INTIMATIONS OF PROPHETHOOD:The Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) was forty when the first glimpses of light and of his future happiness appeared. The time of his mission approached. It had always been the Divine practice that whenever the darkness had become too intense and the wickedness widespread, a Messenger appeared.The Messenger of Allah’s distaste for what he saw reached a peak. It was as if he was being guided...

In or about the year 570 the child who would be named Muhammad and who would become the Prophet of one of the world’s great religions, Islam, was born into a family belonging to a clan of Quraysh, the ruling tribe of Mecca, a city in the Hijaz region of northwestern Arabia. The Revelation (audio) Originally the site of the Ka’bah, a shrine of ancient origins, Mecca had with the decline of southern Arabia become an important center of...