Islamic History Timeline

Birth of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

Muhammad ibn Abdullah was born in Makkah into the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh, orphaned of his father, Abdullah, before birth, and of his mother, Aminah, by the age of six. Tradition places his birth on 12 Rabi’ al-Awwal (scholars differ over the exact day) in what became known as the “Year of the Elephant,” named for the Abyssinian governor Abraha’s failed march on the Kaaba with war elephants that same year — the episode referenced in Surah Al-Fil.

First Revelation, Cave of Hira

At the age of 40, while in retreat and reflection in the Cave of Hira on Jabal al-Nur near Makkah, Muhammad ﷺ received the first revelation through the angel Jibril, who commanded him to “Iqra’” (“Read!”). This moment, recorded in the opening verses of Surah Al-Alaq, marks the beginning of his prophethood and the start of the Quran’s revelation, which continued over the next 23 years.

Start of Public Preaching

After roughly three years of quiet, private invitation to close family and friends, the revelation of Surah Ash-Shu’ara commanded the Prophet ﷺ to warn his nearest kindred openly. He ascended Mount Safa and called the clans of Quraysh together, declaring himself a warner of a coming punishment — the moment public opposition to his message began, led by his own uncle Abu Lahab.

Migration to Abyssinia

As persecution of the small Muslim community in Makkah intensified, the Prophet ﷺ advised a group of followers to seek refuge across the Red Sea in the Christian Kingdom of Aksum (Abyssinia). An initial group of eleven men and four women left first (per Ibn Ishaq's earliest account; later compilers give slightly varying counts); a larger group of roughly eighty, led by Ja’far ibn Abi Talib, followed soon after. The Negus (ruler) of Aksum heard their explanation of the faith and refused Quraysh’s demand to hand them over, granting the migrants his protection.

Isra and Mi’raj — the Night Journey and Ascension

In a single night, the Prophet ﷺ was taken from the Masjid al-Haram in Makkah to the Masjid al-Aqsa in Jerusalem (the Isra), and from there ascended through the heavens (the Mi’raj), an event during which the five daily prayers were made obligatory. No authentic hadith fixes the exact date; scholars place it roughly a year to sixteen months before the Hijrah, and that approximate placement is followed here.

Hijrah — Migration to Madinah

Facing an assassination plot in Makkah, the Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr slipped out of the city and hid for three days in the Cave of Thawr while Quraysh search parties combed the hills for them, before travelling on to Yathrib (soon renamed Madinah), where the Muslims of Makkah were welcomed by the Ansar. The Hijrah transformed the Muslim community from a persecuted minority into a self-governing polity, formalised soon after in the Constitution of Madinah.

Why the Islamic calendar starts here: around 17–18 AH (638–639 CE), Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab needed a fixed reference point to date official correspondence and, on the Companions’ counsel, chose the year of the Hijrah — not the Prophet’s birth or the first revelation — as year 1, since it marked the founding of the first Muslim community with its own independent society and governance. See the Hijri calendar explainer for more on how the calendar itself works.

Battle of Badr

The first major armed confrontation between the Muslims of Madinah and the Quraysh of Makkah, fought near the wells of Badr, considerably closer to Madinah than to Makkah. A lightly equipped Muslim force — early sources vary on the exact count, most commonly citing 313 but with figures as high as 317 — met a Quraysh army of roughly 1,000 and won a decisive victory, killing several of the Quraysh’s leading figures. Seerah accounts put Muslim losses at 14 killed, against roughly 70 Quraysh dead and a further 70 taken captive (later ransomed or freed). Badr is remembered as the turning point that secured the young Madinan state’s survival.

Battle of Uhud

A year after their defeat at Badr, the Quraysh returned with about 3,000 men to avenge it. The Muslims initially held the advantage until a group of archers left their assigned post on a nearby hill to join the spoils, exposing the Muslim flank to a cavalry charge led by Khalid ibn al-Walid (then still fighting for Quraysh). The battle turned into a costly reversal; the Prophet’s uncle Hamzah ibn Abd al-Muttalib was among some seventy companions martyred. Mount Uhud and the martyrs’ graveyard there remain a site of visitation for pilgrims today — see the Umrah & Ziarah guide for more.

