The Life of the Prophet
Muḥammad ﷺ

Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq

al-Ṣiddīq — the Affirmer of Truth; the Companion of the Cave

The first grown man to believe, the companion in the cave named in the Qur'an itself, the freer of Bilāl, and the man who held the community together on the day the Prophet ﷺ died.

ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb

al-Fārūq — the Distinguisher between Truth and Falsehood

He set out to kill the Prophet ﷺ and was a Muslim before the day ended; the Qur'an agreed with his opinion more than once; and as caliph he ruled half the known world and patched his own cloak.

ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān

Dhū al-Nūrayn — Possessor of the Two Lights

A wealthy merchant of shy and generous temperament who married two of the Prophet's ﷺ daughters in turn, bought a well and gave it to Madīnah, and had the Qur'an fixed in a single authoritative text.

ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib

Abū Turāb — the Gate of Knowledge; the Prophet's ﷺ cousin and son-in-law

Raised in the Prophet's ﷺ own house, the first child to believe, the man who slept in his bed on the night of the Hijrah, husband of Fāṭimah, and the fourth caliph.

Khadījah bint Khuwaylid

al-Ṭāhirah — the Pure; the first to believe

The merchant who employed him, proposed to him, and believed him before anyone on earth did — and to whom God sent greetings of peace by name.

ʿĀʾishah bint Abī Bakr

Umm al-Muʾminīn — Mother of the Believers; the jurist of Madīnah

The source of more than two thousand ḥadīth and of nearly everything known about the Prophet's ﷺ private life — a scholar whose rulings corrected senior Companions for fifty years after his death.

Fāṭimah bint Muḥammad

al-Zahrāʾ — the Radiant; mistress of the women of Paradise

The youngest daughter, who wiped the filth from her father's back as he prayed, married ʿAlī into a household with almost nothing in it, and was the first of his family to follow him in death.

Umm Salamah

Mother of the Believers; the counsel at Ḥudaybiyyah

Twice an emigrant, widowed at Uḥud, and the woman whose advice at Ḥudaybiyyah broke a standoff that the Prophet's ﷺ own repeated commands had not.

Zayd ibn Ḥārithah

The Beloved; the only Companion named in the Qur'an

Enslaved as a boy and given to the Prophet ﷺ, he chose him over his own father when offered his freedom — and is the one Companion the Qur'an calls by name.

Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ

Muʾadhdhin of the Messenger of God ﷺ

An Abyssinian slave tortured on the burning sand of Makkah for saying one word, bought and freed by Abū Bakr, and raised to call the prayer from the roof of the Kaʿbah on the day the city fell.

Sumayyah bint Khayyāṭ

The first martyr of Islam

An elderly enslaved woman of no standing, tortured with her husband and son in the sands of Makkah, who refused to recant and was killed for it — the first person to die for this religion.

Salmān al-Fārisī

Salmān of Persia — “one of us, the people of the house”

A Zoroastrian priest's son who left Persia searching for the true religion, passed through Christianity and slavery, and arrived in Madīnah on a dying monk's description of a prophet yet to come.

Ḥamzah ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib

Asad Allāh — the Lion of God; master of the martyrs

The Prophet's ﷺ uncle and foster-brother, whose conversion in a fit of anger changed the balance in Makkah — and whose death at Uḥud was the hardest blow of the Prophet's ﷺ life.

Muṣʿab ibn ʿUmayr

The first ambassador of Islam

The best-dressed young man in Makkah, who gave it all up, was sent alone to Madīnah to teach a city he did not know, and was buried in a cloak too short to cover him.

Khālid ibn al-Walīd

Sayf Allāh al-Maslūl — the Drawn Sword of God

The cavalry commander whose flanking manoeuvre defeated the Muslims at Uḥud, who accepted Islam eight years later, and who never lost a battle on either side of his conversion.

