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Episode 115, The Life of Muhammad, Part 2, Community.

This program is about the life of the Prophet Muhammad from the Muslim The Life of Muhammad, Part 2, Community.

This program is about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, from the Muslim immigration, or Hizra,

to the city of Medina in 622, up to the year 627.

During these five years, in the towns of Yethrip or Medina, and Mecca to it south,

Muhammad's band of followers grew in population and determination,

and nothing less than the future of much of the earth was at stake.

Though we'll only cover five years of Muhammad's life in this show,

we'll also get acquainted with the first four caliphs, Abu Bakr, Omar, Uthman, and Ali,

all of whom had close relationships with the Prophet, and each of which had a major impact on the future of Islam in the world. We'll get to know the Prophet's household, and some of the wives he married

after his first wife, Hadija, died, and we'll learn about the social order

of Medina as it came to be under the governance of the Prophet, a subject that's been of

intense interest to Islamic theology, scholars of Islamic law, and Muslims more generally ever since.

Where we are now in the year 622, the prophet Muhammad is about 52 years old, having already lived an eventful cosmopolitan life.

Last time we learned that Muhammad's Qurayish tribe had established itself as the sovereign ruling group over the pilgrimage city of Mecca,

very roughly around the year 500,

several generations before Muhammad lived. The prophet's father died before he was born,

and he spent his early years as the foster child of a Bedouin wet nurse named Halima.

Later, Muhammad's mother, Amina, confident that little Muhammad had been made strong by living

out in the clear desert air for his earliest years, took him under her care when he was

...