Mohammed

Mohammed (570-632 ad), founder of Muslim religion.

Mohammed was born in Mecca in Western Arabia.

At the age of six, he was left an orphan and his uncle brought him up.

As a boy he herded sheep and camels and traveled with his uncle in camel caravans across Arabia and Syria.

At the age of twenty-five, he went to work for a rich widow named Khadija. Khadija was fifteen years older than Mohammed but he later married her.

At this time, in Mecca, Arabs worshipped a rock called the Black Stone. This stone was supposed to have been given by the Archangel Gabriel to Abraham. It stood in a shrine called the Kaaba. When Mohammed was thirty-five, a flood damaged the Kaaba and he was given the job of setting the Black Stone back in its place.

Afterwards he started going out into the desert to a mountainside to think about God. One day he came back and told Khadija that he had had a vision. In it the Archangel Gabriel had told him to preach about the greatness of God. Some time later Mohammed said he had seen the angel again and he had said, 'Arise and preach, magnify the Lord . . .'. After this Mohammed began preaching but many people laughed at him and sometimes threw stones at him. He said that it was wrong to worship idols, and that people should worship God (Allah).

In 622, a group of idol-worshippers plotted to kill him. He fled to the town now called Medina (the City of the Prophet). There the people listened to his preaching and in time made him their ruler. In 624 ad, war broke out between the people of Mecca and Mohammed's followers. His followers finally won and in 630 ad he went back to Mecca. The idols there were destroyed but Mohammed saved the Black Stone and it stands in the Kaaba in the Great Mosque in Mecca today.

Mohammed's religion is called Islam and the people who practise it are called Muslims. The teachings of Mohammed were written down by his followers in a holy book called the Koran.

After his death Islam was spread by the jihad (holy war). Today there are over a billion Muslims in the world. Most of them live outside the western world, from West Africa to the Philippines.