The Makkan Period

The traditional biographies place the first half of the Prophet Muḥammad's ﷺ mission in Mecca — from his birth into the Quraysh through the beginning of revelation and some thirteen years of preaching under mounting opposition.

At a glance

The classical sīra literature — chiefly the biography of Ibn Isḥāq as edited by Ibn Hishām, alongside the maghāzī works and later compilations — records that Muḥammad ﷺ was born in Mecca around 570 CE into the clan of Banū Hāshim of the Quraysh, the tribe that guarded the Kaʿba. Orphaned young, he was raised by his grandfather ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib and then his uncle Abū Ṭālib, and grew up known, the sources say, for trustworthiness. In his twenties he married Khadīja, a Meccan merchant, whose support the tradition remembers as decisive in the years to come.

According to these accounts, around the age of forty — traditionally about 610 CE — while withdrawn in the cave of Ḥirāʾ, he received the first revelation, the opening verses of Sūrat al-ʿAlaq ("Recite in the name of your Lord…"). The message he began to proclaim was uncompromising monotheism (tawḥīd), a coming judgment, and care for the poor and the orphan — a challenge to the polytheism and the social order of Mecca. The earliest to accept it, in the traditional lists, included Khadīja, his cousin ʿAlī, his friend Abū Bakr, his freedman Zayd, and the enslaved Bilāl.

As the small community grew, the sources describe escalating pressure from the Quraysh: ridicule, then persecution of the weaker converts, a migration of some believers to Christian Abyssinia for refuge, and a social and economic boycott of Banū Hāshim. The biographies mark a turning point in the "Year of Sorrow," when both Khadīja and Abū Ṭālib died, leaving the Prophet ﷺ exposed — and they place in this Meccan phase the night journey and ascension (al-Isrāʾ wa-l-Miʿrāj), understood across the tradition as a sign granted before the community sought a new home.

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Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.