The determination and evaluation of the Prophet Muhammad's worship life

Throughout history, the holy message has been presented to all humanity by various prophets of God. The divine message was purified by another prophetic mission since the belief in one God or tawhīd ceased to prevail in due time. This fact remains an explanation for the similarity of religious rituals performed by adherents of religious traditions. The present study contends this similarity by examining the rituals of worship in divine religions prior to the revelation given to God's Messenger (rasūl Allāh). The divine purpose is to rectify the disrupted doctrine of God's oneness as suggested by the revelation (wahi) by making it foundational to all aspects of human life. This is the ultimate purpose that the eventual prophet, Muhammad, took upon himself to convey to all people. While the revelation is in a general sense involved in the human life as a whole, in a more specific sense, it requires to learn the basis of life and worship of the prophet, rasūl Allāh, in order to fully grasp holy teachings regarding the ritual life. Indeed, the life of the prophet Muhammad is the prime example of how to attain the revelation in our life. All this considered, this study tends to examine the prophet's ritual life in the prewahi period and how it develops with Islam. Furthermore, in order to comprehend Islamic principles, it is very much significant to get familiar with the society in which the revelation was received and the prophet grown up. Therefore, the features of the prophet's ritual life prior to his prophetic mission is discovered by taking into account the rituals of worship existed in the period, a period that is called Jahiliyya in Islamic scholarship. To what extent religious rituals alter with the arrival of the Islamic revelation is analysed and explicated. To understand the eligibility and range of the prophet's religious rituals shall resolve a number of issues for the believers of Islam. The period substantial to prophet's death was preoccupied with the conflicting accounts with respect to the ritual life, resulting in confusion in believers' mind. It is for this reason that to acquire data from the early period chronicles regarding the prophet's ritual life gains an undisputable value. As a consequence, in this work, we aim to clarify the religious rituals of the prophet as much as the early period's sources allow us to do so. Keywords: Muhammad, The Prophet, Sire, Islamic History, Worship, Prayer (Salāt), Fasting, Charity (Zakāt), Hajj, Sacrifice