Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Abdul-Muttalib ﷺ(12 Rabi' al-Awwal 53 BH - 12 Rabi' al-Awwal 11 AH) (22 April 571 - 8 June 632); he is the messenger of Allah to humans and jinn in Islam; he was sent to restore the world to the monotheism and worship of Allah as all the prophets and messengers did, and he is the seal of them, and he was sent to all people. Muslims believe that he is the noblest of creatures and the master of humans, and they believe in his infallibility. When his name is mentioned, Muslims add the phrase "peace be upon him" with the addition of "and his family" and "and his companions" sometimes, because of what came in the Quran and the prophetic Sunnah that urges them to pray for him.
إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ وَمَلَٰٓئِكَتَهُۥ يُصَلُّونَ عَلَى ٱلنَّبِىِّ ۚ يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ صَلُّوا۟ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلِّمُوا۟ تَسْلِيمًا
Indeed, Allah confers blessing upon the Prophet, and His angels [ask Him to do so]. O you who have believed, ask [Allah to confer] blessing upon him and ask [Allah to grant him] peace. Al Ahzab (The allies) - الأحزاب
The Prophet Muhammadﷺ left a great impact on the hearts of Muslims, and they showed their love and reverence for him by following his command and his way of life and worshiping Allah, and by preserving his sayings and deeds and attributes and collecting them in books known as books of biography and prophetic hadith, and celebrating his birth in Rabi' al-Awwal every year. Muhammadﷺ united the Arabian Peninsula in a single Islamic system of governance, where the Quran and its teachings and practices formed the basis of the state's rule. The Jewish writer Michael Hart considered him the greatest person in terms of influence in the entire history of humanity, considering him "the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels".
He was born in Mecca in Rabi' al-Awwal in the Year of the Elephant, 53 years before the Hijra (his migration from Mecca to Medina), which corresponds to 570 or 571 CE and 52 BH. He was orphaned of his father, and lost his mother at an early age and was raised by his grandfather Abdul-Muttalib, then by his uncle Abu Talib where he grew up, and he worked as a shepherd and then as a merchant. He married Khadija bint Khuwaylid at the age of twenty-five and had all his children from her except Ibrahim. Before Islam, he rejected the worship of idols and the pagan practices that were widespread in Mecca, and he used to isolate himself and worship in the cave of Hira for several nights. When Muhammad ﷺ was forty years old, around 610 CE, he was visited by Gabriel in the cave, and received the first revelation from Allah. He was commanded to preach secretly for three years, then he spent another ten years in Mecca openly calling its people, and anyone who came to it from the merchants and pilgrims and others, proclaiming that "Allah is one", and that "complete submission" (Islam) to Allah is the right way, and that he was a prophet and a messenger of Allah like the other prophets in Islam. He migrated to Medina, which was called Yathrib at that time, in 622 CE when he was fifty-three years old after the leaders of Quraysh plotted to kill him for opposing their call and sought to kill him. He lived there for another ten years calling to Islam, and established the nucleus of Islamic civilization, which later expanded and included Mecca and all the cities and tribes of Arabia. He united the Arabs for the first time on a monotheistic religion and a unified state, and called for rejecting racism and tribalism.
The personality of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ had a great impact on history, and therefore his life and works and ideas have been widely discussed by his supporters and opponents over the centuries. Muslims also cared about the biography of the Prophet Muhammad as the practical approach of Islam, and Islamic scholars wrote many comprehensive books about his biography, and recorded everything related to it.
The Quran is a primary source for knowing the biography of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, as it is the oldest and most reliable source of the prophetic biography, because it dates back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad himself. Although the Quran did not cover the entire biography of the Prophet Muhammad in detail, it mentioned many references to his biography either explicitly, or implicitly, or by implication. It mentioned some of his attributes, evidences of his prophethood, his morals and characteristics, and his psychological state. It also mentioned something about his battles. There are about 280 verses in the Quran about the battles (which equal 4.65% of the Quran) some of them are by indication, and some are by declaration, such as the battles of Badr, Uhud, the Trench, Hudaybiyyah, Khaybar, and the Conquest of Mecca. For example, Surah al-Ahzab included details from Muhammad's biography with his wives and companions as well as many details about the Battle of the Trench.
The prophetic biography occupied a large space in the books of hadith, and everyone who wrote in hadith devoted sections and chapters and books specifically to what relates to the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, his call, his battles, and even his companions. But those sections were not arranged chronologically. The purpose of the authors of these books was to collect the sayings and deeds and reports and rulings of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and the scenes of the biography came in their margins to infer from them the legal ruling. Therefore, they came without detail but were limited to some of those reports according to the methodology of the people of hadith in narration.
Muslim scholars agreed that the most famous and oldest books of hadith that were rich with reports of the prophetic biography is Muwatta Malik, where he mentioned a number of hadiths related to the biography of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and his descriptions and mentioned what relates to jihad. Al-Bukhari also did so in his Sahih, where he mentioned aspects of the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ before and after the mission, and devoted a book to the battles and another to jihad. He also mentioned many of his characteristics and evidences of his miracles, which equals a tenth of his Sahih. Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj did likewise in his Sahih, where it included a large part of his biography and virtues and jihad. Everyone who came after them followed the same approach with differences in classification and arrangement, such as the authors of Sunan Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, Muhammad ibn Majah, al-Darimi, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal.
The books of Shama'il are among the primary sources for knowing the biography of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. They are the books that aimed to mention Muhammad's ﷺ morals, habits, virtues, and behavior in the night and day. They also dealt with his manners and physical and moral qualities. The topic of Muhammad's Shama'il was of interest to Muslim scholars since ancient times, and it was one of the purposes of the books of hadith. Then the hadith scholars singled it out in independent books.
There are also other types of sources, such as books of Quranic interpretation and reasons of revelation. Muslim scholars rely mainly on the interpretations of the first Islamic centuries to explain the Quran, including the verses that deal with Muhammad's ﷺ life. Some examples are the interpretation of Ibn Kathir, al-Tabari, and al-Qurtubi. In addition to the books of history that cover history in general and touch on the prophetic biography such as al-Tabari's history and Ibn Khaldun's history and others. There are also non-Arabic sources, such as Greek ones, and one of the earliest is the writer Theophanes in the ninth century AD. There are also Syriac ones, and one of the earliest is the writer John bar Penkaye in the seventh century, along with five other writers who did not exceed thirty years from mentioning the Prophet to his death.