Medina under Muhammad had become a nascent Islamic city-state, with growing outside territories and alliances around coastal and central Arabia. But Muhammad felt that he had been given a vision of an even larger Islamic state that included Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Persia. Now, with formal peace with Mecca, he had time to think about his next steps.
He ended up writing several letters to nearby rulers. The letters were written by Muslim scribes within his community on parchment in Arabic, with an assumption that someone could translate them on the other end. And, we might note, the assumption that the ruler at the other end would take it seriously. Muhammad could assume that he’d be taken seriously because he knew how many caravans his Muslim raiders had disrupted, and that’s news that gets back to places like Persia and Egypt. All of the current rulers kept an eye out for new rising powers. Receiving a letter from one of them? Definitely a thing to notice.
His first letter was written as one ruler to another in a friendly way. There were still a few Muslims in Abyssinia, and it was time for them to come home. His letter to the king, the Negus, asked him to officiate a proxy marriage between Muhammad and a Muslim widow known as Umm Habibah. Umm Habibah’s father was one of their greatest enemies in Mecca, but she had been an early convert. The Negus did as Muhammad asked, so that when Umm Habibah traveled back with the others, she was legally the Prophet’s wife. (I wonder if this changed her travel conditions, since men related to Muhammad were now related to her and could escort her more easily.)
The other letters were formal challenges to rulers with whom Muhammad had no previous dealing. He sent them to:
- Emperor Heraclius in Constantinople
- Emperor Khosroes II in Ctesiphon (Persia)
- the Roman-appointed governor of Egypt, Mukawkis
- the Arabic king/governor of Syria, Harith Ghassani (of the Ghassani tribe that had moved north after the Ma’rib Dam failed)
- the kings/governors of Oman and Bahrain, both under the dominion of Persia
The letters declared their duty to submit to Allah by entering Islam. If they would do so, he would reward them by appointing each of them to keep ruling in that place. If they refused, Islam would conquer their lands at some point.
Egypt’s ruler sent back an evasive reply, but he included a gift as from one ruler to another. It included a slave girl, and I’ll touch back on her later. Emperor Heraclius, according to Muslim sources, was so impressed with Muhammad that he privately believed in Islam. But he had won an important battle against Persia in 627, so he had no reason to think he needed to take an outside threat seriously.
Persia’s experience was interesting, because first the Emperor Khosrau II tore up his letter. Then he sent his Viceroy in Yemen a request to find out who Muhammad was and arrest him. An embassy party set off for Medina, arriving several weeks after the original letters had gone out. Muhammad told the envoys that during the night, the angel Gabriel/Jibril had informed him that the Emperor’s son had seized power in a palace coup. The old Emperor, who had torn up the letter, was dead. They were to understand this a sign that soon Islam would overthrow the Persians in general. The envoys returned and told the Viceroy. The following day, a ship arrived from Persia with the news that yes, they had a new emperor: Kavad II. (more about him later) Badhan, the Viceroy, was shocked that the message proved to be true. He immediately entered Islam, as did the men around him and the envoys themselves. When this message came back to Muhammad, he re-appointed Badhan to be the Muslim ruler of Yemen.
And in that way, without any fighting, the Islamic state at Medina added Yemen to its territory. I could not find specific details, but apparently Oman’s king also chose to enter Islam at this time. It’s not immediately obvious to us, but it was to them: submission to Islam included a duty to send tribute to Medina instead of Persia. Entering Islam was a blend of personal conversion—often accompanied by a gift to the person or church who was the instrument of conversion—-and political surrender, which came with a stipulation for taxes/tribute.
This combination of faith and political duty was later to cause some problems in Arabia, but at this early point, it seems to have been accepted. They believed that Muhammad was a real Prophet who knew the future and the distant present, so there was no way to defend against him. Surrender and tribute were cheaper in the long run. Paying tribute to Medina instead of Persia would mean rebellion against Persia, so they were also trusting that Muhammad would indeed handle that as promised.