The revelation came in a time when Muhammad searched for solitude. Muhammad received his first revelation in 610, on the mountain of Hira outside Mecca. Some of these wives were ways of knotting closer relations with powerful people in the society, and some were widows without economical support. Unlike in his marriage with Khadija, he chose to have several wives, 9 is reported. Khadija died in 619, and soon Muhammad remarried.
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Even if Khadija had children from both of her former marriages, she got 7 children with Muhammad. At the age of 25 Muhammad married Khadija, then 40. It was while working as a trader, that Muhammad came to know the widow (and divorcee) Khadija, who was the owner of a caravan company where Muhammad was employed. Muhammad is, by Muslim theologists, not believed to have received any education, and in young age he started working with the caravans. While the Quraysh was dominating Mecca, the Hashimis had little but religious prestige connected to the, at that time pagan, shrine of Ka'ba.Īs Muhammad's father, Abdullah, died before the birth of his son, and his mother, Amina, when he was 6, Muhammad was in the care of his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib for two years, and then with his uncle Abu Talib, until he reached mature age.
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Muhammad's family belonged to the clan of Hashim, a branch of the Quraysh tribe. Muhammad's birth is said to have been in the "year of the Elephant", which one believes is pointing to the invasion from Yemen, where an elephant was brought along in order to smash the Ka'ba, an event which is dated to 570/571 AD (where Muhammad's recorded age at certain times, have been used as the main source for the estimation).
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These are very good reasons for us to treat the material on Muhammad's life as historical sources, and even more, as good historical sources. Except from certain passages, the material bears few traces of being legendary, and was first told by people who knew Muhammad as a man, and told to people of the same era and cultural environment. The material is extensive, and the presentation of Muhammad in the early texts is straight forward: Different versions of stories are presented, and Muhammad himself is presented as a human being with both his good and his bad sides. The oldest compilation now available, are the ones of Ibn Ishaq (Baghdad, 768). The compilations where built on historical criticism not very unlike what is the method in modern historical criticism. The suras and hadiths available are the result of work from about 100 years after Muhammad's death, but are a continuation of a very accurate and living oral tradition. Bits and pieces of Muhammad's life is also recorded in the Koran. They are principally in the form of the hadiths, the traditions, which are systematical efforts of choosing between good and not so good stories of Muhammad's life, often collected in the shape of suras. The sources available to us on Muhammad are muslim, written in Arabic.
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Muhammad has religious importance in Christianity and Judaism, while Muhammad's position in later religions, like Baha'i, resemble what is found in Islam. Muhammad is the central messenger and prophet in Islam the receiver and transmitter of God's message to mankind, as recorded in the Holy Koran, the principal religious text for Muslims. Sources Normal man First Revelation Conversions Hijira Medina & Battles Last years Ascension List of Prophets