HOW DID
MUHAMMAD BECOME A PROPHET AND A MESSENGER OF GOD?
At the age of 40, while
engaged in a meditative retreat, Muhammad received his first revelation from
God through the Angel Gabriel. This revelation, which continued for
twenty-three years, is known as the Quran. As soon as he began to recite the
words he heard from Gabriel, and to preach the truth which God had revealed to
him, he and his small group of followers suffered bitter persecution, which
grew so fierce that in the year 622 God gave them the command to emigrate. This
event, the Hijra, ‘migration’, in which they left Makkah for the city of
Madinah some 260 miles to the north, marks the beginning of the Muslim
calendar.
After several
years, the Prophet and his followers were able to return to Makkah, where they
forgave their enemies and established Islam definitively. Before the Prophet
died at the age of 63, the greater part of Arabia was Muslim, and within a
century of his death Islam had spread to Spain in the West and as far East as
China.
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