The Prophet Muhammad: Muhammad’s Emigration to Yathrib (Medina)

Like Mecca, Yathrib was experiencing demographic problems: several tribal groups coexisted,
descendants of its Arab Jewish founders as well as a number
of pagan Arab immigrants divided into two tribes, the
Aws and the Khazraj. Unable
to resolve their conflicts, the Yathribis invited Muhammad to perform the
well-established role of neutral outside arbiter (hakam). In September 622, having
discreetly sent his followers ahead, he and one companion, Abu
Bakr, completed the community’s second and final emigration, barely avoiding
Quraysh attempts to prevent his departure by force. By the time of the
emigration, a new label had
begun to appear in Muhammad’s recitations to describe his
followers: in addition to being described in terms of their
faithfulness (iman) to God and his messenger,
they were also described in terms of their undivided
attention—that is, as muslims, individuals who assumed the
right relationship to God by surrendering (islam) to his will. Although the
designation muslim, derived from islam, eventually
became a proper name for a specific historical community, at this point
it appears to have expressed commonality with other monotheists. Like the others, muslims faced
Jerusalem to pray; Muhammad was believed to have been transported
from Jerusalem to the heavens to talk with God; and Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, and
Jesus, as well as Muhammad, all were considered to be prophets (nabis) and
messengers of the same God. In Yathrib, however, conflicts between other
monotheists and the muslims sharpened
their distinctiveness.

The Forging of Muhammad’s Community

As an autonomous
community, muslims
might have become a tribal unit like those with whom they
had affiliated, especially because
the terms of their immigration gave them no
special status. Yet under Muhammad’s leadership they developed
a social organization that could absorb or challenge everyone
around them. They became Muhammad’s ummah
(“community”)
because they had recognized and supported
God’s emissary (rasul Allah). The ummah’s members differed from one another not by wealth or genealogical
superiority but by the degree of their faith and piety, and
membership in the community was itself an expression of faith. Anyone could join,
regardless of origin, by following Muhammad’s lead, and the nature of
members’ support could
vary. In the concept of ummah , Muhammad supplied the missing ingredient in
the Meccan system: a powerful abstract principle for defi ning, justifying,
and stimulating
membership in a single community.

Muhammad made the concept of ummah work by expanding his
role as arbiter so as to become the sole spokesman for all residents of
Yathrib, hereafter called Medina. Even though the agreement
under which Muhammad had
emigrated did not obligate non-Muslims to follow him except in his
arbitration, they necessarily became involved in the fortunes of
his community. By protecting him
from his Meccan enemies, the residents of Medina identified with his fate.
Those who supported him as Muslims received special designations: the Medinans were called ansar (“helpers”), and
his fellow emigrants were distinguished as muhajirun (“emigrants”).
He was often able to use
revelation to arbitrate.

Because the terms of his emigration did
not provide adequate
financial support, he began to provide for his community
through caravan raiding, a tactic familiar to tribal Arabs. By
thus inviting hostility, he required all the Medinans to take sides. Initial
failure was followed by success, first at Nakhlah, where the Muslims defied Meccan custom by
violating one of the truce months so essential to Meccan prosperity and
prestige. Their most memorable victory occurred in 624 at Badr, against a large Meccan
force; they continued to succeed, with only one serious
setback, at Uhud in 625. From that time on, “conversion” to
Islam involved joining an established polity, the successes of which were
tied to its proper spiritual orientation, regardless of whether
the convert shared that orientation completely. During the early years in
Medina a major motif of
Islamic history emerged: the connection between material success and divine
favour, which had also been
prominent in the history of the Israelites.

