Muhammad in Mecca

According to writers of Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya Muhammad, the final Islamic prophet, was born and lived in Mecca for the first 53 years of his life (c. 570–622 CE) until the Hijra. This period of his life is characterized by his proclamation of prophethood. Muhammad's father, Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib, died before he was born. His mother would raise him until he was six years old, before her death around 577 CE at Abwa'. Subsequently raised by his grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, and then his uncle, Abu Talib ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib, Muhammad's early career involved being a shepherd and merchant. Muhammad married Khadija bint Khuwaylid after a successful trading endeavour in Syria. After the death of Khadija and Abu Talib in the Year of Sorrow, Muhammad married Sawdah bint Zam'a and Aisha.

Muslims believe Muhammad began receiving revelation sometime in the year 610 CE. Initially, the ranks of the Muslims only included Muhammad and some of his close friends and relatives. However, as more members of the Quraysh and other Arab tribes respected his words and accepted his message, the vast majority of them, including tribal leaders and some of his relatives, such as Abū Lahab, opposed, ridiculed and eventually boycotted his clan, the Banu Hashim, and Muhammad and his followers were harassed, assaulted and forced into exile in Abyssinia. After experiencing the Isra and Mi'raj in 620 and receiving delegations from Medina and pledges of protection from the two Arab tribes that lived in the city at al-'Aqabah, Muhammad instructed his companions to gradually migrate to the city, before doing so himself in 622.

Critical evaluation of information sources is of particular importance in uncovering Muhammad's historical existence beyond the myths. Prophetic biography, known as sīra, along with attributed records of the words, actions, and the silent approval of Muhammad, known as hadith, survive in the historical works of writers from the second and third centuries of the Muslim era (c. 700−1000 CE), and give a great deal of information on Muhammad, but the reliability of this information is very much debated in academic circles due to the gap (Oral tradition) between the recorded dates of Muhammad's life and the dates when these events begin to appear in written sources.

The general Islamic view is that the Quran has been preserved from the beginning by both writing and memorization, and its testimony is considered beyond doubt. The earliest Muslim source of information for the life of Muhammad, the Quran, gives very little personal information and its historicity is debated. A group of researchers explores the irregularities and repetitions in the Quranic text in a way that refutes the traditional claim that it was preserved by memorization alongside writing. According to them, an oral period shaped the Quran as a text and order, and the repetitions and irregularities mentioned were remnants of this period. John Burton summarizes the information provided by the multitude of available sources, from a historian's perspective: states

In judging the content, the only resort of the scholar is to the yardstick of probability, and on this basis, it must be repeated, virtually nothing of use to the historian emerges from the sparse record of the early life of the founder of the latest of the great world religions ... so, however far back in the Muslim tradition one now attempts to reach, one simply cannot recover a scrap of information of real use in constructing the human history of Muhammad, beyond the bare fact that he once existed.

There are a relatively small number of contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous non-Muslim sources which attest to the existence of Muhammad and are valuable both in themselves and for comparison with Muslim sources. As in the case of Mecca, these sources cannot be said to support the traditional Islamic narrative; where there is a lack of pre-Islamic sources that mention it as a pilgrimage center in historical sources before 741 here the author places the region in "midway between Ur and Harran" rather than the Hejaz- and lacks pre-Islamic archaeological data.

The early history of Mecca is still largely shrouded by a lack of clear sources. The city lies in the hinterland of the middle part of western Arabia of which there are sparse textual or archaeological sources available. This lack of knowledge is in contrast to both the northern and southern areas of western Arabia, specifically the Syro-Palestinian frontier and Yemen, where historians have various sources available such as physical remains of shrines, inscriptions, observations by Greco-Roman authors, and information collected by church historians. The area of Hejaz that surrounds Mecca was characterized by its remote, rocky, and inhospitable nature, supporting only meagre settled populations in scattered oases and occasional stretches of fertile land. The Red Sea coast offered no easily accessible ports and the oasis dwellers and bedouins in the region were illiterate.

Possible earlier mentions are not unambiguous. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes about Arabia in the 1st century BCE in his work Bibliotheca historica, describing a holy shrine: "And a temple has been set up there, which is very holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians". Claims have been made this could be a reference to the Ka'bah in Mecca. However, the geographic location Diodorus describes is located in northwest Arabia, around the area of Leuke Kome, within the former Nabataean Kingdom and the Roman province of Arabia Petraea.