Originally the site of the Kaabah, a shrine of ancient
origins, Makkah had, with the decline of southern Arabia,
become an important center of sixth-century trade with
such powers as the Sassanians, Byzantines, and Ethiopians.
As a result, the city was dominated by powerful merchant
families, among whom the men of Quraish were prominent.
In or about the year 570 the child who would be named
Muhammad and who would become the Prophet of one of
the world’s great religions, Islam, was born into
a family belonging to a clan of Quraish, the ruling
tribe of Makkah, a city in the Hijaz region of northwestern
Arabia.
Hazrat Muhammad’s(P.B.U.H) father, “Abd
Allah ibn” Abd al-Muttalib, died before the boy
was born; his mother,Hazrat Aminah, died when he was
six. The orphan was consigned to the care of his grandfather,
the head of the clan of Hashim. After the death of his
grandfather, Hazrat Muhammad (P.B.U.H)was raised by
his uncle, Abu Talib. As was customary, the child Muhammad(P.B.U.H)
was sent to live for a year or two with a Bedouin family.
This custom, followed until recently by noble families
of Makkah, Medina, Taif, and other towns of the Hijaz,
had important implications for Hazrat Muhammad(P.B.U.H).
In addition to enduring the hardships of desert life,
he acquired a taste for the rich language so loved by
the Arabs, whose speech was their proudest art, and
also learned the patience and forbearance of the herdsmen,
whose life of solitude he first shared, and then came
to understand and appreciate.
About the year 590, Hazrat Muhammad(P.B.U.H), then
in his twenties, entered the service of a merchant widow
named Khadijah as her factor, actively engaged with
trading caravans to the north. Sometime later he married
her, and had two sons, neither of whom survived, and
four daughters by her.
In his forties, he began to retire to meditate in a
cave on Mount Hira, just outside Makkah, where the first
of the great events of Islam took place. One day, as
he was sitting in the cave, he heard a voice, later
identified as that of the Angel Gabriel, which ordered
him to:
“Recite: In the name of thy Lord who created,
Created man from a clot of blood.” (Quran 96:1-2)
Three times Hazrat Muhammad(P.B.U.H) pleaded his inability
to do so, but each time the command was repeated. Finally,
Hazrat Muhammad(P.B.U.H) recited the words of what are
now the first five verses of the 96th chapter of the
Quran - words which proclaim God to be the Creator of
man and the Source of all knowledge.
At first Hazrat Muhammad(P.B.U.H.) divulged his experience
only to his wife and his immediate circle. But, as more
revelations enjoined him to proclaim the oneness of
God universally, his following grew, at first among
the poor and the slaves, but later, also among the most
prominent men of Makkah. The revelations he received
at this time, and those he did later, are all incorporated
in the Quran, the Scripture of Islam.
Not everyone accepted God’s message transmitted
through Hazrat Muhammad(P.B.U.H.). Even in his own clan,
there were those who rejected his teachings, and many
merchants actively opposed the message. The opposition,
however, merely served to sharpen Hazrat Muhammad’s(P.B.U.H.)
sense of mission, and his understanding of exactly how
Islam differed from paganism. The belief in the Oneness
of God was paramount in Islam; from this all else follows.
The verses of the Quran stress God’s uniqueness,
warn those who deny it of impending punishment, and
proclaim His unbounded compassion to those who submit
to His will. They affirm the Last Judgment, when God,
the Judge, will weigh in the balance the faith and works
of each man, rewarding the faithful and punishing the
transgressor. Because the Quran rejected polytheism
and emphasized man’s moral responsibility, in
powerful images, it presented a grave challenge to the
worldly Makkans.
Islamic Art