According to Muslim tradition, Islam was born in c. 610 CE when Muhammad–an illiterate, forty-year-old Arab native of Mecca (in modern Saudi Arabia)–began to experience a series of ‘revelations’ from Allah (God), relayed by the Archangel Gabriel. These ‘revelations’, regarded as the sacred and immutable words of God, were later set down in written form to become the Koran.
