Who Muhammad ﷺ is

Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, was born in Makkah around the year 570 of the common era. When Muslims say his name, they add a short prayer for him after it. In writing you will see ﷺ, or peace be upon him, or the letters pbuh. All of it is the same phrase, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam.

He was orphaned by six. Raised by his grandfather, then by his uncle. Worked as a shepherd and later as a merchant. Those who knew him before he received prophethood called him al-Amin, the trustworthy. His wife Khadija, older than him and already established in trade, had trusted him with her business before she married him.

He received his first revelation at age forty, in a cave outside Makkah, from the angel Jibreel. The first word revealed was iqra, meaning read or recite. He could not read. That detail is not incidental. The Quran came through a man who had never been a student of anyone.

“We have not sent you, except as a mercy to all creation.”

— Quran 21:107

The thirteen years in Makkah

He preached the oneness of God in a city of 360 idols. The early Muslims were beaten, tortured, boycotted, and eventually driven out. He never once retaliated personally. When a tribe near Makkah drove him out bleeding, and an angel offered to crush them between two mountains, he said no, and prayed instead that their descendants would come to believe.

The ten years in Madinah

After the hijrah (migration) to Madinah, a city-state formed around him. Treaties were signed with Jewish tribes. Constitutions were drawn up. Wars were fought and ended. In the end he entered Makkah with roughly ten thousand men, without bloodshed, and forgave the people who had spent twenty years trying to kill him.

He died at sixty-three, in the arms of his wife Aisha, without leaving behind gold or property. His armour was pawned to a Jewish merchant for a loan of barley. His sandals were stitched. His bed was a mat of palm fibres that left marks on his body.

Why Muslims model their lives on him

The Quran tells believers explicitly to follow his example.

لَّقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ فِي رَسُولِ اللَّهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ

There is certainly in the Messenger of Allah an excellent example for you.

— Quran 33:21

The record of his sayings, actions, and silent approvals was collected after his death into books called hadith collections. The two most rigorously authenticated are Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. When you read a hadith with those labels, it has passed through a screening process more careful than almost any ancient text ever produced.