CSMH History Class

Muhammad called to be the Prophet of God

Page history last edited by Ryan Sarll 2 yrs ago

Muhammad called to be the Prophet of God by Ryan S.

Who Was Muhammad?

Not a lot is known about Muhammad's childhood, but we do know that he was born around 570 C.E. in Mecca. One of the earliest resources we have of him is a date of 750 C.E. with a book called life by Ibn Ishaq, this was more then 100 years after his death. This is the first basic source of information about the life Muhammad. He lived for all Muslims. We don't have any original copies of Ibn Ishaq's work, but we do have a later version by Ibn Hisham. He died in 834 C.E. So practically, our earliest information was about 200 years after Muhammad died.

The Muslim tradition says that Mecca was a great stopping place for trading, but where Mecca is right now isn't a place that people would stop from the route to Arabia to Syria. Also the coins that were found, show only Allah, or god, not the Prophet. Also Muhammad's birthday differed from about 85 years from the stories that went around. So with that information, Muhammad's life is based mostly on traditional beliefs that were passed down and not on pure fact. For the descriptions that we do have of Muhammad, he was portrayed an honest and moral man. When he grew older, he was more distressed with society around him and some times he went to a cave and thought about his life. Some times for days at a time.

Muhammad's preaching of his new beliefs were not welcomed at Mecca and after thirteen years of preaching, his small band of followers were not strong enough to take control of Mecca. Due to these facts, he then moved his group to Medina in 622, an event that was called the Hijra and is the beginning of the Muslim calendar. In Medina he made a school or band that made freedom of religion for the local jews, but Muhammad thought that they would quickly go into Islam once they heard what it was all about. He was very disappointed that they didn't switch. Then Muhammad changed the regular salat{prayers}. When they were praying they used to face Jerusalem, now they faced Mecca. That I think was very disappointing for Muhammad. On June 8, 632, Muhammad died. In the 640's, Arabs possessed most of Syria, Iraq, Persia, and Egypt. Thirty years later the Arabs conquered parts of Europe, Africa, and Central Asia. Today, the Muslim religion is becoming one the fastest growng religions in the world.

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