It’s important to understand how society was organized in Muhammad’s Medina, because it set the pattern for Muslims as what a perfect society would look like. One of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence (Maliki) takes customs and memoirs from Medinans to be a valid source of law, since that time and place represented the ideal. Everyone assumes that with Muhammad right there, guiding the community through continuing revelations, society was set up in a perfectly just way.
Muhammad quickly ordered mosques to be built in Medina and other parts of the oasis. The absolute centrality of religion in Medina’s government was shown in a concrete way: the city’s new mosque was made from the courtyard of Muhammad’s new house. The mosque was mostly open, as the masjid had been around the Ka’aba, but the palm trees growing in the space were cut down. Their trunks were used as pillars for a palm-leaf roof to create a covered area. The house had a common area with separate rooms for Saudah and A’isha to live in. With this provision made, A’isha arrived in Medina and very soon went to her long-betrothed husband’s household. (See next article about A’isha.) Muhammad’s family members, such as Ali and Zayd, and his closest companions, also built houses that opened into this mosque. It was not possible to bring a case for judgment without coming to the mosque.
In Medina, too, they first began the public call to prayer: a man was appointed to stand at the top of the tallest house and call out at dawn, then four times more during the day. Not every person in the city was yet following Islam, but the agreement had been that the city would be organized on Muhammad’s principles, so mosques and prayer were part of civic life. Giving for the poor was mandated. That probably meant it was mandated for believers and resident non-believers alike, though administered through the mosque.
In the first year at Medina, the mosque was oriented toward Jerusalem. The qibla, the direction of prayer, was mandated to be the same as the Jews used. The idea of unity with the Jews went further, too, as Muhammad formed a treaty of cooperation with the Jewish clans in Medina.
The treaty stated that Jews and Muslims were to consider that they had the same religion, both honoring the God of Abraham. Each could continue its own customs for worship, without pressure from the other. The fact that both groups faced toward Jerusalem helped to reinforce the sameness. A few of the Jewish leaders crossed over to Islam, and Muhammad hoped that there would be more.
The treaty outlined a plan of mutual cooperation: consulting on decisions, settling offenses, and defending each other. God and the Prophet would settle disagreements, and the Jews would comply with the new mandatory boycott of the Quraysh tribe in Mecca. Further, they would help pay the costs of war as long as they were on the same side as the Muslims. The phrasing of this stipulation makes me wonder if the costs were to be heavier on the Jews, as established businessmen, than on the Muslims, who were refugees, because it’s not phrased in terms of equality.
With this treaty, the entire civil-war-torn oasis was at peace, with Muhammad responsible to keep it that way as a secular ruler or judge would (but always in the name of Allah). Medina had already been a city-state in that it was independent of the empires, but now it had a ruler who would view relationships with other cities as foreign policy decisions.
Mecca itself was now a foreign city. It was not typical for Arabs to move away from their birthplace; they felt it as a hardship. Muhammad had been devoted to the Ka’aba, which he taught them had been built by Abraham to Allah, not for idols. At the end of a year in Medina, he received a revelation that from now on, their qibla (direction to face during prayer) would now be toward Mecca, not Jerusalem. Only a few simple mosques had been built by then; they were altered to show the new direction, and all others followed suit. This was a step away from unity with the Jews, though not a step in itself that would have caused a rift.
As Islam went from the status of persecuted minority in Mecca to rulers of a city-state in Medina, being a believer suddenly became an appealing choice. In Mecca, believers had often been the poor and lowly, who wanted a change from the old system. Wealthy men who became Muslims were very devout and sure in their own minds, and the decision cost them a lot, as in Abu Bakr’s case. But now, in Medina, it was an advantage to confess the Shahada and begin praying publicly. When religion and state are fused this way, people begin pretending religion for the sake of power. The religion has sovereign power, but it begins to lose purity. The same thing had happened when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion, ruled from Constantinople. Where before all believers had been tested with hardship, now belief opened doors to privilege. From this time on, Muslims could never be sure how genuine a conversion was.