Muhammad (c. 570-632)

Before recounting a life, the honest historian must state the sources of their information. For Muhammad, this question is not a mere methodological precaution: it is the heart of the matter. The paradox is striking — the man who most shaped the history of the 7th century is almost invisible in the documents of that very century.

The Near-Total Silence of Contemporary Sources

No continuous Muslim text written during Muhammad’s lifetime or in the decades immediately following his death has survived. The very earliest external mentions — Christian or Jewish — are brief, allusive, and often awkward. The oldest is the Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati (“Teaching of Jacob Newly Baptized”), a Christian Greek treatise composed around 634, barely two years after Muhammad’s traditional death. It refers, without naming him, to “a prophet who appeared with the Saracens” — but regards him as alive and judges his message harshly.^[2]

“It was said that a prophet had appeared, coming with the Saracens, proclaiming the coming of the anointed one, the Christ who was to come. […] He is a false prophet, for prophets do not come armed with a sword.”
— Doctrina Jacobi, Greek Christian treatise, circa 634^[3]

A generation later, the History attributed to the Armenian bishop Sebēos (written around 660) is the first external text to give a name — Mahmet — and to describe him as a merchant of the lineage of Ishmael preaching the God of Abraham.^[4] The first material and dated attestation of the name comes even later: the inscriptions of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, commissioned by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik and dated to 72 AH (691–692), bear the word muhammad and Qur’anic formulas.^[5] Nearly sixty years elapsed between the death of the figure and this first epigraphy.

The Qur’an: Rich in Doctrine, Sparse in Biography

One might think that the Qur’an, regarded by Muslims as the very word transmitted to Muhammad, provides a solid biographical foundation. This is not the case. The Qur’an names Muhammad only four times — in chapters 3, 33, 47, and 48 — and a fifth time as Ahmad.^[6] Above all, it hardly recounts his life: it gives no dates, no precise places, no continuous chronology. It presupposes a context known to its first listeners but never detailed in the text.

In other words, almost everything believed about Muhammad’s life — his birth, childhood, battles, sayings — does not come from the Qur’an but from later narratives that claim to explain the Qur’an and fill its silences. It is this late narrative material that must now be examined.

The Sīra: Ibn Ishaq Through Ibn Hisham

The oldest continuous biography preserved is the Sīrat Rasūl Allāh (“Life of the Messenger of God”) by Ibn Ishaq, a historian of Medina who died around 767 — about 135 years after Muhammad’s death.^[7] Crucial for criticism: Ibn Ishaq’s original text is lost. We know it mainly through the recension made by Ibn Hisham (died circa 833), and through quotations by the chronicler al-Tabari.

Ibn Hisham does not hide his editorial work. In his preface, he acknowledges having omitted passages he considered “shameful to mention,” likely to offend some people, or insufficiently supported by reliable traditions.^[8] The sacred biography read by Muslims is therefore already, by the 9th century, a selected and censored text compared to an older original that is now lost. The reference English translation, that of Alfred Guillaume (Oxford, 1955), wonderfully illustrates the fragility of the structure: Guillaume did not translate a single manuscript; he reconstructed the text by combining Ibn Hisham with the fragments of Ibn Ishaq preserved by al-Tabari — including the famous episode known as the “Satanic Verses,” which Ibn Hisham had precisely excluded.^[9] The foundational account of the prophetic call is told as follows:

“He came to me while I was sleeping, with a brocade cloth on which was a writing, and he said: ‘Read!’ I replied: ‘What shall I read?’ […] And I read. Then he left me, and I awoke from my sleep: it was as if these words had been engraved on my heart.” — account of the first revelation, Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, trans. Alfred Guillaume, p. 106^[10]

The hadiths, chronicles, and biographical dictionaries

Around the sīra revolves a vast corpus, also late:

• The hadiths, sayings and actions attributed to Muhammad, collected in the major Sunni compilations of al-Bukhari (died 870) and Muslim (died 875) — about two centuries after the events. Their primary purpose is legal and theological, not biographical; but they contain key scenes, such as the account of the first revelation.^[11]
• The Kitab al-Maghazi (“Book of Expeditions”) by al-Waqidi (died 823), devoted to military campaigns.^[12]
• The Kitab al-Tabaqat by Ibn Sa'd (died 845), a vast biographical dictionary.^[13]
• The monumental History of the Prophets and Kings by al-Tabari (839–923), a universal history that remains the principal source for the period.^[14]

These sources are valuable, but they all share the same characteristic: they were written long after, in a fully Islamic milieu that had every interest in presenting the founder’s image as edifying and coherent. It is on this observation that the great modern historiographical debate has been built.