The Ummah’s Allies and Enemies

During these years,
Muhammad used his outstanding knowledge
of tribal relations to act as a great tribal leader, or
sheikh, further expanding his authority beyond the role that
the Medinans had given him. He developed a network of alliances
between his ummah and neighbouring
tribes, and so competed
with the Meccans at their own game. He managed and distributed the booty
from raiding, keeping one-fifth for the ummah’s overall needs and distributing the rest among
its members. In return, members gave a portion of their wealth as zakat, a tax paid to
help the needy and to
demonstrate their awareness of their dependence on God for all
of their material benefits. Like other sheikhs, Muhammad
contracted numerous, often strategically motivated, marriage alliances. He was
also more able to harass and
discipline Medinans, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, who did
not support his activities fully. He agitated in particular
against the Jews, one of whose clans, the Banu Qaynuqa‘, he
expelled.

Increasingly estranged from
nonresponsive Jews and Christians, he reoriented his followers’ direction of
prayer from Jerusalem
to Mecca. He formally instituted the hajj to Mecca and fasting during the month
of Ramadan as distinctive
cultic acts, in recognition of the fact that islam, a generic act of
surrender to God, had become Islam, a proper-name identity distinguished
not only from paganism but from other forms of monotheism as well. As more and more of
Medina was absorbed into the Muslim community and as the Meccans
weakened, Muhammad’s authority expanded. He continued to lead a
three-pronged campaign—against
nonsupporters in Medina, against the Quraysh in Mecca, and against
surrounding tribes—and he even ordered raids into southern Syria. Eventually Muhammad became
powerful enough to punish nonsupporters severely, especially those who leaned
toward Mecca. For
example, he had the men of the Qurayzah clan of Jews in
Medina executed after they failed to help him against the
Meccan forces at the Battle of the Ditch in 627. But he also
used force and diplomacy to bring in other Jewish and
Christian groups. Because they were seen, unlike pagans, to have formed ummahs of their own
around a revelation
from God, Jews and Christians were entitled to pay for
protection (dhimmah). Muhammad thus
set a precedent for
another major characteristic of Islamicate civilization,
that of qualified religious pluralism under Muslim
authority.

Muhammad’s Later Recitations

During these years of
warfare and consolidation, Muhammad
continued to transmit revealed recitations, though
their nature began to change. Some commented on Muhammad’s
situation, consoled and encouraged his community, explained the continuing
resistance of the Meccans, and
urged appropriate responses. Some told stories about figures familiar to
Jews and Christians but cast in an Islamic framework. Though still delivered
in the form of
God’s direct speech, the messages became longer and less ecstatic, less urgent
in their warnings if more earnest in their guidance. Eventually they
focused on interpersonal
regulations in areas of particular importance for a new
community, such as sexuality, marriage, divorce, and inheritance. By this
time certain Muslims had begun to write down what Muhammad
uttered or to recite passages for worship (salat) and private devotion. The recited word, so
important among the Arab tribes, had found a greatly enlarged
significance. A competitor for Muhammad’s status as God’s messenger
even declared himself among a
nonmember tribe; he was Musaylimah of Yamamah, who claimed to convey
revelations from God. He managed
to attract numerous Bedouin Arabs but failed to speak as successfully
as Muhammad to the various available constituencies.

Activism in the name of God, both
nonmilitary as well as military, would become a permanent strand in Muslim piety. Given the
environment in which Muhammad operated, his ummah was unlikely to
survive without it; to compete as leader of a community, he needed to exhibit military
prowess. (Like most successful leaders, however, Muhammad was a
moderate and a compromiser; some of his followers were more militant and
aggressive than he, and some were less so.) In addition, circumstantial
necessity had ideological
ramifications. Because Muhammad as messenger was also, by divine
providence, leader of an established community, he could
easily define the whole realm of social action as an expression of faith.
Thus, Muslims were
able to identify messengership with worldly leadership to an
extent almost unparalleled in the history of religion. There had been activist
prophets before Muhammad and
there were activist prophets after him, but in no other religious tradition
does the image of the activist prophet, and by extension the activist
follower, have such a
comprehensive and coherent justification in the formative
period.

Islamic history / edited by Laura S.
Etheredge. Britannica Educational Publishing

(a
trademark of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.): New York.