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Chapter 4 — The Life of the Prophet ﷺ

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In the last chapter, we left Muhammad (مُحَمَّد) ﷺ in the cave of Ḥirāʾ (حِرَاء), holding on to something no one else on earth yet knew about: he was a prophet of Allah (SWT). He returned home to his wife Khadījah (خَدِيجَة), shaken by what had happened, and she believed him without hesitation. For the next three years, the message stayed quiet — shared only with the people closest to him. This chapter picks up the story from there: how a private revelation became a public call, what it cost the earliest Muslims to answer it, and how the Prophet ﷺ carried that cost through some of the hardest years of his life.

📖 The Call Begins

For three years after the first revelation in Ḥirāʾ, the message of Islam was shared quietly. Khadījah (رضي الله عنها) was the first to believe. Among the earliest to accept were his young cousin ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (عَلِيّ اِبْن أَبِي طَالِب رضي الله عنه), his close friend Abū Bakr (أَبُو بَكْر رضي الله عنه), and Zayd ibn Ḥārithah (زَيْد اِبْن حَارِثَة رضي الله عنه), a young man who had once been enslaved and whom the Prophet ﷺ had freed and treated as family. Through Abū Bakr's own daʿwah, several other respected men of Makkah (مَكَّة) also entered Islam during this early period.

These new Muslims met in secret, often at the house of a young companion named Al-Arqam ibn Abī al-Arqam (الْأَرْقَم اِبْن أَبِي الْأَرْقَم), learning the verses that had been revealed and how to pray. Islamic tradition remembers this house as Dār al-Arqam (دَارُ الْأَرْقَم), one of the first places where the earliest community of Muslims gathered together.

After three years, the Qur'an instructed the Prophet ﷺ to make the message public:

فَاصْدَعْ بِمَا تُؤْمَرُ وَأَعْرِضْ عَنِ الْمُشْرِكِينَ "Then declare what you are commanded and turn away from the polytheists."

— Surah Al-Ḥijr 15:94

According to Islamic tradition, the Prophet ﷺ climbed the hill of Aṣ-Ṣafā (الصَّفَا), gathered the leaders of Quraysh (قُرَيْش), and called them to worship Allah (SWT) alone. Some in the crowd mocked him. Others were simply confused. But from that day, the message of Islam was no longer a secret — and the response from the leaders of Makkah began to turn from confusion into open hostility.

⚔️ Years of Trial

As more people accepted Islam, the leaders of Quraysh grew alarmed. The Prophet ﷺ himself was protected, for a time, by the standing of his uncle Abū Ṭālib (أَبُو طَالِب) and by the customs of tribal protection in Makkah. But many of the earliest Muslims had no such protection — especially those who were poor, enslaved, or without powerful families behind them.

Among those who suffered greatly was Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ (بِلَال اِبْن رَبَاح رضي الله عنه), an enslaved man from Abyssinian descent. His enslaver, Umayyah ibn Khalaf (أُمَيَّة اِبْن خَلَف), would drag him into the open desert heat, place a heavy stone on his chest, and demand that he renounce his faith. Islamic tradition records that Bilāl (رضي الله عنه) responded again and again with a single word: "Aḥad" (أَحَد) — "One." He would not deny that Allah (SWT) is one, no matter what was done to him.

Another family, Yāsir ibn ʿĀmir (يَاسِر اِبْن عَامِر) and his wife Sumayyah bint Khayyāṭ (سُمَيَّة بِنْت خَيَّاط رضي الله عنهما), were also tortured for their faith. Islamic tradition holds that Sumayyah (رضي الله عنها) did not survive her persecution — remembered by many Muslims as the first to give her life for Islam.

When the suffering grew too severe, the Prophet ﷺ advised a group of Muslims to leave Makkah entirely. In 615 CE, they emigrated to Habesha (الْحَبَشَة — Abyssinia), where a Christian king known as Najashi (النَّجَاشِيّ — the Negus) ruled with justice. Islamic tradition records that when Quraysh sent messengers demanding the Muslims be returned, Najashi refused, having heard their explanation of the faith and judged it to be true.

🚫 The Boycott

Unable to stop the message through mockery or torture, the leaders of Quraysh turned to a broader punishment. Around the year 616 CE, they drew up an agreement to boycott the Prophet's ﷺ own clan, Banū Hāshim (بَنُو هَاشِم), along with the related clan of Banū al-Muṭṭalib (بَنُو الْمُطَّلِب). They refused to trade with them, marry into their families, or sell them food, regardless of whether every member of the clan had accepted Islam. The agreement was reportedly hung inside the Kaʿbah (الْكَعْبَة) itself.

For roughly three years, the clan was confined to a narrow mountain pass known as Shiʿbu Abī Ṭālib (شِعْبُ أَبِي طَالِب), where conditions grew severe. Islamic tradition describes real hunger during this period, eased only when supplies could occasionally be smuggled in.

The boycott eventually collapsed when several men of Quraysh, unconvinced that the whole clan should suffer for the actions of a few, worked to have the agreement torn down. Islamic tradition holds that when the document was finally taken from the Kaʿbah, it was found that insects had eaten through most of the writing — leaving only the words "بِاسْمِكَ اللَّهُمَّ" ("In Your name, O Allah") intact.