Battle of the Trench (Khandaq)

A confederation of roughly 10,000 fighters from Quraysh and allied tribes besieged Madinah. On the suggestion of the Persian companion Salman al-Farisi — a defensive tactic unfamiliar to Arabian warfare — the Muslims dug a trench around the city’s exposed side, neutralising the besiegers’ cavalry. After roughly three weeks, a fierce storm scattered the confederates’ camp and the siege collapsed without a pitched battle.

In the siege’s aftermath, the Banu Qurayza — a Jewish tribe bound by treaty to help defend Madinah, who had instead opened secret contact with the confederates during the siege — were besieged in turn once the confederates withdrew. They surrendered on condition of accepting the judgment of Sa’d ibn Mu’adh, an Ansari leader of their own choosing as arbitrator; he ruled that the men be executed and the women and children taken captive, a judgment the Prophet ﷺ affirmed as sound. Classical seerah works (Ibn Ishaq, al-Waqidi, al-Tabari) commonly cite figures of 600–900 men executed, though some modern historians dispute these numbers as inflated, proposing figures as low as several dozen — and no number is given in the canonical hadith collections themselves.

Treaty of Hudaybiyyah

The Prophet ﷺ led some 1,400–1,500 pilgrims toward Makkah intending only to perform Umrah. Quraysh blocked their entry, and negotiations at Hudaybiyyah produced a ten-year truce whose terms looked, to many Muslims at the time, like a one-sided concession. The Quran instead named it a clear victory: the calm that followed let Islam spread peacefully through the peninsula over the next two years far faster than warfare had.

Conquest of Makkah

After Quraysh allies broke the Hudaybiyyah truce, the Prophet ﷺ marched on Makkah with some 10,000 men. The city fell almost without bloodshed; he struck down the 360 idols set around the Kaaba, reciting “Truth has come and falsehood has vanished” (Quran 17:81), refused to enter the Kaaba until the idols and images inside were removed, and declared a general amnesty to the Quraysh who had persecuted him for over a decade — “Go, for you are free.” Mass conversions to Islam followed across Arabia. See how the Prophet ﷺ treated his former enemies for more on this episode of clemency.

Battle of Hunayn

Weeks after the conquest of Makkah, the tribes of Hawazin and Thaqif gathered a large force to strike the Muslims first, meeting them in the Hunayn valley on the road toward Ta’if. A much larger Muslim army — swelled by new Makkan converts — was caught by a surprise ambush in the valley’s narrow passes and briefly scattered; the Prophet ﷺ himself held his ground with a small group of companions until the Muslims rallied and turned the battle into a decisive victory. Reports of exact casualties are far less consistent across sources than for Badr or Uhud, so no firm figure is given here. A large amount of livestock and many captives were taken from the defeated Hawazin at nearby Awtas, most later returned once the tribe’s delegation embraced Islam.

Farewell Sermon (Hajjatul Wada’)

On his only and final Hajj, the Prophet ﷺ addressed more than 100,000 Muslims gathered at Mount Arafat. He declared the sanctity of life and property, abolished the usury and blood feuds of pre-Islamic Arabia, and affirmed the rights of women — all preserved in Jabir ibn Abdullah's long narration of the sermon. A separate, differently-chained report has him stating on this same pilgrimage that no Arab has superiority over a non-Arab, nor a red (i.e. fair-skinned) person over a black person, nor a black over a red, except by piety — a narration graded sahih in the site's hadith repository. The verse completing the religion is understood to have been revealed around this same pilgrimage. See the dedicated page: The Farewell Hajj & Sermon.

Death of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

Weeks after returning from the Farewell Pilgrimage, the Prophet ﷺ fell ill and passed away in the chamber of his wife Aisha, adjoining what is today the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, where he was buried. His death closed the era of revelation and opened the era of the Rashidun ("Rightly-Guided") Caliphate that preserved and carried his teaching forward.

Abu Bakr as-Siddiq — 1st Caliph

The Prophet’s closest companion and father-in-law was chosen as the first caliph. His defining achievement was holding the fledgling Muslim state together through the Ridda ("apostasy") Wars, when several Arabian tribes renounced allegiance to Madinah after the Prophet’s death.

