Muhammad Receives the First Revelation
In the month of Ramadan in 610 CE, a Meccan merchant named Muhammad ibn Abdallah, then approximately forty years old, retired as was his custom to a cave on Mount Hira for solitary meditation. There, according to Islamic tradition, the angel Jibreel (Gabriel) appeared to him and commanded: 'Iqra' — Read, or Recite. The terrified Muhammad protested that he could not read, but the command came three times, and then the first words of what would become the Quran were revealed. Muhammad returned home trembling to his wife Khadijah, who became the first convert to Islam and whose support sustained him through the years of rejection that followed. For the next twelve years in Mecca, the new religion attracted a small but devoted following — mostly the poor, slaves, and young idealists — while facing fierce opposition from the Qurayshi merchant aristocracy whose wealth depended on Mecca's position as a polytheist pilgrimage centre. The core of Muhammad's message was radical in its simplicity and its social implications: there is one God (Allah), Muhammad is His final messenger, and all human beings are equal before God regardless of tribe, wealth, or birth. In a society stratified by clan loyalty and the ownership of slaves, this was not abstract theology — it was a direct attack on the existing social order. The Quran's condemnations of hoarding wealth, mistreatment of orphans, and false pride in lineage were heard as political challenges by Mecca's ruling families. In 622, facing persecution that had become life-threatening, Muhammad and his followers emigrated to Medina — the Hijra — which marks year one of the Islamic calendar. In Medina, Muhammad transformed from prophet to statesman: he issued the Constitution of Medina, which created a political compact among the city's Arab and Jewish tribes, and began the series of military campaigns that would eventually conquer Mecca in 630. By the time of his death in 632, the entire Arabian Peninsula had nominally submitted to Islam. The religious, legal, and political framework Muhammad established — the five pillars, the concept of the ummah (community of believers) transcending tribal loyalty, the fusion of religious and political authority — would prove remarkably durable. Within a century of his death, the empire he had set in motion stretched from Spain to the borders of China, making Islam the fastest-expanding civilisation in history. The scholarly tradition around Muhammad is vast. The Quran is the primary source, supplemented by the Hadith (reported sayings and actions of the Prophet) and the Sira (biographical accounts). Western scholars including Maxime Rodinson, W. Montgomery Watt, and Karen Armstrong have attempted historically grounded biographies that navigate between hagiography and polemics.
- Year: 610 CE
- Category: Religious