Three schools for reading the sources

Faced with this late corpus, scholars are divided, simplistically, into three families:

The traditional-critical school dominated the 20th century. W. Montgomery Watt, in Muhammad at Mecca (1953) and Muhammad at Medina (1956), proposed a socio-economic reading: Muhammad responded to a crisis in Meccan mercantile society.^[15] The Frenchman Maxime Rodinson, in his Muhammad (Seuil, 1961/1968), wrote an openly secular and materialist biography but gave credit to the framework of events.^[16] The Tunisian Hichem Djaït, in the three volumes of The Life of Muhammad (Fayard, 2001–2012), strongly defended the value of the historical core.^[17]

The revisionist school emerged in the 1970s as a shock. John Wansbrough argued that the Qur’an itself was canonized late (8th–9th century) in a Judeo-Christian “sectarian milieu.”^[18] Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, in the groundbreaking Hagarism (Cambridge, 1977), attempted to reconstruct the origins of Islam from only non-Muslim sources, resulting in an image very different from the traditional narrative.^[19] Crone, in Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987), then dismantled the myth of Mecca as a major hub of international trade.^[20] These authors themselves later distanced themselves from the most radical hypotheses of Hagarism — presented more as a methodological experiment than as an established conclusion.

The median school reacted from the 1990s onward. Fred Donner, in Muhammad and the Believers (Harvard, 2010), defended the existence of a historical movement of monotheistic “Believers” around Muhammad.^[21] Harald Motzki refined the so-called isnād-cum-matn method to date some traditions earlier.^[22] Above all, two material discoveries dealt a blow to the ultra-late dating of the Qur’an: the Birmingham Qur’an manuscript, whose parchment was carbon-dated between 568 and 645 with 95% confidence, and the Sanaa palimpsest, discovered in 1972, whose support also dates back to the 7th century.^[23] These datings concern the parchment, not the act of copying; but they make it difficult to maintain that the Qur’an was fabricated a century and a half after Muhammad.

In summary: the historical existence of an Arab preacher named Muhammad, active in western Arabia in the first third of the 7th century, around whom a conquering monotheistic movement formed, is now widely accepted, including by critics. It is the details of his life — precise dates, exact words, edifying episodes — that remain dependent on late sources and must be read with caution. In all that follows, the expression “according to tradition” should therefore be implied almost everywhere.

To understand Muhammad, one must envision the world into which he was born. The Arabia of the 6th century was a tribal region, wedged between two empires exhausted by their wars: the Christian Byzantine Empire to the northwest and the Persian Sassanid Empire, of Zoroastrian religion, to the northeast. The desert interior of the peninsula largely escaped the control of either.

Mecca, Quraysh, and the Kaaba

Mecca was a commercial city and religious center. It housed the Kaaba, a cubic sanctuary around which pagan pilgrimages and seasonal trade were organized. The tribe of Quraysh, to which Muhammad belonged, derived prestige and income by administering the sanctuary and guaranteeing the safety of the caravans.^[24] This Arabian paganism was polytheistic: tradition counts numerous idols around the Kaaba, while also acknowledging a supreme and distant deity, Allāh (“the God”), whom Muhammad’s message would radically reinterpret as the one God.

Jews, Christians, and Seekers of God

Arabia was not unfamiliar with Judaism or Christianity. Jewish tribes were firmly established, notably in Yathrib (the future Medina). Christian communities existed on the margins — in Yemen, among the northern Ghassanids — and Christian monks and merchants traveled the trade routes. Muslim tradition also knows the figure of the hanīf, a seeker of God dissatisfied with paganism and drawn to a diffuse Abrahamic monotheism. It is in this soil — a monotheism “in the air,” but without an Arab structure of its own — that Muhammad’s preaching would take root.

