Muhammad (26 April 570-8 June 632) was the founder of the religion of Islam and the last prophet according to Muslims. Muhammad was not just an inspirational religious leader, but he was also a successful military commander who defeated the pagan Quraysh of Mecca and established an ummah in Arabia. Muhammad died shortly after unifying Arabia under Islamic rule, and he was succeeded by Abu Bakr as leader of Islam, with Abu Bakr becoming the first Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate.
Biography
Muhammad was the son of Abdullah ibn Shaiba and Aminah bint Wahb. His father died when he was born, and he was raised under the care of his uncle Abu Talib ibn Shaiba. Muhammad worked as a merchant after his childhood, during which time he became familiar with the Christian and Jewish religions, and he would seclude himself and pray in a cave for several nights. At the age of 40, he claimed that the archangel Gabriel visited him and gave him his first revelation from Allah. He engaged in dawah, proselytizing people to his beliefs three years later. He preached that surrender (Islam) to Allah was the only way acceptable to Allah, and that he was a prophet and messenger of God like Isa, Ibrahim, Musa, and the other prophets of Islam. He gained some early followers, but when some tribes of Mecca acted with hostility towards the Muslims, Muhammad sent some of his followers to the Kingdom of Axum while he migrated to Medina in 622 in the hijra. He united the tribes in the Constitution of Medina, and he led the tribes of Medina against the Quraysh of Mecca. He first won the Battle of Badr in 624, and despite a setback at the Battle of Uhud in 625, he won the Battle of the Trench in 627 and conquered Mecca with 10,000 converts in 629. He destroyed the 360 pagan idols at the Ka'aba in the city and made Mecca and Medina into the two holiest cities of Islam, as well as sending out expeditions to the rest of Arabia to spread Islam through conquest. He united the Muslims of Arabia into the ummah, a single Islamic state. The belief became a large religion that would spread to the rest of the Middle East soon after. Muhammad's rule saw the Arabs conquer almost all of the Arabian Peninsula, and he died in 632, having declared Abu Bakr his successor as the first caliph.
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