ABSTRACT
About Muhammad's early life little is accurately known. This lack of information is not uncommon in the recorded history of many of the world's great, and it is not until Muhammad began to proclaim the message of Islam that the attested facts of his life become numerous. The year of his birth is said to be A.d. 570, but that date is anything but definite. His father Abdullah died before Muhammad was born, and his mother died a few years after his birth. As an orphan without siblings, he was raised by his grandfather and then by an uncle, spending long hours alone in Mecca or in the surrounding countryside tending the herds. One can easily imagine the loneliness experienced by the sensitive youth, and the effect that this must have had on his mental make-up. His later revelations were not given to him as though in a vacuum, but within an atmosphere of inevitable introspection and spiritual questioning—the concomitant of a boy's existence without parents, brothers or sisters.
