SMHMShaheed Mudassir Hussain Mehdi
← Ahlul-Bayt

محمد

The Messenger of God, Muhammad ibn Abdullah

peace and blessings be upon him and his family

أبو القاسمAbu l-Qasimthe father of al-Qasim, his kunya
الأمينal-Aminthe trustworthy
رسول اللهRasul Allahthe Messenger of God
المصطفىal-Mustafathe chosen one
حبيب اللهHabib Allahthe beloved of God
صفي اللهSafi Allahthe one God chose and purified
خير خلق اللهKhayr Khalq Allahthe best of God's creation
سيد المرسلينSayyid al-Mursalinthe master of the messengers
خاتم النبيينKhatam al-Nabiyyinthe seal of the prophets
رحمة للعالمينRahmat li-l-Alamina mercy to all the worlds
النبي الأميal-Nabi al-Ummithe unlettered Prophet

His life

  1. Muhammad, son of Abdullah, son of Abd al-Muttalib, son of Hashim, of the tribe of Quraysh, his line reaching back to Adnan; his mother was Amina bint Wahb of Banu Zuhra. Al-Allama al-Majlisi wrote that all Twelver Shia agree that his father, his mother, Abu Talib and all his forefathers back to Adam were believers in God (Tarikh-i Payambar-i Islam of Ayati).
  2. Born in Mecca in the Year of the Elephant (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya of Ibn Hisham), on 17 Rabi al-Awwal according to most Shia scholars; Sunni scholars give 12 Rabi al-Awwal (Tarikh-i Payambar-i Islam of Ayati). The exact year is uncertain; reckoning from his passing in 632 at sixty-three gives 569 or 570 CE (Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi).
  3. He grew up an orphan. His father died in Yathrib, before his birth according to some historians and a few months after it according to others; he was nursed in the desert by Halima of Banu Sa'd; his mother died at al-Abwa when he was six (some reports: four); his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib then raised him until he died two years later, and his uncle Abu Talib took him in (Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi). When Fatima bint Asad, Abu Talib's wife, died, he said: Today my mother has died (Tarikh al-Ya'qubi).
  4. He never worshipped an idol. As a boy travelling to Syria with Abu Talib, he refused the monk Bahira's demand to answer in the name of al-Lat and al-Uzza, saying: I do not hate anything more than them (Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi). As a young man he joined Hilf al-Fudul, a pledge to support anyone oppressed and defend their rights (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya of Ibn Hisham).
  5. Mecca knew him as honest and trustworthy. When the clans of Quraysh were about to fight over who would set the Black Stone back into the rebuilt Ka'ba, they accepted his judgement: he placed the stone on a cloth, had the chief of every clan lift a corner, and set it in place with his own hands (Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi).
  6. At twenty-five he led a trading caravan to Syria with the goods of Sayyida Khadija, who, seeing his trustworthiness, then married him (al-Siyar wa l-Maghazi of Ibn Ishaq; Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi). She lived with him for twenty-five years and passed away in the tenth year of the mission.
  7. The mission began, according to the Twelver Shia, on 27 Rajab (610 CE), when he was forty, in the cave of Hira, where he used to retreat to worship God; the first revelation was: Read in the name of your Lord who created (96:1) (Tarikh-i Payambar-i Islam of Ayati; Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi). The first to believe in him were his wife Khadija among the women and Ali ibn Abi Talib among the men (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya of Ibn Hisham).
  8. When the verse Warn the nearest of your kinsfolk (26:214) came down, he gathered about forty of the sons of Abd al-Muttalib and asked which of them would help him and be his brother, his executor and his caliph among them. Only Ali answered, and the Prophet said: This is my vicegerent and my caliph among you; listen to his words and obey his orders (Tarikh al-Tabari; al-Siyar wa l-Maghazi of Ibn Ishaq; Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi). This is the Hadith of Yawm al-Dar.
  9. When the chiefs of Quraysh pressed Abu Talib to stop him, the Prophet said: By God, if the sun were given to me in my right hand and the moon in the other, I would not abandon my mission; and Abu Talib answered: Then follow your mission, and I will not let them harm you (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya of Ibn Hisham; Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi).
  10. To spare his persecuted followers he sent them to Abyssinia, to a king who harmed no one. Quraysh then besieged Banu Hashim in the valley of Abu Talib for two or three years, with a boycott document hung in the Ka'ba; termites ate all of it except the words Bismika Allahumma, as the Prophet had told Abu Talib, and the siege ended (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya of Ibn Hisham; Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi). Soon after, Khadija and Abu Talib passed away (Tarikh al-Tabari).
