Historians cannot figure out the exact date of Muhammad's birth, but the common consensus puts it around 570 AD (Phipps 34). His death, on the other hand, is well known to have occurred in 632 AD (Cook 14).

Muhammad's father died shortly before his birth, so Muhammad's mother took him to live with husband's father (Marston 12). Muhammad's name means 'worthy of praise' or 'often praised' and was an unfamiliar name in Arabia (Salahi 23). He lived on the Arabian Peninsula, near the Red Sea (Martson 7). He was from the Quraysh. The Quraysh are an Arab tribe said to descend from a nobleman, Fihr ibn Malik, who lived eleven generations before Muhammad (Cook 12).

As was common for young children, Muhammad was sent to live with a bedouin, or nomad, woman named Halima (Martson 14). Halima was from one of the poorest tribes, she had no milk for her own child and even her camels' were dried up. B

One year later, on January 1, 630 AD, Muhammad returned to Mecca with 10,000 men. He then ordered the men to spread out some distance from the city and light campfires to make the army appear even larger to intimidate the city. This caused the Quraysh leaders to give their allegiance to the Prophet (Martson 80).

Muhammad's first followers were his family. Then others started to follow his teachings, these mostly included poor people and slaves because one of the main points of his teaching said for the rich to help the poor (Martson 34). The rich of the day probably didn't like this concept to much. The most powerful tribe in Mecca at this time was the Quraysh which included Muhammad's own clan. Because of their size and power the Quraysh became a primary target of Muhammad's criticisms. This caused them to start to oppose him. And their biggest problem with Muhammad was when he began to say that Allah was not the first among all the deities but was the one and only god (Martson 36).

By June he gave up all activities outside his home and was apparently ill with fever. On June 8, 632 AD, Muhammad died (Martson 88). Surviving him were nine widows, a concubine from Egypt, and four daughters (Cook 24).

Over the next two years Muhammad spread Islam to many of the surrounding settlements and countries through peaceful negotiations or through jihads (Martson 84).

Shortly after returning to Mecca Muhammad's mother died and then two years later his grandfather died. Luckily he was taken in by his uncle Abu Talib, but unfortunately his uncle didn't have the money to send Muhammad to school so he tended to his uncle's livestock (Martson 16). When Muhammad was older his uncle had him help with his trade dealings and due to his reliability and honesty in these transactions he came to be called Al Amin which means "the trustworthy" (Martson 22).

Muhammad memorized the revelations and preached them to listeners. They would then memorize what he said and may have kept written records. The collection of revelations came to be called the Koran (Martson 30). The Koran is the primary holy book of Islam. The Koran is 114 chapters that are arranged in order of length from longest to shortest (Martson 9). The Koran does not present events in chronological order and is not a historical narrative (Martson 10).

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)