Here is the biographical outline as reported by Muslim tradition, in the order presented by the sources.

Childhood, Orphanhood, and Youth

According to tradition, Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570, in a year that legend associates with an Ethiopian expedition called the “Year of the Elephant.”^[25] Orphaned of his father before birth, he lost his mother Amina around the age of six. He was then taken in by his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib, and after his death, by his uncle Abu Talib, an influential clan leader.^[26] This orphaned childhood, to which the Qur’an itself seems to allude (Sura 93), has left a lasting mark on his image in Muslim piety.

As a young man, he worked in caravan trade. This occupation brought him into the service of a wealthy Meccan widow, Khadija bint Khuwaylid.

Marriage to Khadija

Around 595, at about twenty-five years old, Muhammad married Khadija, who was several years his senior according to some sources, or about fifteen years older according to the most widespread version.^[27] This marriage was decisive in two respects. First, it gave him a social and material foundation that freed him from daily concerns. Second, it was marked by an exceptional monogamous fidelity: as long as Khadija lived, tradition knows of no other wife — Muhammad’s polygamy is strictly a Medinan and later phenomenon. Khadija is also presented as his first confidante and believer: it was she who, upon his return from the cave of Hira, is said to have reassured and supported him.

The Prophetic Call (circa 610)

The foundational event took place around 610. Withdrawn to meditate in the cave of Hira, on the mountain called Jabal al-Nour near Mecca, Muhammad is said to have received a visit from the angel Gabriel commanding him to “read” or “recite” (iqra). Tradition identifies these first revealed words at the beginning of Sura 96:

“Read in the name of your Lord who created, who created man from a clinging substance. Read! Your Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.” — Qur’an, Sura 96 (al-‘Alaq), verses 1-5^[28] Disturbed, initially believing himself to have gone mad or possessed, he is said to have found his first comfort and the first recognition of his mission with Khadija.^[29] This initial doubt, far from being erased, is preserved by tradition—a feature historians consider rather indicative of the antiquity of the account.

The Meccan Preaching and Persecution

For about twelve years, Muhammad preached in Mecca an intransigent monotheism: one God, a final judgment, and a demanding social morality. This message directly challenged the Meccan order: it threatened the idol worship of the Kaaba, a source of prestige and income for the Quraysh. The first converts—Khadija, his cousin Ali, his friend Abu Bakr, and many people of modest status or slaves—suffered mockery, pressure, and sometimes violence.^[30]

The year 619 is called by tradition the “Year of Sorrow”: Muhammad lost in quick succession Khadija, his intimate supporter, and Abu Talib, his clan protector.^[31] Deprived of this dual protection, he became vulnerable. It is also during this period that tradition places the Night Journey (isra) from Mecca to Jerusalem and the celestial ascent (miraj), an episode of immense spiritual significance in Muslim piety, though its dating remains uncertain.

The Hijra: From Mecca to Medina (622)

Threatened in Mecca, Muhammad accepted the invitation of tribes from Yathrib, an oasis about 350 kilometers to the north, where he was called as an arbiter between rival clans. In 622, he emigrated there with his followers: this is the Hijra (hijra, “emigration”). The event was so formative that the caliph Umar, about fifteen years later, made it the starting point of the Muslim calendar—year 1 of the Hijra beginning, in the Julian calendar, on July 16, 622.^[32] Yathrib then took the name Medina (Madinat al-Nabi, “the city of the Prophet”).

The change was not only geographical: it was of nature. In Mecca, Muhammad was a persecuted preacher; in Medina, he became leader of a community that was simultaneously religious, political, and military. Tradition attributes to this period a document, the “Constitution of Medina”, regulating relations between emigrants, Medinans, and the Jewish tribes of the oasis.

The War and State Leader

The Medinan period (622–632) was the era of arms. Three major battles mark tradition:

• Badr (624): the first great victory against a Meccan caravan and army, regarded as a sign of divine favor.
• Uhud (625): a serious setback, where Muhammad himself was wounded; tradition draws from it a lesson on trial and fidelity.
• The Trench, or Khandaq (627): a siege of Medina repelled thanks to a defensive trench, which broke the Meccan offensive.^[33]

This period also saw conflict with the Jewish tribes of Medina, who did not adhere to Muhammad’s preaching and were accused of treason. The Banū Qaynuqāʿ and then the Banū Nāḍir were expelled; after the siege of the Trench, the men of the Banū Qurayẓa were, according to Ibn Ishaq, executed and their families enslaved.^[34] The scale, and even the historicity, of this episode are debated by several modern historians, who see it as a later amplification—but it appears in Muslim sources themselves and weighs heavily in the memory of the figure.

