Every year, when the month of Rabi al-Awwal comes round, one question surfaces again in classrooms, on radio, in family groups, and among neighbours who are not Muslim at all. Who was this man?
It is a fair question, and this article tries to answer it simply. It describes the man as the earliest and best-preserved records describe him: what he said, how he lived, and how he treated both the people who followed him and the people who opposed him.
No single person in Islam is loved more than the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Muslims mention his name millions of times a day, always followed by a prayer of peace upon him (the meaning of the symbol ﷺ). Yet to understand Islam, one must understand him, not the caricature, but the man as Muslims know him: the final Messenger of God, and a mercy sent to all of creation.
An Orphan of Makkah
Muhammad ﷺ was born in the city of Makkah, in Arabia, around the year 570 CE. His father died before his birth and his mother when he was only six, leaving him an orphan raised first by his grandfather and then by his uncle. He never learned to read or write.
Long before he received any revelation, the people of Makkah, a society steeped in idol-worship, tribal warfare, and injustice, knew him by a remarkable title: Al-Amīn, "the Trustworthy." Even his future enemies entrusted him with their valuables, for his honesty was beyond question. This reputation, established over forty years, is itself part of the evidence of his truthfulness: a man never once caught in a lie among his own people did not suddenly begin lying about God.
The First Revelation
At the age of forty, while meditating alone in the Cave of Hirā' outside Makkah, Muhammad ﷺ received the first words of the Qur'an through the angel Gabriel. The very first command revealed to an unlettered man was, fittingly, a call to knowledge:
"Read, in the name of your Lord who created, created man from a clinging clot. Read, and your Lord is the most Generous, who taught by the pen, taught man that which he knew not."
(Surah Al-'Alaq, 96:1–5)
For the next twenty-three years, revelation continued, and Muhammad ﷺ called his people away from the worship of idols and toward the one true God. He was met first with mockery, then with persecution, boycott, and finally attempts on his life, yet he never wavered, and never returned cruelty for cruelty.
The Migration and the First Muslim Society
When persecution in Makkah became unbearable, the Prophet ﷺ and his followers migrated to the city of Madinah in 622 CE, an event so pivotal it marks the start of the Islamic calendar. There, he established the first Muslim community: a society bound not by tribe or race, but by faith; a place where former enemies became brothers, where the poor were fed, and where justice was administered without favour.
Within a single generation, the man who had been driven from his home returned to Makkah in triumph, and, on the day of his greatest power, forgave the very people who had tortured and expelled him. This mercy in the moment of victory is one of the defining images of his life.
The Final Prophet
Muslims believe Muhammad ﷺ was not the founder of a new religion, but the last in the long line of prophets, the seal who completed the message begun with Adam and carried by Abraham, Moses, and Jesus (peace be upon them all).
"Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is the Messenger of Allah and the seal of the prophets."
(Surah Al-Ahzab, 33:40)
And his mission was not for the Arabs alone, nor even for Muslims alone, but for all of humanity, indeed, for all of creation:
"And We have not sent you except as a mercy to the worlds."
(Surah Al-Anbiya, 21:107)
A Character Like No Other
When a man came to his wife 'A'ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) and asked her to describe his character, she did not begin with a list. She answered him with a question:
"Don't you read the Qur'an?" I said: Yes. Upon this she said: The character of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was the Qur'an.
— Sahih Muslim 746a
Her point was that he could not be described apart from the book he brought. He was not a man who preached one thing and lived another; the two were the same thing. God Himself testified to his character in the Qur'an:
"And indeed, you are of a great moral character."
(Surah Al-Qalam, 68:4)
He summarised his own life's purpose in a single sentence:
"I was only sent to perfect good character."
(Al-Adab Al-Mufrad, 273; authenticated)
He mended his own clothes, milked his own goats, played with children, freed slaves, honoured women at a time when they were buried alive, and said of marriage: "The best of you is the best to his wives, and I am the best of you to my wives." (Jami` at-Tirmidhi 3895 — Sahih) He forbade cruelty even to animals, and taught that a woman entered Hell for starving a cat, while another was forgiven for giving water to a thirsty dog. (Sahih al-Bukhari, 3318; Sahih Muslim, 2245)
Why Muslims Follow Him
For Muslims, the Prophet ﷺ is not divine and is never worshipped, worship belongs to God alone. Rather, he is the perfect human example of how to live in submission to God. The Qur'an makes following him a sign of truly loving God:
"Say: If you love Allah, then follow me, and Allah will love you and forgive you your sins."
