Legends of the founding of Islam relate that Muhammad, a Mecca-born member of the Hashim clan of the powerful Quraish tribe, became an orphan upon the death of his mother, Amina, in about 576, as his father, Abd Allah, had died before he was born.

He became a ward of his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib and, after 578, of his uncle Abu Talib, who succeeded as head of the Hashim clan.

Muhammad found work as a trader, traveling with caravans between Syria and Mecca, the center of trade and religion in the Arabian peninsula.

In about 595, Muhammad began working for a rich widow, Khadijah, in her commercial enterprise.

Although Khadijah was fifteen years Muhammad’s senior, they soon married.

While in a cave on Mount Hira outside Mecca in about 610, Muhammad claimed to have received what he has come to understand as a divine revelation from the angel Gabriel.

The angel had charged Muhammad with preaching to his people a religion based on the worship of the one God, the belief in a day of judgment, and the giving of alms for the support of the poor.

Following his revelation, Muhammad, first privately and then publicly in 613, had begun to proclaim that there is but one God and that Muhammad is his messenger sent to warn people of the Judgment Day and to remind them of God's goodness.

The Meccans receive Muhammad's message of monotheism and iconoclasm with hostility, but Muhammad is protected by the Hashim as long as Abu Talib lives.