Abū Hurayrah

The greatest narrator of the ḥadīth

A destitute latecomer who spent three years attached to the Prophet ﷺ with no property and no trade, and transmitted more of his words than any other human being.

ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd

The first to recite the Qur'an aloud in Makkah

A shepherd boy who became one of the six greatest authorities on the Qur'an, and the first man to recite it publicly to the Quraysh — and be beaten for it.

The Farewell Sermon

632 CE · 10 AH

Delivered at ʿArafah before more than a hundred thousand people, three months before his death — the abolition of blood vengeance and usury, the sanctity of life and property, and a charge concerning women.

The Constitution of Madīnah

622 CE · 1 AH

The written compact drawn up on arrival in Madīnah between the Muhājirūn, the Anṣār, and the Jewish clans — binding them into one community while leaving each its own religion and law.

The Letters to the Kings

628 CE · 6–7 AH

After Ḥudaybiyyah he had a silver seal made and sent envoys to Heraclius, Chosroes, the Negus, and the ruler of Egypt — the moment a local movement addressed the empires.

His Appearance

The Companions described him with the exactness of people who expected to be asked — his height, his hair, his eyes, his hands, and the seal between his shoulders.

His Speech and Silence

He spoke slowly enough to be counted, repeated himself three times so he would be understood, never spoke obscenely, and was silent far more than he spoke.

His Laughter and Humour

He rarely laughed aloud — mostly he smiled — but he joked, teased his companions by name, played with children, and never once said anything untrue in jest.

His Worship

He stood in prayer until his feet swelled and was asked why, when he had already been forgiven; his answer became the definition of gratitude in Islam.

His Household and Daily Life

Asked what he did at home, ʿĀʾishah said he was in the service of his family — mending his own sandals, patching his clothes, and going out when the call to prayer came.

His Character with People

Ten years of service without a word of rebuke, generosity that never refused a request, and a mercy that the Qur'an itself named as the reason people gathered around him.

Ādam

Abū al-Bashar — the Father of Humanity

Formed of clay and given the divine breath, taught the names of all things, honoured above the angels, then tested in the Garden, forgiven outright, and sent to earth as its first vicegerent.

Idrīs

The Truthful Prophet, Raised to a High Station

A descendant of Ādam named twice in the Qur'an as truthful and patient, granted a station of nearness by God — identified by many exegetes and by long tradition with the biblical Enoch.

Nūḥ

Shaykh al-Mursalīn — the Elder of the Messengers

Nine hundred and fifty years of patient preaching to a people who would not listen, an ark built on dry land amid ridicule, and a flood that closed one age of humanity and opened another.

Hūd

Messenger to ʿĀd

A prophet of the mighty, pillar-raising people of ʿĀd, who warned them against their own strength and was answered with a barren wind that left nothing standing.

Ṣāliḥ

Messenger to Thamūd

A prophet to the rock-carving people of Thamūd, given a she-camel as a manifest sign — hamstrung by his own people in defiance, and followed within three days by a devastating cry.

Ibrāhīm

Khalīl Allāh — the Friend of God

The idol-breaker of Ur and Ḥarrān, thrown into fire and unburned, father of Ismāʿīl and Isḥāq, builder with his son of the Kaʿbah itself — the patriarch to whom the Qur'an traces the faith it calls the religion of Ibrāhīm.

Lūṭ

Messenger to the Cities of the Plain

Nephew and companion of Ibrāhīm, sent to warn a people sunk in an unprecedented sin — and the one prophet among the messengers of the plain whose own wife stayed behind in the ruin.

Ismāʿīl

Ṣādiq al-Waʿd — True to His Promise

Left as an infant with his mother Hājar in a barren valley, saved by the spring of Zamzam, offered willingly for sacrifice, and grown to raise the Kaʿbah beside his father — ancestor of the Arabs and of Muḥammad ﷺ.

