Mecca
Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 ad, in the Arab clan of the Banū Hāshim, son of his father ʿAbd Allāh, who died before he was born. He came into the world in the same year that saw an intrepid sovereign from Yemen, by the name of Abraha, attempt to attack Mecca and destroy the Kaʿba. His mother, Āmina, died when Muhammad was 6 years old and the child was placed in the care first of his grandfather, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, and then of his uncle Abū Ṭālib, as was the clan practice. This, and little else, Islamic historiography has to tell us of the early years of the life of the Prophet, at least until the time he met his future wife, Khadīja, a rich widow in the Asad clan, by whom he was employed. Like many of the men in his region, Muhammad earned his living escorting trading caravans to the north, and at the age of 25 he began to do so for Khadīja. It was in the course of expeditions to the Syrian region that a Christian monk by the name of Baḥīrā recognised in him the signs of prophecy.
As long as he was married to Khadīja, who gave him four daughters (and two sons, who died at a very early age), Muhammad entered into no other marriages. The fundamental date in Muhammad’s life at Mecca was 610 when, at the emblematic age of 40, Muhammad received the first revelation from the awesome Archangel Gabriel (Q. 96:1–4).
This event, which took place on Mount Ḥirāʾ overlooking Mecca, filled him with doubts and terror (Q. 53:1–18), assuaged by his wife, who comforted him and stayed by him. This initial encounter was followed by interruptions and further revelations. Three years later, Muhammad proclaimed what was happening to him and the contents of the revelations to the people closest to him, who accepted the message; they included, along with Khadīja, Abū Bakr, his cousin ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and yet others. Despite these first positive responses, Muhammad’s public preaching was far from successful. The number of followers – although it was to grow progressively – offered scant encouragement, and many of them were poor or with little influence in the social life of Mecca. At the same time, the opposition of the majority of the inhabitants of Mecca went from strength to strength, above all when Muhammad began to attack the pagan divinities and proclaim the primacy of the bond of faith over the traditional bond of blood. The Prophet even found himself having to arrange for some of his followers to seek refuge in the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia at the court of a sympathetic Negus, who arranged to protect them, and he himself was the victim of increasingly rough bullying when he went out among the people. The death of his uncle and protector Abū Ṭālib and then of his wife Khadīja in 619 made matters even worse, while the opposition of the Quraysh grew even harsher.
The situation was such that, when a delegation from the nearby Yathrib oasis invited Muhammad to move out there in order to arbitrate in the local tribal disputes, after a further meeting in the following year he accepted the invitation and organised his emigration (Arabic hijra) in the year 622. Subsequent to Muhammad’s move there, Yathrib was renamed Medina, as “city” (Arabic madīna) of the Prophet. The Islamic calendar begins from this date, using lunar years, which are about 11 days shorter than solar years.5
Two episodes that occurred in the closing stage of Muhammad’s life in Mecca are significant for a number of reasons. First, there was the revelation of the so-called Satanic verses. The account has it that Muhammad announced the revelation of verses attesting to the legitimacy of the cult dedicated to three local divinities (Manāt, al-ʿUzzā and al-Lāt), only to be followed by another revelation that dismissed it as a false revelation invented by Satan. The account is accepted somewhat guardedly only by a few Muslim historians, since it is only attested by a relatively late, albeit authoritative source, namely, Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī’s History (d. 923).
The other episode is Muhammad’s extraordinary night journey (isrāʾ) from Mecca to Jerusalem and ascent (miʿrāj) to the seven heavens. Alluded to in the Qur’an (Q. 17:1, 53:1–12), according to exegetical tradition and looming ever larger in the narratives as in the collections of sayings of Muhammad (ḥadīth) and the accounts of the life of Muḥammad (sīra), it has become the miracle par excellence attributed to the Prophet. His meeting with other prophetic figures (including Abraham, Moses and Jesus) in the seven heavens served to confirm the prophetic prerogatives of Muhammad, while the location sanctioned the sacred status of Jerusalem for Muslims. His companion and subsequent first caliph, Abū Bakr, who succeeded him and attested to the truthfulness of his return, was in consequence given the epithet “The Truthful” (al-ṣiddīq), while ʿĀʾisha, the first and best loved of his many wives after the death of Khadīja, held, on the contrary, that it was an ecstatic vision, claiming that his body had never moved from Mecca. In Islamic literature in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and every other language that has been touched by Islam, we find increasingly elaborate versions, enriching the account with eschatological details of visits to hell and paradise. One particular version is the Book of Muhammad’s Ladder, which developed in this tradition and was in circulation in Europe in the Middle Ages.6