings of Persia and Rome could have this world, and that he wanted the next.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2567↗Sahih al-Bukhari 6459↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4913↗

A life told in full has to face two subjects that modern readers find hard. Each has its own page, and each deserves a plain answer here.

Aisha said her marriage contract was made when she was six, and that she moved to his home at nine. In her world a girl was held ready for marriage at puberty, and no enemy of his is recorded objecting. Years later, offered her freedom, she chose to stay, and she became one of the great scholars of early Islam. Today the law of each country sets the age of marriage, and Muslims keep that law.

Sahih al-Bukhari 5134↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4785↗Qur’an 17:34

Slavery existed in every society he knew. Islam did not abolish it at a stroke. The Qur’an made freeing a slave an act of worship. He condemned anyone who sold a free person. He told owners that their slaves were their brothers, to be fed and clothed as they fed and clothed themselves. Bilal and Zayd, both former slaves, rose to the front rank of the Muslims.

Qur’an 90:12-13Sahih al-Bukhari 2227↗Sahih al-Bukhari 30↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3754↗

War was the one way left of taking a person captive. For prisoners of war the Qur’an names generosity or ransom. At Badr prisoners were ransomed, and at Hunayn the captives went home free. But the women and children of Banu Qurayzah and Khaybar were taken captive and shared out, as armies did across the ancient world.

Qur’an 47:4Sahih Muslim 1763↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2307↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4028↗Sahih al-Bukhari 371↗

Classical law allowed a man relations with a captive woman he owned, under strict rules. He had to wait a set time, and he could never force her into prostitution. If she bore him a child, the child was born free, she could not be sold, and she went free at his death.

Qur’an 24:33

When he died he owned no slave at all. Today no one may own another person, so none of these rules can apply.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2739↗

By the end of his life he governed most of Arabia, and large sums passed through his hands. The Qur’an set aside part of all spoils for him, for his family, for orphans, the needy and travellers. So where did it go?

Qur’an 8:41

He died owning a white mule, his weapons, and a piece of land he had given in charity. He left no money, no slave, nothing else. His armour was held by a Jewish neighbour against thirty measures of barley he had borrowed to feed his family. He said that prophets leave no inheritance, and that what they leave is charity.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2739↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2916↗Sahih al-Bukhari 2069↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3093↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4240↗

Ask what a false claimant would want. The usual answers are money and power. Power he had, and he used it to forgive. Money passed through his hands and kept on going. The ruler of Arabia had to borrow barley.

In twenty-three years, most of Arabia’s tribes had come under one faith and one law. The Qur’an had been committed to memory by many and written down. A freed slave had called the prayer from the roof of the Ka’bah. All of this came from a man who could not read.

Sahih al-Bukhari 4986↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4993↗

Pew estimated about two billion Muslims in 2020. Five times a day they pray as he prayed. They fast as he fasted. They turn to the house Ibrahim built. His words and habits were recorded in great detail by the people who knew him.

Pew Research Center, 2025↗

He claimed to be a messenger of Allah (﷾). That claim is either true or it is not. If it is not, he was either lying or mistaken. Now put each of those next to the life you have just read.

Was he lying? Liars lie for something. Look at what he was offered and what he refused, and at what he owned on the day he died. Mecca called him the trustworthy for forty years before he said a word about religion. His enemy Abu Sufyan, before an emperor, with every reason to lie, could not name a single lie he had told. This is strong evidence that he was sincere. The next question is whether he could have been mistaken.

Ibn Ishaq, Sirah (Ibn Hisham’s edition)Sahih al-Bukhari 2916↗Sahih al-Bukhari 7↗

Was he sincere but mistaken? Many capable people have held wrong beliefs, so his success proves nothing alone. But look at what such a mistake would have to explain. He feared for himself at the first revelation. It came and went without his choosing. It corrected him in public, and once it left him waiting for a month. For twenty-three years, through persecution, exile, war and rule, its message stayed the same: one God (﷾), prayer, charity and justice. The people who knew him best, his wife, his closest friend, his cousin and his adopted son, believed first and never left.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3↗Sahih al-Bukhari 4750↗Sahih al-Bukhari 3857↗

The Qur’an and his own words also spoke of things to come. Here are four.

Above all there is the Qur’an, the book he brought and could not have read. It tells the reader to look for a flaw in it. For fourteen centuries it has challenged people to produce anything like it. His life is the frame around that book. It is the reason the book deserves a hearing.

Qur’an 29:48Qur’an 4:82Qur’an 2:23

Taken together, the evidence points to a true prophet: a man known for honesty, who kept nothing for himself, whose revelation corrected him, and whose words came true.

He never asked anyone to worship him. His message in every year of his life was one sentence: there is no god but Allah (﷾). It is the same message Moses and Jesus brought. If this life has moved you, or even just left you asking, take the next step. Read the Qur’an for yourself, and find out what he called people to.

Qur’an 21:25