The Qurʾān provides very few concrete details regarding Muhammad’s life. Most such information thus comes from the sīrah (“biography”) literature, consisting of accounts of his life by various writers dating mainly from the 8th and 9th centuries. Those reports are not consistent, however, and some include miraculous elements or stories obviously adapted from the Bible. By carefully comparing accounts, scholars have identified common elements that were in circulation by the late 7th century, and some rudimentary details are confirmed by non-Islamic sources (e.g., a Syriac chronicle and an Armenian history) dating to the first few decades after his traditional death date.

Born in Mecca about 570 CE, Muhammad married a wealthy widow, Khadījah, in 595. In 610 he experienced a vision of the archangel Gabriel. His public preaching aroused opposition from other clans of his tribe. He undertook his miraculous Night Journey (Isrāʾ) from Mecca to Jerusalem, where he prayed with Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. After his clan withdrew its protection, he fled to Medina in 622 and repulsed two attacks by Meccan forces in 625 and 627. He concluded a truce with Mecca in 628 but later forced it to submit. He led the Farewell Pilgrimage to Mecca, the precedent for the hajj,

Muhammad was the founder of Islam and the proclaimer of the Qurʾān, Islam’s sacred scripture. He spent his entire life in what is now the country of Saudi Arabia, from his birth about 570 CE in Mecca to his death in 632 in Medina. According to Islamic tradition, the Qurʾān, understood as a literal transcription of the speech of God (Allah), was revealed to Muhammad in stages by the archangel Gabriel, beginning in 610.