  11. When Quraysh resolved in Dar al-Nadwa that young men from every clan would kill him together, he left Mecca by God's command while Ali slept in his bed; he hid three days in the cave of Thawr and reached Quba in Rabi al-Awwal of the first year of the Hijra (622 CE), the reports differing on the day. Ali returned the trusts left with the Prophet and followed with Sayyida Fatima and the women of the family (Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi).
  12. In Medina he built his mosque, helping with the building himself, and made a pact of brotherhood between the Emigrants and the Helpers, taking Ali as his own brother (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya of Ibn Hisham).
  13. He led the Muslims at Badr in 2 AH, where they won though fewer in number; at Uhud in 3 AH, where his uncle Hamza was martyred and he himself was badly wounded; and at the Trench in 5 AH, where Ali killed Amr ibn Abd Wadd (al-Maghazi of al-Waqidi; Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi).
  14. At Khaybar in 7 AH, after others had failed to take the fortress, he said: Tomorrow I will give this flag to a man in whose hands is the victory, who loves God and His Prophet and whom God and His Prophet love. The next day he called Ali, healed his eyes with his saliva, and gave him the flag (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya of Ibn Hisham; Tarikh-i Payambar-i Islam of Ayati).
  15. He made the Treaty of Hudaybiyya with Quraysh in 6 AH. When they broke it, he marched on Mecca in Ramadan of 8 AH with ten thousand men; when one commander cried that it was the day of slaughter, he sent Ali to take the flag from him, saying: Today is the day of mercy. He entered Mecca almost without a fight, cleared the idols from the Ka'ba, and told the Quraysh who had fought him for twenty years: I free all of you (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya of Ibn Hisham; Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi).
  16. Leaving Ali in charge of Medina when he marched to Tabuk in 9 AH, he told him: You are to me as Aaron was to Moses, except that there is no prophet after me (Tarikh-i Tahlili-yi Islam of Shahidi). This Hadith al-Manzila is also recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.
  17. He took Imam Ali, Sayyida Fatima, Imam al-Hasan and Imam al-Husayn, and no one else, to the Mubahala with the Christians of Najran (3:61) (al-Irshad of al-Shaykh al-Mufid; Tafsir-i Nimuna).
  18. Returning from his last Hajj in 10 AH, at Ghadir Khumm, by God's command, he raised the hand of Ali before the gathered pilgrims and said: For whomever I am the master, Ali is his master. O God, befriend whoever befriends him and be the enemy of whoever is his enemy (Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal; Ansab al-Ashraf of al-Baladhuri). He enjoined his community to hold fast to the Qur'an and his Ahl al-Bayt.
  19. God says of him: Indeed you possess a great character (68:4). He was quiet and spoke only when needed, smiled and never laughed aloud, and loved cleanliness and perfume. Imam Ali said that whoever met him for the first time was in awe of him, and whoever kept his company came to love him (al-Shifa of al-Qadi Iyad); he looked at all his companions equally, and when he shook hands he was never the first to withdraw his hand (Bihar al-Anwar).
  20. He forgave those who wronged him, even Wahshi, the killer of his uncle Hamza, and Abu Sufyan (Hayat al-Sahaba of al-Kandhlawi). Among his sayings: The best of you are the best of you to their wives (Nahj al-Fasaha).
  21. He lived simply: a leather bed stuffed with palm fibre, coarse clothes, barley bread and dates, and months in which no fire was lit in his house to cook. Once Fatima brought him barley bread, and he told her it was the first food her father had eaten in three days. When he passed away, his armour was pledged with a Jewish man for thirty measures of barley (Nahj al-Fasaha).
  22. He is the seal of the prophets, after whom there is no prophet (33:40). In Shia belief he is the first of the Fourteen Infallibles, protected from error not only in receiving and delivering revelation but in all his life, and the Qur'an is his greatest miracle.
  23. In his last illness he said: If I owe anything to anyone, let him come and ask for it; if I have hurt anyone, I am ready to be paid back for it (al-Tabaqat al-Kubra of Ibn Sa'd). He passed away in Medina in 11 AH at sixty-three, on 28 Safar (some reports: 12 Rabi al-Awwal), with his head on the chest of Ali (Nahj al-Balagha, sermon 202). Ali washed and shrouded him and buried him in his house, which is now inside his mosque.
  24. All his children died in his lifetime except Sayyida Fatima, and his progeny continues through her alone (Tarikh-i Payambar-i Islam of Ayati). While Ali and Banu Hashim were washing his body, a group gathered at Saqifa Bani Sa'ida and chose Abu Bakr, setting aside what he had proclaimed at Ghadir (al-Irshad of al-Shaykh al-Mufid; Sharh Nahj al-Balagha of Ibn Abi l-Hadid).

