Muhammad

Born around 570 CE into Mecca's aristocratic Banu Hashim clan, Muhammad lost his father Abdullah near birth and his mother Amina at six, raised afterward by his grandfather and uncle. At 40, around 610, he reported being visited by Gabriel in a mountain cave and receiving his first revelation from God. He began preaching publicly in 613 - proclaiming monotheism and complete submission to God - but his early followers were few and faced thirteen years of persecution by Meccan polytheists. In 622 he and his followers migrated to Medina, an event called the Hijrah that marks the start of the Islamic calendar, and there he united the tribes under the Constitution of Medina. After eight years of intermittent conflict he marched on Mecca in 629 with ten thousand converts and took the city with minimal resistance. He died in 632, months after the Farewell Pilgrimage, leaving behind the Quran and a peninsula largely converted to the faith he founded.