Compilation of the Quran into a Single Mushaf

After the Battle of Yamama (12 AH / 633 CE) killed a number of companions who had memorised the Quran, Umar urged Abu Bakr to have the text formally collected. Zayd ibn Thabit gathered it from written fragments and the memories of huffaz into a single master copy, kept afterward by Hafsa bint Umar. Roughly two decades later, as Islam spread and recitation differences began to surface among new, non-Arab Muslims, Caliph Uthman commissioned a committee, again led by Zayd, to produce one standardised written mushaf and distribute copies to the major cities of the growing empire — the text that underlies the Quran read today.

Umar ibn al-Khattab — 2nd Caliph

Under Umar the caliphate expanded rapidly, bringing the Levant, Egypt, and the Sasanian Persian Empire under Muslim rule. His defining achievement domestically was building the administrative backbone of the early Islamic state — including the diwan (public treasury and stipend register) and, around 17 AH, the formal start of the Hijri calendar itself.

Uthman ibn Affan — 3rd Caliph

Uthman’s reign continued the caliphate’s expansion, but his defining, lasting achievement was commissioning the standardised Uthmanic mushaf described above, which fixed a single written text of the Quran for the entire Muslim world and ended growing disputes over regional recitation differences.

Ali ibn Abi Talib — 4th Caliph

The Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law became the fourth caliph during a period of internal conflict within the Muslim community, including the Battles of the Camel and Siffin. He is remembered above all for his justice, eloquence, and closeness to the Prophet, whose household he had belonged to since childhood.

The Tabi’un — Students of the Companions

The generation that learned directly from the Companions — the Tabi’un (“followers”) — carried the Quran and Sunnah into the new centres of the Muslim world. In Madinah, Makkah, Kufa, Basra, and Damascus, scholars such as Sa’id ibn al-Musayyib, al-Hasan al-Basri, and Ata’ ibn Abi Rabah taught what they had taken from the surviving Companions. Writing was part of this transmission from the beginning: some Companions kept written collections in the Prophet’s ﷺ own lifetime with his permission — Abdullah ibn Amr said, “I used to write everything I heard from the Messenger of Allah” — alongside the far larger, parallel effort of precise memorisation.

Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz Orders the Systematic Recording of Hadith

Fearing that knowledge would be lost as the scholars of the first generations passed away, the Umayyad caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz — often counted a fifth rightly-guided caliph for his justice — wrote to Abu Bakr ibn Hazm, his judge in Madinah: “Look to what there is of the hadith of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and write it down, for I fear the effacement of knowledge and the passing away of the scholars.” The work fell above all to Muhammad ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 124 AH), whom early scholars remember as the first to compile hadith systematically at the caliph’s command — the point where private notebooks and memorised corpora became an organised, state-supported effort of collection.

The Four Imams of Fiqh

Across this period lived the four jurists whose schools (madhhabs) still organise Sunni fiqh: Abu Hanifa of Kufa (d. 150 AH / 767 CE); Malik ibn Anas of Madinah (d. 179 AH / 795 CE), whose Muwatta is among the earliest surviving books of hadith and law; al-Shafi’i (d. 204 AH / 820 CE), whose Risala founded the systematic study of legal theory (usul al-fiqh); and Ahmad ibn Hanbal of Baghdad (d. 241 AH / 855 CE), compiler of the vast Musnad, remembered for holding firm under persecution in the mihna (inquisition). All four built on the same foundation — the Quran and the authentic Sunnah — and their differences in method produced the recognised, legitimate diversity of the madhhabs, not rival religions: each imam held the others in respect, and each subordinated his own opinion to an authentic hadith.

Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim

The recording begun under Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz matured into a full science of hadith criticism: every report traced through a named chain (isnad) of narrators, each narrator’s honesty and precision examined in dedicated biographical works. Its most celebrated fruits are the collections of Muhammad ibn Isma’il al-Bukhari (d. 256 AH / 870 CE) — reported to have sifted his Sahih from hundreds of thousands of narrations, counting chains — and his student Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (d. 261 AH / 875 CE), each admitting only hadith that met the strictest conditions of authenticity. Sunni scholars came to regard the two Sahihs as the most authentic books after the Quran; together with the four Sunan works (Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasa’i, Ibn Majah) they form the six canonical collections — you can read them, with authenticity gradings, in the deen2u Hadith library.