Islam and Islamic History in Arabia
In or about the year 570 the child who would be named Muhammad
and who would become the Prophet of one of the world's great religions, Islam,
was born into a family belonging to a clan of Quraysh, the ruling tribe of
Mecca, a city in the Hijaz region of northwestern Arabia.
Originally the site of the Ka'bah, a shrine of ancient
origins, Mecca had with the decline of southern Arabia (see Chapter l ) become
an important center of sixth-century trade with such powers as the Sassanians,
Byzantines, and Ethiopians. As a result the city was dominated by powerful
merchant families among whom the men of Quraysh were preeminent.
Muhammad's father, 'Abd Allah ibn'Abd al-Muttalib, died before
the boy was born; his mother, Aminah, died when he was six. The orphan was
consigned to the care of his grandfather, the head of the clan of Hashim. After
the death of his grandfather, Muhammad was raised by his uncle, Abu Talib. As
was customary, Muhammad as a child was sent to live for a year or two with a
Bedouin family. This custom, followed until recently by noble families of Mecca,
Medina, Tayif, and other towns of the Hijaz, had important implications for
Muhammad. In addition to enduring the hardships of desert life, he acquired a
taste for the rich language so loved by the Arabs, whose speech was their
proudest art, and learned the patience and forbearance of the herdsmen, whose
life of solitude he first shared and then came to understand and appreciate.
About the year 590, Muhammad, then in his twenties, entered
the service of a widow named Khadijah as a merchant actively engaged with
trading caravans to the north. Sometime later Muhammad married Khadijah, by whom
he had two sons - who did not survive - and four daughters.
During this period of his life Muhammad traveled widely. Then,
in his forties he began to retire to meditate in a cave on Mount Hira outside of
Mecca, where the first of the great events of Islam took place. One day, as he
sat in the cave, he heard a voice, later identified as that of the Angel
Gabriel, which ordered him to:
Recite: In the name of thy Lord who created, Created man from
a clot of blood.
Three times Muhammad pleaded his inability to do so, but each
time the command was repeated. Finally, Muhammad recited the words of what are
now the first five verses of the 96th surah or chapter of the Quran - words
which proclaim God the Creator of man and the Source of all knowledge.
At first Muhammad divulged his experience only to his wife and
his immediate circle. But as more revelations enjoined him to proclaim the
oneness of God universally, his following grew, at first among the poor and the
slaves, but later also among the most prominent men of Mecca. The revelations he
received at this time and those he did so later are all incorporated in the
Quran, the Scripture of Islam.
Photo: The
sun rises over Jabal al-Rahmah, the Mount of Mercy, where Muhammad in his
farewell sermon told the assembled Muslims, "I have delivered God's message
to you and left you with a clear command: the Book of God and the practice of
His Prophet. If you hold fast to this you will never go astray."
Not everyone accepted God's message transmitted through
Muhammad. Even in his own clan there were those who rejected his teachings, and
many merchants actively opposed the message. The opposition, however, merely
served to sharpen Muhammad's sense of mission and his understanding of exactly
how Islam differed from paganism. The belief in the unity of God was paramount
in Islam; from this all else followed. The verses of the Quran stress God's
uniqueness, warn those who deny it of impending punishment, and proclaim His
unbounded compassion to those who submit to His will. They affirm the Last
Judgment, when God, the Judge, will weigh in the balance the faith and works of
each man, rewarding the faithful and punishing the transgressor. Because the
Quran rejected polytheism and emphasized man's moral responsibility, in powerful
images, it presented a grave challenge to the worldly Meccans.
Above article was reproduced with permission of IslamiCity
(http://www.islamicity.com)