By the time he reached middle age, Muhammad ibn Abdullah ﷺ was a respected, unremarkable merchant in a city of merchants. What happened to him in a cave outside that city, and in the thirteen years that followed, would set in motion the founding of a world religion — through a period of quiet faith, open persecution, and remarkable endurance that Islamic tradition has never stopped retelling.
The trustworthy merchant
Muhammad ﷺ was born in Mecca around 570 CE and orphaned young, raised first by his grandfather and then his uncle, Abu Talib. As a young man he worked in trade and became known across Mecca for his honesty and reliability, earning the nickname al-Amin, "the trustworthy." It was this reputation that led the successful merchant Khadijah bint Khuwaylid to hire him to lead one of her trading caravans, and later to propose marriage to him herself. They married when he was about twenty-five, and the marriage lasted, in devoted partnership, for roughly twenty-five years.568 In the years before revelation, Muhammad ﷺ had developed a habit of periodic retreat to a small cave on Mount Hira, outside Mecca, where he spent time in solitary reflection away from the city's noise and idolatry.58
The cave and the first revelation
It was in that cave, around 610 CE, when he was about forty years old, that the angel Jibril (Gabriel) came to him with the first words of the Quran. The hadith preserves the encounter in the Prophet's ﷺ own words, as related by Aisha:
The commencement of the Divine Inspiration to Allah's Messenger ﷺ was in the form of good dreams which came true like bright daylight, and then the love of seclusion was bestowed upon him. He used to go in seclusion in the cave of Hira where he used to worship continuously for many days before his desire to see his family. He used to take with him the journey food for the stay and then come back to Khadijah to take his food again for another period, till suddenly the Truth descended upon him while he was in the cave of Hira. The angel came to him and asked him to read.
— Sahih al-Bukhari 31
The verses conveyed to him that day are traditionally identified as the opening lines of Surah al-'Alaq:
Recite in the name of your Lord who created — created man from a clinging substance. Recite, and your Lord is the most Generous — who taught by the pen — taught man that which he knew not.
— Quran 96:1-5 (Saheeh International)3
Shaken and uncertain what had happened to him, Muhammad ﷺ returned home to Khadijah, who comforted him and, together with her Christian cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, recognized the encounter as prophethood.1 The fuller account of Khadijah's role in this moment, and in the years that followed, is told in Khadijah bint Khuwaylid.
From quiet faith to public proclamation
For roughly the first three years, the Prophet ﷺ shared the message privately with family and close associates. As revelation continued, he was commanded to preach openly, and the message moved from private conversation to public proclamation in Mecca's streets and gatherings. The earliest believers came from across Meccan society — some, like Abu Bakr, from respected families; others, including enslaved people and the poor, from society's most vulnerable ranks — united by their acceptance of one God and rejection of the city's idols.567
Persecution intensifies
As the number of believers grew, so did the hostility of Mecca's leading clans, who saw the new faith as a threat to both their religious authority and the pilgrimage trade tied to the Ka'bah's idols. Believers without powerful clan protection bore the worst of it. Sumayyah bint Khabbat is remembered in Islamic tradition as the first martyr of Islam, killed for her faith by a Meccan chief, and Bilal ibn Rabah, enslaved by another Meccan leader, was tortured in the open for refusing to renounce his belief in one God before being purchased and freed by Abu Bakr.568
The pressure grew severe enough that, around 615 CE, the Prophet ﷺ advised a group of his followers to leave Mecca altogether and seek refuge across the Red Sea in Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia). Its Christian ruler, known by the title the Negus, heard a delegation from both sides and, according to the traditional accounts, refused Meccan demands to extradite the refugees after being moved by the Muslims' description of their faith, including its reverence for Jesus and Mary, peace be upon them. This episode is remembered as the first hijra, or migration, in Islamic history — a rehearsal, in miniature, for the larger migration to come.568
Mecca's leading clans eventually imposed a broader social and economic boycott on the Prophet's ﷺ own clan, Banu Hashim, cutting them off from trade and marriage with the rest of Quraysh for several years in an effort to force them to abandon their protection of him.
The Year of Sorrow and the journey to Ta'if
Around 619-620 CE, within a short span of each other, both Khadijah and Abu Talib died — Khadijah his steadiest source of comfort, Abu Talib the clan elder whose protection had kept Meccan hostility from turning lethal. The year is remembered in Islamic tradition as 'Aam al-Huzn, the Year of Sorrow.567 With his position in Mecca more exposed than ever, the Prophet ﷺ traveled to the nearby city of Ta'if seeking support and protection, only to be rejected and reportedly driven out by a crowd that pelted him with stones. The traditional biographical accounts describe this as one of the bleakest episodes of his life, met, in the same accounts, with a moment of angelic comfort on the road back to Mecca.687
The Night Journey
It was in this same difficult period that Islamic tradition places the Isra and Mi'raj, the Night Journey and Ascension. The Quran opens a chapter with a brief, striking reference to a journey from Mecca to Jerusalem:
Exalted is He who took His Servant by night from al-Masjid al-Haram to al-Masjid al-Aqsa, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him of Our signs. Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
— Quran 17:1 (Saheeh International)4
The hadith literature expands on this journey, describing the Prophet ﷺ being taken from Mecca to Jerusalem and then, in the same night, ascending through the heavens, where among other things he was given the instruction for the five daily prayers:
Then Allah's Messenger ﷺ ascended with us till we reached a heaven... Then he ascended with me till the matter was over, and the five daily prayers were enjoined on me.
— Sahih al-Bukhari 38872
For Muslims, the Night Journey is a foundational sign of the Prophet's ﷺ station and the establishment of the five daily prayers as the pillar of worship they remain today.
The pledges of Aqabah
Around this time, the Prophet ﷺ began meeting pilgrims from Yathrib, a city to the north with a mixed population of Arab tribes and Jewish communities, who had grown receptive to his message. Over two successive years, delegations from Yathrib met him privately at a place called Aqabah near Mecca and pledged their support: the first pledge was a commitment to the basic moral teachings of Islam, and the second, larger pledge included an invitation for the Prophet ﷺ and his followers to come to Yathrib and a promise to protect him there as they would their own families.567 These pledges opened the door that thirteen difficult years in Mecca had never fully closed. What followed is the story of the Hijra.