Days

  1. 53 BH570 CEBorn in Mecca, 17 Rabi al-Awwal
  2. 13 BH610 CEThe mission begins in the cave of Hira, 27 Rajab
  3. 1 AH622 CEMigrates to Medina; Ali sleeps in his bed
  4. 2 AH624 CEThe Battle of Badr
  5. 8 AH630 CEThe conquest of Mecca
  6. 10 AH632 CEThe Farewell Hajj; Ali proclaimed at Ghadir Khumm
  7. 11 AH632 CEPasses away in Medina, 28 Safar

Family

عبد المطلبAbd al-Muttalib
محمدThe Messenger of God
خديجةSayyida Khadija
مارية القبطيةMariya al-Qibtiyya
فاطمةSayyida Fatima
القاسمal-Qasim
عبد اللهAbdullah
إبراهيمIbrahim

In the Qur’an

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ وَمَلَٰٓئِكَتَهُۥ يُصَلُّونَ عَلَى ٱلنَّبِيِّۚ يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ صَلُّواْ عَلَيۡهِ وَسَلِّمُواْ تَسۡلِيمًا ٥٦

Indeed Allah and His angels bless the Prophet; O you who have faith! Invoke blessings on him and invoke Peace upon him in a worthy manner.

The verse of salawat · Al-Ahzaab 33:56

وَإِنَّكَ لَعَلَىٰ خُلُقٍ عَظِيمٖ ٤

and indeed you possess a great character.

Al-Qalam 68:4

وَمَآ أَرۡسَلۡنَٰكَ إِلَّا رَحۡمَةٗ لِّلۡعَٰلَمِينَ ١٠٧

We did not send you but as a mercy to all the nations.

Al-Anbiyaa 21:107

وَمَا يَنطِقُ عَنِ ٱلۡهَوَىٰٓ ٣ إِنۡ هُوَ إِلَّا وَحۡيٞ يُوحَىٰ ٤

Nor does he speak out of [his own] desire: it is just a revelation that is revealed [to him],

An-Najm 53:3-4

مَّا كَانَ مُحَمَّدٌ أَبَآ أَحَدٖ مِّن رِّجَالِكُمۡ وَلَٰكِن رَّسُولَ ٱللَّهِ وَخَاتَمَ ٱلنَّبِيِّـۧنَۗ وَكَانَ ٱللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَيۡءٍ عَلِيمٗا ٤٠

Muhammad is not the father of any man among you, but he is the Apostle of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets, and Allah has knowledge of all things.

The seal of the prophets · Al-Ahzaab 33:40

Peace be upon you, O Messenger of God.

Peace be upon you, O Prophet of God.

Peace be upon you, O Muhammad son of Abdullah, the seal of the prophets.

Peace be upon you, O mercy to all the worlds, and the mercy of God and His blessings.

Sources