In 628, the Treaty of Hudaybiyya established a truce with Mecca: diplomatically, it was a success that legitimized the Medinan community. Two years later, in 630, Muhammad entered Mecca almost without fighting, destroyed the idols of the Kaaba, and rededicated it to the one God.^[35] The pagan sanctuary became the center of the new cult.

The Farewell Pilgrimage and Death (632)

In 632, Muhammad performed what tradition calls the Farewell Pilgrimage, during which he delivered a sermon regarded as a spiritual testament. Shortly after, back in Medina, he fell ill and died, around June 8, 632, in the apartment of his wife Aisha, where he was buried—the current site of the “Green Dome” of the Prophet’s Mosque.^[36] Tradition recounts the distress of the faithful and the famous reply of Abu Bakr, quoting the Qur’an: “Muhammad is but a messenger; messengers have passed away before him.”^[37]

His death immediately opened the question of succession (the caliphate), which has long divided Islam: the Sunnis recognize Abu Bakr as the first legitimately chosen caliph, while the Shi‘ites hold that Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was the designated successor.^[38] This fracture, born at the founder’s death, still structures the Muslim world today.

Tradition portrays Muhammad as both a human and idealized figure: a man of average height, sober, eloquent, alternately gentle and formidable, a shrewd merchant turned legislator and military leader. Several aspects of his personal life have been, from early Christian antiquity through contemporary historiography, the subject of debate.

The Medinan Polygamy

After Khadija’s death, in Medina, Muhammad entered into several marriages — tradition generally lists about ten, often referred to as the “Mothers of the Believers.”^[39] Many of these unions had a political dimension, sealing tribal alliances. Two figures stand out: Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr, who became a major source of hadiths; and Zaynab bint Jahsh, whose marriage left a direct trace in the Qur'an.

Zaynab’s case is particular: she was the wife of Zayd ibn Haritha, Muhammad’s adopted son. After their separation, the Qur'an itself presents this marriage as willed by God, precisely to abolish the assimilation between adopted and biological sons:

“And when Zayd had no longer any relations with her, We married you to her, so that there is no blame on the believers in marrying the wives of their adopted sons when they have ceased to have relations with them.” — Qur'an, Surah 33 (al-Ahzab), verse 37^[40]

The Marriage to Aisha

Among the most debated points is Aisha’s age at the time of her marriage. Several canonical hadiths indicate she was six years old at the contract and nine at consummation; other scholars, including Muslims, dispute these figures and propose a significantly higher age, based on chronological cross-references.^[41] This question, charged with contemporary sensitivities, again illustrates the fragility of the sources: what is considered an established fact rests on late hadiths, themselves debated within the tradition.

A Founder Who Wielded the Sword

One trait clearly distinguishes Muhammad from the founders of Christianity: in the latter half of his life, he was a victorious military and political leader. Where Christ dies crucified refusing the sword, Muhammad dies at the head of an expanding state. This contrast, highlighted as early as the Doctrina Jacobi (“prophets do not come armed with a sword”), fueled Christian polemics for centuries — but it is also, for the Muslim tradition, a title of glory: that of a prophet who fulfilled his message in history.

From the earliest decades, Christians had to position themselves in relation to this new prophet and the religion claiming him. Their perspective has varied widely — from the harshest theological refutation to the respectful esteem of the Second Vatican Council.

The First Theological Refutation: John of Damascus

The first Christian theologian to systematically address Islam was Saint John of Damascus (died c. 749), who lived in lands now under Muslim rule. In his treatise On Heresies, he classifies Islam among the Christian heresies — “the religion of the Ishmaelites who lead the people astray” — and calls Muhammad a false prophet.^[42] This classification is crucial: for John of Damascus, Islam is not a foreign religion coming from nowhere, but a distortion of biblical Revelation, mixing Jewish, Christian, and Arab elements.

