وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ إِلَّا رَحْمَةً لِّلْعَالَمِينَ
Qur'an 21:107
From a cave above Makkah to a grave in Madinah, and then the harder question: what he was actually like, and how a person is supposed to copy it. Every verse and every narration below is carried with its source.
Walk it
The shape of it
Prophethood lasted twenty-three years and it was not one thing twice. Thirteen were spent in Makkah with almost no power and almost no protection. Ten were spent in Madinah with both. The first period is where most of the Qur'an about patience came down; the second is where almost all of the law did.
The road · twenty stations
Every station names the verse and the narration it rests on. Nothing here is summary without a source behind it.
Badr · 17 Ramadan, 2 AH
The numbers are the argument. Every dot on the right is one man. The believers came out with no intention of a battle and were given one anyway, against an army more than three times their size, better armed and better mounted.
Allah had already given you victory at Badr while you were few. Qur'an 3:123
The example · al-uswa al-hasana
The Qur'an does not describe him as a set of doctrines to agree with. It calls him a pattern, and the word it uses is the one for a mould a thing is pressed into. Everything below is here because a person can do it tomorrow.
There is certainly in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for whoever hopes in Allah and the Last Day, and remembers Allah much. Qur'an 33:21
What the people who lived with him said
The method · how he handled things
Not maxims. Real situations with a person in front of him and a decision to make. Read the problem, then open it to see what he did and the rule underneath, which is the part that still works on a Tuesday.
The day · his habits, in the order they fell
He did not live in bursts. The day had joints in it, and the same small acts sat at the same joints for twenty-three years. That repetition is most of what made the character.
الرَّفِيقَ الْأَعْلَى
Bukhari 4463 · Bukhari 4438
He said it three times, and he passed. Abu Bakr stood before a community that could not accept it and said: whoever worshipped Muhammad, Muhammad has died; and whoever worships Allah, Allah is Living and does not die. Then he recited the verse that had been waiting for that morning since Uhud.
Muhammad is only a messenger; messengers have passed away before him. If he dies or is killed, will you turn back on your heels? Qur'an 3:144
Arafat, 9 Dhul-Hijjah, 10 AH. The sermon that fixed what the community owed each other.
Open the station →Rabi' al-Awwal, 11 AH. The completion of the message, and the community's hardest morning.
Open the station →Book, Sunnah, chain. How a religion was built to survive its Messenger.
Open the station →Every verse on this page has been checked against the text of the Qur'an, and every narration has been opened on sunnah.com and read at the number given, so that what is quoted is what stands at that number. Where two collections are cited, both were checked. Where a report is from the sirah literature rather than the two Sahihs, it says so and carries no number; where a narration is real but sits in a part of the Musnad that is not published where it can be opened and read, the number has been left off rather than passed on unchecked. Nothing here was written from memory. If you find an error, please send it to us — it will be fixed and the page will say so.