💔 The Year of Sorrow

The boycott had barely ended when the Prophet ﷺ faced the hardest year of his life. In the year 619 CE, within a short span of months, he lost Khadījah (رضي الله عنها) — his wife of twenty-five years, the first person to believe in his message, and the one who had supported him with her wealth, her comfort, and her unwavering belief — and then his uncle, Abū Ṭālib, who had protected and raised him since he was a young boy.

With Abū Ṭālib gone, the Prophet ﷺ lost much of the tribal protection that had shielded him in Makkah. Islamic tradition records that the opposition from Quraysh grew bolder in the months that followed. Muslims came to call this difficult period ʿĀm al-Ḥuzn (عَامُ الْحُزْن) — the Year of Sorrow.

Seeking support elsewhere, the Prophet ﷺ traveled to the nearby city of Aṭ-Ṭāʾif (الطَّائِف) to invite its people to Islam. He was rejected harshly and driven out by a crowd who pelted him with stones. ʿĀʾishah (عَائِشَة رضي الله عنها) once asked him whether he had ever faced a day harder than the Battle of Uḥud, and he described this journey to Aṭ-Ṭāʾif as the hardest trial he had faced. In the same authenticated narration, he related that an angel came to him afterward and offered, on Allah's (SWT) command, to crush the people of Aṭ-Ṭāʾif between two mountains if he wished it. The Prophet ﷺ declined, saying instead that he hoped Allah (SWT) would bring forth from their descendants people who would worship Him alone (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim).

🌌 The Night Journey

In the midst of this sorrow, Islamic tradition places one of the most remarkable events of the Prophet's ﷺ life: Al-Isrāʾ wal-Miʿrāj (الْإِسْرَاء وَالْمِعْرَاج), the Night Journey and the Ascension. The Qur'an refers to the journey itself:

سُبْحَانَ الَّذِي أَسْرَىٰ بِعَبْدِهِ لَيْلًا مِنَ الْمَسْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ إِلَى الْمَسْجِدِ الْأَقْصَى الَّذِي بَارَكْنَا حَوْلَهُ "Exalted is He who took His servant by night from al-Masjid al-Ḥarām to al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, whose surroundings We have blessed."

— Surah Al-Isrāʾ 17:1

According to authentic narrations, the Prophet ﷺ was taken in a single night from Makkah to Al-Masjid al-Aqṣā (الْمَسْجِدِ الْأَقْصَى) in Jerusalem, and from there was raised through the heavens, where he was shown signs of Allah's (SWT) creation. It was on this journey that the five daily prayers — Aṣ-Ṣalāh (الصَّلَاة) — were made obligatory for Muslims.

Many in Makkah mocked the account when the Prophet ﷺ described it the next morning — a journey of that distance in a single night seemed impossible to them. Islamic tradition records that when they brought the story to Abū Bakr (رضي الله عنه) expecting him to doubt it, he replied simply that if the Prophet ﷺ said it, then it was true. This earned him the title Aṣ-Ṣiddīq (الصِّدِّيق), "the Truthful One."

🤝 The Pledges of ʿAqabah

With the situation in Makkah growing harder, the Prophet ﷺ began seeking a new community that might welcome the message of Islam. During the annual pilgrimage season, he met a small group of visitors from the city of Yathrib (يَثْرِب) — later renamed Al-Madīnah (الْمَدِينَة) — who listened to the message and accepted it.

The following year, in 621 CE, twelve people from Yathrib (يَثْرِب) met the Prophet ﷺ at a place called Al-ʿAqabah (الْعَقَبَة) and made a pledge — promising to worship Allah (SWT) alone, to avoid major sins, and to live according to the teachings of Islam. This became known as the First Pledge of Al-ʿAqabah.

A year later, in 622 CE, a much larger group — around seventy men and women from Yathrib — met the Prophet ﷺ again at Al-ʿAqabah. This time, the pledge went further: they promised not only to follow the teachings of Islam, but to protect the Prophet ﷺ and the Muslims of Makkah as they would protect their own families, and to welcome them to Yathrib if they came. This Second Pledge of الْعَقَبَة opened the door to what would come next in the story of Islam — the Hijrah (هِجْرَة), the migration to Yathrib, which the next chapters will tell.

📜 Lesson Summary

After three years of quiet daʿwah, the Prophet ﷺ was commanded to call the people of Makkah to Islam openly. What followed were some of the hardest years of his life: the torture of the earliest, most vulnerable Muslims; the boycott of his own clan; and the Year of Sorrow, in which he lost both his wife Khadījah (رضي الله عنها) and his uncle Abū Ṭālib within a few months of each other. Yet through the Night Journey, the Muslims were reminded that Allah (SWT) had not abandoned them, and through the Pledges of Al-ʿAqabah, a new community in Yathrib opened its doors to welcome them. This chapter closes with the Muslims of Makkah standing on the edge of a journey that would change the course of Islamic history — the Hijrah.

🌟 Discussion Questions

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