The play is a study of religious fanaticism and self-serving manipulation based on an episode in the traditional biography of Muhammad, in which he orders the murder of his critics.

[2] The story of Mahomet unfolds during Muhammad's post-exile siege of Mecca in 629 AD, when the opposing forces are under a short-term truce called to discuss the terms and course of the war.

In the first act the audience is introduced to a fictional leader of the Meccans, Zopir, an ardent and defiant advocate of free will and liberty who rejects Mahomet.

Pierre Milza posits that it may have been "the intolerance of the Catholic Church and its crimes done on behalf of the Christ" that were targeted by the philosopher.

[6] Voltaire's own statement about it in a letter in 1742 was quite vague: "I tried to show in it into what horrible excesses fanaticism, led by an impostor, can plunge weak minds.

"[7] It is only in another letter dated from the same year that he explains that this plot is an implicit reference to Jacques Clément, the monk who assassinated Henri III in 1589.

[8] Voltaire sent a copy of the play to Pope Benedict XIV, with a couplet in Latin and a request for two holy medals.