From traditional accounts, we hear that Muhammad (P.B.U.H) (c. 570-632 C.E.) was born under the shadow of an uncertain future in the city of Mecca in today’s Saudi Arabia. His father died before he was born; his mother, when he was only six; and his first guardian, his grandfather, shortly thereafter. As detailed in our earliest major source, the biography The Life of Muhammad (P.B.U.H) by Ibn Ishaq (d. 767 C.E.), the young orphan was finally taken in by a kindly paternal uncle, Abu Talib. He grew into an adult who, explains the biography, had a reputation for honesty and fairness. His early life was uneventful. A young Muhammad (P.B.U.H) began to work as a merchant in northward-bound trading caravans headed for ports of the eastern Mediterranean coast in his teens and twenties...