Isḥāq

The Promised Son; Father of Yaʿqūb

Born to Ibrāhīm and Sārah in an old age the Qur'an calls astonishing, blessed as a prophet in his own right, and made — through his son Yaʿqūb — the ancestor of the Israelite line of prophets.

Yaʿqūb

Isrāʾīl — Father of the Twelve Tribes

Also called Isrāʾīl, father of twelve sons and of Yūsuf's whole story — a man who wept for a lost son for years without ever losing hope in God, and lived to be reunited with him in Egypt.

Yūsuf

Aḥsan al-Qaṣaṣ — the Best of Stories

Thrown into a well by his own brothers, sold into slavery, tempted, imprisoned on a lie, and raised at last to command the granaries of Egypt — the single sustained narrative the Qur'an itself calls the best of stories.

Ayyūb

The Exemplar of Patience

Stripped of wealth, children, and health alike, and remembered ever after not for the length of his suffering but for the single sentence of complaint he permitted himself before God restored everything twofold.

Shuʿayb

Khaṭīb al-Anbiyāʾ — the Orator of the Prophets

A preacher against fraud in the marketplace as much as idolatry in the temple, sent to Madyan and to the Companions of the Wood, and remembered for the eloquence with which he reasoned before his people were destroyed.

Mūsā

Kalīm Allāh — the One Who Spoke Directly with God

Cast onto the river as an infant to escape a tyrant's decree, called at a burning bush on the slopes of Sinai, sent to confront Pharaoh with nine signs, and the guide who led Banū Isrāʾīl out of Egypt through a sea split in two — named more often in the Qur'an than any other human being.

Hārūn

The Prophet Sent as His Brother's Strength

Mūsā's elder brother, given prophethood expressly to support him, left in charge of Banū Isrāʾīl at Sinai — and nearly killed by his own people for standing against the golden calf he had no power to stop.

Dhū al-Kifl

The One of the Pledge

Named only twice in the Qur'an, in the briefest company of the patient and the excellent — a figure whose very identity classical scholarship left more open than almost any other named in scripture.

Dāwūd

The Shepherd King Given the Zabūr

A young soldier who felled a giant, raised afterward to kingship and prophecy together, given a scripture, a voice that made mountains and birds join his praise, and a judgement so keen it became a lesson to himself.

Sulaymān

The King Given Command over Wind and Jinn

Heir to Dāwūd's throne and prophecy, given dominion over the wind, the jinn, and the speech of birds and ants — a king who asked for a kingdom no one after him would have, and whose death went unnoticed even by the jinn who served him.

Ilyās

Messenger Against the Worship of Baʿl

Sent to call his people from the worship of the idol Baʿl back to the God of their fathers — rejected by all but a few, and given by the Qur'an the rare honour of a name preserved among later generations.

al-Yasaʿ

Successor to Ilyās

Named twice in the Qur'an among the excellent and the favoured, with almost no further detail preserved — remembered by long tradition as the prophet who carried on Ilyās's mission after him.

Yūnus

Dhū al-Nūn — the Companion of the Fish

Sent to Nineveh, he left his people in anger before God released him from his mission — and was swallowed by a great fish, praying in its darkness the words Muslims still say in every hour of distress.

Zakariyyā

Guardian of Maryam; Father of Yaḥyā

An aged priest who raised Maryam in the sanctuary and, seeing God's provision reach her by unseen means, was moved to ask in his own old age and his wife's barrenness for a son — and was answered.

Yaḥyā

Given Wisdom as a Boy

Given the Scripture to hold with determination while still a child, and greeted by the Qur'an with a blessing of peace repeated word for word for only one other prophet — ʿĪsā, his kinsman and contemporary.

ʿĪsā

Ibn Maryam — the Messiah, Servant and Messenger of God

Born of Maryam without a father, speaking from the cradle in her defence, given the Injīl and working miracles by God's permission — denied divinity as firmly as he is affirmed a prophet, spared crucifixion by being raised to God, and awaited still for a return before the Last Hour.