Miracles of Muhammad are miraculous claims attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

History

Several Quranic verses highlight instances where Muhammad's contemporaries challenged him to validate his prophetic claims by demanding that he demonstrate phenomena that defied the ordinary course of nature, such as causing a fountain to gush from the ground, creating a lush garden with flowing rivers, manifesting a golden house, or delivering a readable book from heaven. However, Muhammad refused to fulfill any of those challenges, reasoning that prophets could not produce a sign without God's authorization. He argued that the regularities of nature already served as sufficient proof of God's majesty and contended that miracles were pointless because they had not prevented past civilizations from rejecting their own prophets. He maintained that he served solely as a warner and underscored that the Qur'an alone was adequate for his opponents. Nevertheless, after Muhammad's death, several devout Muslims who were dissatisfied with their prophet's lack of miracles—partly due to their arguments with Christians—decided to attribute a range of superhuman qualities to him in post-Qur'anic texts such as the Hadith and the Sira. For some parts, they also relied on ambiguous Qur'anic verses that they then developed into elaborate narratives. Notably, the Quranic verses 53:1-2, which originally forecast a forthcoming event linked to the Day of Judgment based on a sighting of a lunar eclipse, were ultimately transformed by them into a historical miracle, the splitting of the moon.

List of miracles

Contrary to those of biblical prophets, claims of miracles attributed to Muhammad are not consistently incorporated into a cohesive life narrative. Some collections simply list these miracles, primarily aiming to showcase that Muhammad performed miracles similar to earlier prophets, particularly Jesus, rather than delving into doctrinal aspects or interpreting specific life events. One example is a book by the 12th-century Islamic scholar al-Ghazali titled Ihya' 'ulum ad-din (The Revival of the Science of Religion) which provides the following list of Muhammad's miracles:

Interpretations

Sunni views

According to the consensus of Sunni scholars, rejecting a single letter of the Qur'an or a hadith which is causes one to become a non-Muslim. Belief in the miracles of Muhammad in the Qur'an and in hadith which are transmitted by are obligatory.

Views on Muslim views

American scholar of Islam Marcia Hermansen states that "Miracles in the Islamic tradition play less of an evidentiary role than in some other religions since the prophet Muhammad's humanity is stressed."

Quran Primary Sources

Hadith Primary Sources

Other Citations