(Surah Aal 'Imran, 3:31)
His teachings and example, his Sunnah, form the second great source of Islam alongside the Qur'an, showing Muslims how to translate belief into daily life: how to pray, how to treat neighbours, how to conduct business honestly, and how to carry oneself with dignity and mercy.
What Did He Actually Ask of People?
Stripped to its core, his message was a single sentence: there is one God, worship Him alone, and He has sent messengers to every people. Everything else, prayer, charity, fasting, honesty in trade, kindness to parents, followed from that one claim.
He was careful, repeatedly and publicly, to place himself on the human side of the line:
Say, "I am only a man like you, to whom has been revealed that your god is one God. So whoever would hope for the meeting with his Lord, let him do righteous work and not associate in the worship of his Lord anyone."
— Qur'an 18:110
For this reason, Muslims follow Prophet Muhammad ﷺ but do not worship him. Older English books sometimes called Muslims "Muhammadans", which reflects a misunderstanding of this point. Worship in Islam belongs to God alone, and that teaching sits at the centre of the message the Prophet ﷺ brought.
How Do We Know What He Was Like?
Reasonably enough, people ask how anyone can know the character of a man who died in 632 CE.
The answer is that his community treated his words as something to be preserved rather than remembered loosely. Reports of what he said and did were transmitted with the chain of people who carried them attached, who heard it from whom, and in what year, and later scholars built an entire discipline around examining those chains: the memory, honesty and lifespan of every narrator in them.
That is why a hadith carries a grading, and why this article names one. It is also why a Muslim writer will tell you that a report is hasan rather than sahih when it is. The system was designed to make the difference visible, not to hide it.
What He Taught About Race
In his final year, he stood before a large gathering and said that no Arab is superior to a non-Arab, and no white person to a black person, except through God-consciousness. This helps explain a choice he had made many years earlier.
The man he chose to call the first adhan, to stand and summon the whole community to prayer, five times a day, in the voice everyone would hear, was Bilaal ibn Rabah, an African who had been enslaved and tortured in Makkah for refusing to renounce his faith. In a society ordered by lineage, the Prophet ﷺ gave the most public role in it to a freed Black slave.
In a society that ranked people by lineage, the Prophet ﷺ gave the most visible role in the community to a man who had been enslaved. He taught equality in words, and he demonstrated it in practice. Readers in South Africa, and anywhere else that has sorted people by descent or colour, may find that choice speaks directly to them.
Why Muslims Trust the Sunnah
If the Prophet's ﷺ sayings and actions are a source of guidance, how can Muslims be sure of what he actually said, fourteen centuries later? The answer lies in one of the most rigorous systems of historical verification the pre-modern world ever produced.
The sayings of the Prophet ﷺ (the hadith) were carefully memorised by his companions, written down, and transmitted through documented chains of narration (isnad), each report traced, narrator by narrator, back to an eyewitness. Generations of Muslim scholars then critically examined these chains, investigating the memory, honesty, and life of every single narrator, and grading each report as authentic, weak, or fabricated. Vast biographical encyclopaedias were compiled for this purpose alone.
This is why not every saying attributed to the Prophet ﷺ is accepted. The most trusted collections, such as Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, record only reports that passed this demanding scrutiny. It is a science of authentication with few parallels in human history, and it is the reason Muslims can speak with confidence about how the Prophet ﷺ lived, prayed, and taught.
Further Reading
- The Qur'an. Read it for yourself, with translation and recitation.
- Sahih al-Bukhari & Sahih Muslim. The two most rigorously authenticated collections of the Prophet's ﷺ sayings.
- Riyad as-Salihin (Imam an-Nawawi), a beloved anthology of hadith on faith, character, and worship.
- The Sealed Nectar (Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum), an award-winning biography of the Prophet ﷺ.
- Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Martin Lings.