Read the Qur'an with the Seerah

Year of the Elephant · 53 BH · Makkah

He ﷺ is born to Āminah, his father already dead, in the year Abrahah's army came against the Kaʿbah.

c. 53–49 BH · the desert of Banū Saʿd

He ﷺ is nursed among Banū Saʿd, and there the chest of the young boy is opened.

c. 47–45 BH · Makkah

His mother dies when he ﷺ is six, his grandfather when he is eight, and his uncle takes him in.

c. 41 BH · Buṣrā, Shām

At about twelve he ﷺ travels with Abū Ṭālib's caravan, and a monk recognises the signs.

c. 33 BH · Makkah · age 20

The young men of Quraysh swear to stand with anyone wronged in Makkah, and he ﷺ is among them.

c. 28 BH · Makkah · age 25

He ﷺ takes her caravan to Shām, and she proposes; he is twenty-five, she is forty.

c. 18 BH · Makkah · age 35

Quraysh nearly fight over who replaces the stone; he ﷺ settles it with a cloak.

c. 16–13 BH · Ḥirāʾ

In the years before revelation he ﷺ withdraws to a cave above Makkah to worship alone.

c. 13 BH · Ramaḍān · age 40

He ﷺ was forty, and for years he had been going up to a cave outside Makkah to worship alone. In Ramaḍān the angel Jibrīl عليه السلام came to him there and told him to read. He said he could not read. The angel held him hard, three times, and then gave him the first five āyāt of Sūrat al-ʿAlaq. He went home shaking and asked to be covered.

c. 13 BH · Makkah

Khadījah رضي الله عنها did not tell him to calm down. She told him what his life had been — that he kept family ties, carried the weak and honoured guests — and said Allah would never disgrace such a man. She took him to her cousin Waraqah, an old Christian who read scripture, and Waraqah said this was the same angel who came to Mūsā عليه السلام, and that his own people would drive him out.

c. 13–12 BH · Makkah

After that first meeting the revelation stopped for a while. People mocked him, saying his Lord had left him. Then Sūrat aḍ-Ḍuḥā came: your Lord has not left you and does not hate you. Its proof is his own past — orphaned and sheltered, lost and guided, poor and provided for.

c. 12 BH · Makkah

Revelation returned. He saw the same angel filling the sky, came home frightened and asked to be wrapped up, and Sūrat al-Muddaththir was given: arise and warn. What had been a private experience was now a public job.

c. 13–12 BH · Makkah

The first people to believe were the ones closest to him: his wife Khadījah رضي الله عنها, the boy ʿAlī رضي الله عنه in his house, his freedman Zayd, and his friend Abū Bakr رضي الله عنهم. Abū Bakr رضي الله عنه began bringing others in at once — ʿUthmān رضي الله عنه, az-Zubayr, ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, Saʿd and Ṭalḥah رضي الله عنه.

c. 12–10 BH · Makkah

For about three years the call stayed quiet. The believers met in the house of a young man called al-Arqam, at the foot of Ṣafā, and there they learned the newly revealed sūrahs and prayed. They were taught before they were exposed.

c. 10 BH · Makkah

Then came the order to warn his own relatives first. He called the clans of Quraysh by name and told them plainly that he could not save them from Allah — naming even his aunt and his daughter. Family gave nobody an exemption.