New to the Qur'an? Start with The Qur'an: What It Is, How It Came Down, and How It Was Kept, then read Muhammad ﷺ: A Life. All articles: Deen: Start Here.
Deen · Interactive · السيرة
The life of the Prophet ﷺ from the Year of the Elephant to his death in Madinah, then the caliphs, the great dynasties and the scholars whose books are still read. Tap any event for the detail, the Qur'an it relates to in Arabic and English, the hadith, and where the account comes from.
His 63 years to scale: forty before revelation, thirteen in Makkah, ten in Madinah (Bukhārī 3902). Tap a mark; on a phone, swipe the strip sideways.
Where these accounts come from
Sunna Where a hadith in al-Bukhārī or Muslim records an event, it is linked. These are the firmest accounts.
Sīrah works Most narrative detail comes from the early biographies, which collected reports of varying strength: Ibn Isḥāq (d. 150 AH) in the edition of Ibn Hishām (d. 218 AH), al-Wāqidī (d. 207 AH) on the campaigns, Ibn Saʿd (d. 230 AH), and al-Ṭabarī's History (d. 310 AH). A widely used modern synthesis is al-Mubārakpūrī's al-Raḥīq al-Makhtūm (The Sealed Nectar), which won the Muslim World League's sīrah prize in 1979.
Dates before the Hijrah are approximate, because the Arabs did not yet number years, and the sīrah writers sometimes differ by a year or two. The Hijri calendar was adopted under ʿUmar, counting from the Hijrah. For a full biography, see Muhammad ﷺ: A Life; for the people around him, The People Around Muhammad ﷺ.
Sources
Qur'an: Arabic and Dr Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, from quran.com. Hadith: sunnah.com, checked 11 Nov 2026.