Civilization #28: Muhammad's Revolution of God

Muhammad is portrayed as a messianic leader who unites fragmented tribes by invoking shared Abrahamic lineage and a divine plan for history.

Arabian traders, tribal warriors, and mercenaries operate at the crossroads between the Byzantine and Sassanian empires.

Exiled Christian sects, Jewish communities, and Zoroastrian minorities relocate to Arabia to escape orthodoxy and persecution in imperial centers.

Muhammad frames Arabs, Jews, and Christians as a single Abrahamic family descending from Sarah and Hagar, with Ishmael as ancestor of the Arabs.

Muhammad mediates between Medina’s tribes, including Jewish groups, and establishes a community that binds diverse factions under shared rules.

Muhammad, an Arab merchant from Mecca, receives revelations from the angel Gabriel and becomes a unifying prophet for Arabian tribes.

Muhammad is introduced through sparse records, including a Christian bishop’s testimony and later Islamic oral traditions that preserve his memory.

Early Muslim armies mobilize diverse Arabs, Jews, and Christians around a shared revolutionary project grounded in divine mandate.

Later Islamic empires, court historians, and religious authorities reshape Muhammad’s legacy once the revolutionary movement becomes a ruling state and imperial establishment.

The Taiping movement in China and the Canudos uprising in Brazil illustrate how religious visions can mobilize peasants into revolutionary armies.