Muhammad was born into the ruling Quraish clan of Mecca, in the western part of Arabia, in the year 570. Mecca was a caravan city that had grown up around the Ka’abah, a shrine said to have been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael. At the time of Muhammad, the locals worshipped more than 360 idols at the Ka’abah, and Mecca was notorious for its lawlessness and wickedness.

Muhammad’s parents died when he was a child. He spent some years among the bedouins in the desert, and traveled widely with caravans throughout the Middle East. In his twenties, he became a successful businessman himself, and married Khadija, a woman fifteen years his senior, to whom he remained devoted for the rest of his life.

Tradition says that Muhammad’s youth gave him a sympathy for the poor and downtrodden, and that his years with the bedouins gave him an appreciation of simplicity and solitude, a strong will, and an excellent character. Yet tradition also says that he was an unremarkable, unlettered man until the age of 40, when God

Grand Mosque

Grand Mosque

There was much early opposition to Muhammad and his teachings. By the year 622, political intrigue and assassination plots forced the prophet and his followers to flee to the city of Medina. Among the faithful, this event (called the hijra) marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar and the dawn of the Muslim age. Muhammad was not deterred from his calling, and eight years later he returned in triumph, destroyed the idols which defiled the temple of Abraham, and ruled as head of state of the tribes around Mecca.

Over the next several centuries, Islam grew faster than any religion in the history of the world. By the mid-700s, it had spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East, to Spain in Europe, through Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan, and into the countries of central Asia. Today, it is the predominant religion from Morocco to Mindanao, and has adherents all over the globe.