The central tenet of Islam is that there is one God (Allah) and Muhammad is his prophet. The founding of the religion, which is now the world's second largest, began with the revelation of the word of God directly through Muhammad, beginning around the year 611. After receiving the word of Allah Muhammad wrote down everything exactly as it had been transmitted to him in his revelations and this became the Qur'an, the holy scripture of Islam. The term "islam" means "submission" and the religion centers on the submission of the individual and the community to Allah in all things.
The events of Muhammad's life took on extraordinary significance as the practice of Islam evolved. Muhammad was married and had one daughter, Fatima. After his revelations began he spent ten years (611-621) preaching and attempting to reform religious practice in Mecca. But the town was very hostile toward him and very attached to its polytheistic practices. In 622 Muhammad finally fled Mecca with some followers and was much more successful with his preaching in the city of Medina. This flight to Medina was called the Hijra and it became the starting date for the Muslim calendar since it was "the beginning of Muhammad's public and organizational life on a large scale" (Ellwood & McGraw 381). In the remaining ten years of his life Muhammad's successful preaching managed to unite all of Arabia under his religious and civil leadership.
Muhammad's revelations continued until the end of his life in 632. The process of revelation consisted of the words of God being conveyed to Muhammad through the agency of the archangel Gabriel. This act is regarded as the central miracle of Islam for there is no other "explanation of how an unlettered caravan merchant of the early seventh century might have been able, by his own devices, to produce a text of such inimitable beauty [and] which stood so far above the ideas current among mankind at that time" (Du Pa...