Was there anything like “monotheism” in Arabia at the origins of Islam?
At Muhammad’s time the Meccan cult revolved around a principal deity called Allah (“the” god, or simply God), whose three “daughters” (Allat, Manat, and Uzza) also figured in local piety. The Quraysh tribe had become the ruling authority over the city’s affairs and exercised considerable control over the Ka’ba. The Ka’ba and its stone had many meanings to the Meccans of Muhammad’s day, and they would play an important role, sometimes negative and sometimes more positive, in the Prophet’s life. According to one account, when the structure had to be rebuilt, the Meccans asked Muhammad the Trustworthy to replace the stone in its socket. Ever aware of the symbolic value of his public actions, and looking for ways to unify local factions, Muhammad placed the stone in the center of his cloak and had representatives of the chief interests lift it with him by grabbing a corner of the cloak. Some estimates date that event at around the year 604 C.E., prior to the beginning of Muhammad’s prophetic career. As the Quraysh came more and more to disapprove of his new preaching, they applied the ultimate social pressure, denying Muhammad access to the sacred precincts to pray. Eventually the Ka’ba would become the center of the world of Islam. In the classic Islamic interpretation of history, the birth of Islam marked the death of the “age of ignorance” (jahiliya).
Who was Muhammad? What is known about his early life?
Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 C.E. to a rather poor family of the clan of Hashim, one of the branches of the Quraysh tribe. His father died before Muhammad was born and the boy’s mother died when he was six years old. According to Arabian custom, the child was sent to be reared for a time among the Bedouin. Tradition names his nurse Halima. After his mother’s death, Muhammad grew up in the custody first of grandfather Abd al-Muttalib and later in the house of his uncle Abu Talib, whose son Ali would later become a major religious and political figure as well. Tradition has it that the young Muhammad travelled with his uncle on business. One story tells how in Syria they met an old Christian monk named Bahira, who discerned the marks of prophetic greatness in the boy.
Did Muhammad have any siblings?
He had no “blood” siblings but a total of eight “foster” siblings. His family tree was thus a bit more complex than many, in the sense that very early on Muhammad’s family relations included intertribal connections. The practice of engaging the services of wet nurses from among the Bedouin meant that children often grew up with peers from outside their family of origin’s lineage.
What is known about Muhammad’s family life as an adult? Was polygamy a new development with Islam?
When Muhammad was about twenty-five, he married a widow fifteen years his senior. Khadija ran her own caravan business, and Muhammad went to work for her. They were married for over twenty years, and while Khadija lived, Muhammad married no other women. He remained unmarried, it appears, for another two years after her death. Over the following seven years, Muhammad contracted marriages with a total of eleven other women under a wide variety of circumstances. Polygamy was already a very ancient practice in the Middle East, as is clear from the Hebrew Scriptures. Abraham and subsequent “patriarchs,” as well as David, Solomon, and assorted other kings of Israel, had multiple wives, including some who were very young when first married. Given such a long-standing cultural precedent, Muhammad’s practice was not at all unusual. Muhammad’s subsequent wives were Sawda, Aisha (daughter of major Companion and first Caliph Abu Bakr), Hafsa (daughter of Companion and second Caliph Umar), Zaynab (daughter of Khuzayma), Umm Salama, Zaynab (daughter of Jahsh), Juwayria, Umm Habiba, Safiya, Maymuna, and Maria (a Coptic Christian). Many of these relationships were the result of concerns for the security of individual women as well as means of cementing social bonds within the community.
The Tomb of Abraham in Hebron is a Muslim holy site.
What does tradition tell us about Muhammad’s personal spiritual life?
Apparently Muhammad occasionally liked to retreat to mountain solitude, in a cave on Mt. Hira above Mecca, to meditate and seek within the source of life. He was very likely aware of traditions about previous “seekers after the One God,” stories of whom had long been the shared patrimony of ancient Middle Eastern oral cultures. He may have learned of the practice of solitary meditation, at least indirectly, from Christian monks who lived in the region. Around 610 C.E., when Muhammad had reached the age long considered in the Middle East a necessary precondition for the imparting of wisdom and ministry, he began to experience troubling visitations that sent him in turmoil to ask for Khadija’s counsel. She encouraged Muhammad to pay close heed to these experiences as authentic spiritual encounters, however bewildering they might be.
What’s the Islamic understanding of the origins of Muhammad’s experience of revelation?
Here is the traditional account: On the “Night of Power” in the year 610, now generally commemorated on the twenty-seventh day of Ramadan, the earliest message commanded him to “Recite!” (literally, “make Quran,” i.e., “recitation”) that which no human being could know unaided. The encounter left him confused and uncertain. Not until almost a year later did Muhammad hear a follow-up message of confirmation: “Indeed your Lord is the one who best knows who has strayed from His path, who best knows those who are guided” (Quran 68:7). Assured that he was not losing his sanity, Muhammad persisted in his attitude of attentiveness to the messages from the unseen world. From then on revelations came more frequently. During the next several years, Muhammad slowly gathered a circle of “converts” who would form the nucleus of a faith community. Leaders of the Quraysh grew increasingly unhappy at the effects of Muhammad’s preaching on caravan and pilgrim traffic to the Ka’ba and at the prospect of a rival leader in their midst. Around 615 C.E., under growing pressure and amid threats to the safety of his community, Muhammad sent a group off to seek asylum across the Red Sea with the Christian rule of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Muhammad remained in Mecca.
What were some critical events in Islam’s earliest years?
Over the next twenty-two years or so (610–632), Muhammad continued to preach the word God had spoken directly to him. At the heart of the message was the notion of “surrender” (the root meaning of the Arabic word islam, is-LAAM) to the one true God. His early preaching called for social justice and equality and condemned oppression of the poor by the wealthy and powerful. Muhammad belonged to a powerful tribe called the Quraysh, who exercised considerable control over the lives of the Meccans generally. But Muhammad’s family and the clan of which they were a part were among the poorer and less influential within the tribe. Muhammad’s preaching did not endear him to the Quraysh, who made life difficult for the small community of Muslims. In 622, Muhammad and his followers made the crucial decision to move north to the city of Yathrib, whose representatives had offered the young community sanctuary. This “emigration,” or Hijra, marked the official beginning of the Muslim calendar. Muhammad the prophet became a statesman as well, and Yathrib became known as Madinat an-Nabi, the City of the Prophet, or Medina for short. The Muslim community grew rapidly, doing battle with the Meccans and eventually regaining access to Mecca in 630.
What place does Muhammad occupy in Islamic tradition?
Muslims consider Muhammad the last in a line of prophets commissioned to act as God’s spokesmen to humankind. Beginning with Adam and continuing down through Jesus, the pre-Islamic prophets preached the same fundamental message of belief in one sovereign transcendent God. But because successive generations invariably found the message difficult and inconvenient, people sometimes corrupted or diluted the revelation. Hence, God chose