section_path: Birth and early life
section_name: Birth and early life
paragraph_text: Birth and early life
  
  Ali was born in Mecca to Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib and his wife Fatima bint Asad around 600 CE. His date of birth is possibly 13 Rajab, which is the occasion celebrated annually by Shia Muslims. Ali may have been the only person born inside the Ka'ba, the holiest site of Islam, which is located in Mecca. However, this is disputed by Sunni sources, which state Hakim ibn Hizam was also born in the Ka'ba. Furthermore, Sunni scholar Al-Nawawi regards the birth of Ali in the Ka'ba as weak. Ali's father was a leading member of the Banu Hashim, a clan within the Meccan tribe of Quraysh. Abu Talib also raised his nephew Muhammad after his parents died. Later when Abu Talib fell into poverty, Ali was taken in at the age of about five and raised by Muhammad and his wife Khadija.
  
  Aged about eleven, Ali was among the first to accept Muhammad's teachings and profess Islam. Ali did so either after Khadija or after Khadija and Muhammad's successor, Abu Bakr. While the precise order here is debated among Shia and Sunni scholars, the earliest sources place Ali before Abu Bakr. Muhammad's call to Islam in Mecca lasted from 610 to 622, during which Ali assiduously supported the small Muslim community, especially the poor. Some three years after his first revelation, Muhammad gathered his relatives for a feast, invited them to Islam, and asked for their assistance. Aged about fourteen, Ali was the only relative there who offered his support, after which Muhammad told his guests that Ali was his brother and his successor, according to the Sunni historian al-Tabari (d. 923). The Shia interpretation of this episode is that Muhammad had already designated Ali as his successor.