The prophetic line

~1800 BCE

Abraham

Ibrahim rejects idolatry for the one God and, with his son Ishmael, raises the foundations of the Kaaba in the valley of Makkah. Islam sees itself as the continuation of his faith.

~1300 BCE

Moses and the Torah

Musa leads Israel out of Egypt and receives the Torah: for Islam, genuine revelation from the same God, and he is the most-mentioned prophet in the Quran.

~30 CE

Jesus

Isa, the Messiah, preaches in Palestine, works miracles by God's permission, and is raised by God. Muslims await his return.

The final revelation

570

Birth of Muhammad ﷺ

Born in Makkah, orphaned young, and known by his people as "al-Amin", the trustworthy, decades before any claim to prophethood.

610

The first revelation

In the cave of Hira, the angel Jibreel brings the first words of the Quran: "Read, in the name of your Lord who created." Thirteen years of persecuted preaching in Makkah follow.

622

The Hijra

The migration to Madinah, where the first Muslim community forms around a written charter with the city's tribes, including its Jews. Year one of the Islamic calendar.

630

The return to Makkah

Makkah is taken almost without bloodshed, and the Prophet ﷺ declares a general amnesty for the city that persecuted him. The idols around the Kaaba are removed; the house returns to the One God of Abraham.

632

The farewell

The Prophet ﷺ delivers the farewell sermon ("no Arab is superior to a non-Arab... except by piety") to over 100,000 pilgrims, and dies in Madinah with the religion complete: "This day I have perfected for you your religion." (5:3)

The spreading light

632-661

The rightly-guided caliphs

Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali lead the young community. Under Uthman the Quran's standardised copies are distributed; the text Muslims read today.

638

Jerusalem

Umar enters Jerusalem on foot, guarantees the Christians their churches in writing, and clears the neglected Temple Mount. Jews, banned by Byzantium, are permitted to return to the city.

711-1492

Al-Andalus

Muslim Spain becomes medieval Europe's centre of learning, where Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars translate and build on Greek thought. Cordoba's library dwarfs any in Christendom.

The golden age

~830

The House of Wisdom

Baghdad's great academy translates the world's knowledge into Arabic. Al-Khwarizmi writes the book that names algebra; "algorithm" is his own name Latinised.

~1000

The scientists

Ibn al-Haytham founds modern optics and the experimental method; Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine teaches European doctors for 600 years; al-Biruni measures the Earth's radius within about 1%. The Quran's command to observe creation is taken literally.

859

The first university

Fatima al-Fihri, a Muslim woman, founds al-Qarawiyyin in Fez: recognised as the oldest continuously operating degree-granting institution on earth.

Into the modern world

1258

The Mongol sack of Baghdad

The House of Wisdom is destroyed, the Tigris said to run black with ink. A civilisational wound, though learning continues in Cairo, Andalusia, and beyond. Within a generation, the Mongols' descendants embrace Islam.

1300s-1600s

The gunpowder empires

Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals rule from the Balkans to Bengal. Sinan raises the great mosques of Istanbul; the Taj Mahal rises in India. Meanwhile Islam spreads through West Africa and Southeast Asia by trade and teachers, not conquest.

Today

1.9 billion

Roughly one in four humans is Muslim, across every continent and ethnicity; the largest populations are in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, not the Middle East. And every single day, thousands more say the Shahada for the first time, exactly as it was said in Makkah in 610.