How did Muhammad become a Prophet and a Messenger of Allah?
At the age of 40, while engaged in a meditative retreat, Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) received his first revelation from Allah through the Angel Gabriel. This revelation, which continued for twenty-three years, is known as the Qur’an. As soon as he began to recite the words he heard from Gabriel and to preach the truth which Allah had revealed to him, he and his small group of followers suffered bitter persecution which grew so fierce that in the year 622 CE, Allah 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 and the establishment of the Islamic State. 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 spre
