Mecca and Muhammad: AD c.570 - 622
A child, Muhammad, is born in a merchant family in Mecca. His clan is prosperous and influential, but his father dies before he is born and his mother dies when the boy is only six.
Entrusted to a Bedouin nurse, Muhammad spends much of his childhood among nomads, accompanying the caravans on Arabia's main trade route through Mecca.
A widow, Khadija, considerably older than Muhammad, has sufficient faith in him to entrust him with her business affairs; and when he is twenty-five, they marry. For the next fifteen years or so he lives the life of a prosperous merchant. But he develops one habit untypical of merchants.
From time to time he withdraws into the mountains to meditate and pray. In about the year 610 he has a vision which changes his life; and changes world history. |