The Latin Middle Ages: Polemics, Translation, and Legend

In the West, real knowledge of Muhammad remained poor and distorted by legend for a long time. An intellectual turning point occurred in the 12th century: Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, commissioned the first Latin translation of the Qur'an, carried out by Robert of Ketton in 1143 under the revealing title Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete (“Law of Muhammad the false prophet”).^[43] The intention was apologetic: to know in order to refute. A century later, Dante placed Muhammad in hell, among the sowers of discord, in canto XXVIII of the Inferno — a lasting image of medieval condemnation.^[44]

The Modern View and the Vatican II Turning Point

The contemporary era marks a shift. Without conceding on doctrinal substance, the Church clearly distinguishes the respect due to persons from adherence to doctrines. The Second Vatican Council, in the declaration Nostra Aetate (1965), affirms:

“The Church also regards with esteem the Muslims, who adore the one God, living and subsisting, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men.” — Second Vatican Council, declaration Nostra Aetate, § 3, 28 October 1965^[45]

This text must be read precisely: it esteems Muslims for their worship of the one God and their reference to Abraham, but it never names Muhammad nor recognizes him in any way as a prophet — the only “prophet” mentioned in the paragraph is Jesus, whom Muslims venerate without acknowledging his divinity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reprises this esteem in paragraph 841.^[46]

Once the biography is established, a decisive question remains for a Catholic reader: what to think of Muhammad’s prophetic claim? The Church’s answer is clear, and it is based not on disdain but on a principle of faith.

Public Revelation Closed with Christ

Christianity holds that God has said everything He had to say in His Word made flesh. Christ is not a prophet among others nor the first in an open series: He is the definitive Word of God. After Him, no new public revelation is to be expected:

“The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away, and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 66^[47]

From this principle logically follows the refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet. The Catechism adds that the Christian faith cannot accept “revelations” claiming to surpass or correct that of which Christ is the fulfillment.^[48] Islam precisely claims to correct Christianity on its central points — the Trinity, the divinity, and the Cross of Christ. It therefore cannot, from the Catholic point of view, be a fulfillment of biblical Revelation.

Arguments Acceptable to a Non-Christian Interlocutor

Faced with a Muslim interlocutor, the Christian argument from authority does not hold: a Muslim recognizes neither the New Testament nor the Catechism. The debate then shifts to a shared ground — history and internal coherence. This is precisely what the source dossier examined above provides: the crucifixion of Jesus, which the Qur’an denies (Sura 4:157), is one of the best-attested facts of ancient history, including by non-Christian sources; the thesis of a “forged” Gospel runs up against the stability of Christian manuscripts. These questions are developed in the articles Did Jesus Exist? and The Resurrection of Christ, and the entire doctrinal discussion in the hub Islam and the Catholic Response.

Esteeming Persons, Discerning Doctrine

The Catholic position thus holds together two demands often wrongly opposed. On one side, a genuine respect for the hundreds of millions of Muslims who seek God, pray, fast, and give alms; Islam contains authentic seeds of truth — the worship of the one God, the sense of His transcendence, the moral requirement. On the other, faithfulness to the truth: Muhammad, remarkable though his historical destiny was, is not for the Church a prophet, and his message, where it contradicts the Gospel, cannot come from God. This double fidelity — to charity toward persons and to truth about doctrines — is the hallmark of the Catholic perspective, equidistant from disdain and syncretism.

Unlike Christian reformers such as Martin Luther or John Calvin, who sought to remain within the Christian tradition, Muhammad founded a distinct religion, endowed with its own book, its own law, and its own community. For this reason, the Church does not treat him as a Christian heretic in the strict sense, but as the founder of a great monotheistic religion which it regards with both esteem and discernment.

• Islam and the Catholic Response — the comprehensive doctrinal dossier on Islam, the Qur'an, and the Church’s response.
• What Does the Church Say About Islam? — the magisterial position, from Nostra Aetate to the present.
• Did Jesus Exist? — the historical sources on Jesus, addressing Muslim objections.
• The Resurrection of Christ — the crucifixion and Resurrection in the face of Qur'anic denial.
• Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564) — other religious founders, this time within Christianity.