Compared with the founders of other religions, such as Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses and Jesus Christ, Muhammad's life is relatively well documented, although the oldest existing historical elements have been in large part mingled with mythology, a dominant influence on traditional Arab and Islamic thought. Representations of the Prophet's personality and life draw on pre-Islamic examples of hagiography as well as examples from other civilisations, and introduce numerous mythical elements far removed from historical reality. The only corrective to this tendency is what the Qur'an says of the Prophet. The Qur'an is constantly present in the lives of Muslims, and presents a rich human portrait, far removed from the idealised portrait to which Muslim sensibility inclined in subsequent eras, seeking a kind of union with the spiritual ideal which took on human form in the person of the Prophet.

However, historical details about Muhammad's childhood and youth are scarce and fragmentary, once one has stripped away the mythical elements added by subsequent generations. What is known about him can be summed up as follows: he belonged to Beni Hashim, one of the factions of the Quraysh, who played a significant symbolic role since some of their leaders from Qusayy onwards (in the sixth century ce) played an important role in the promotion of the pilgrimage to the Kaaba, escorting and accommodating pilgrims to the sanctuary. They did not have the same disposable material wealth as Beni Umayya, who had become wealthy through trade and thus played an influential role in Mecca and its environs.