The Arabian tribes who were not already allied with or tributaries of Muhammad were impressed and maybe shocked at how large the army for Tabuk had been. Arabia had never been united. Its largest cities, like Saba, employed much smaller forces to dominate their local regions. Most towns and tribes had followed the strategy of using alliances to call up reserve forces at need. 30,000 men, many of them mounted, was a clear implied threat to Arabian towns that had not yet joined.
So for about a year, Muhammad stayed peacefully in Medina and received delegations from tribes and cities who now wanted some kind of alliance. Some of them converted to Islam, though the towns that were already majority Christian usually did not. Each one negotiated a settlement of some kind with Muhammad, providing for political peace.
An important settlement was with the town of Ta’if, where the Muslims had given up on a siege. The tribe ruling there wanted special provisions: submission, but without the usual prayer regimen, and 3 years’ grace period before the idol of al-Lat had to go down. Muhammad played hardball. The momentum was on his side, and Ta’if knew it; soon they would be politically isolated. Eventually they just surrendered the idol for destruction.
I suppose this is probably the period when a story told by A’isha fits in. One of these petty kings or chiefs must have suggested that his sister or daughter would make a fine addition to the Prophet’s household. When the bride arrived, A’isha was given the task of getting her ready. As she dressed the other girl, she gave her sage advice. Muhammad, she said, was really turned on by negativity. He liked it when a girl said no. If the girl wanted to give her new husband a really good time, she would not only say no, but she would say “I take refuge in Allah from you!” Well, this happened to be a divorce formula, but A’isha didn’t say this. The confused bride followed her sister wife’s friendly tips, but her new husband suddenly left the room and didn’t come back. The next morning, the girl learned that she was now divorced.
There are two other family notes for this period. Fatimah gave birth to her third child, a girl named Zaynab. But the little boy Ibrahim, child of the Coptic slave Maria, died. And still none of the other wives conceived. It’s a point of mystery to Muslim historians. In the end, they have to chalk it up to God’s will, though the Shi’ites find this easier. Their belief is that the prophetic office was passed only through Fatimah and her children. Sunnis believe that Muhammad had one other grandchild, the girl Umamah, daughter of oldest girl Zaynab, but Shi’ites do not believe Zaynab was genetically his child. In the Arabian system of foster children, adopted children, and step children, it’s easy to lose track. Muhammad had several step children from the two wives Umm Salamah and Umm Habibah, but they are certainly not counted. Shi’ites point out that Khadijah may have taken in some children who were later counted as Muhammad’s.
One of the delegations, from a Christian ruler in Yemen, prompted a special demonstration of the place of Ali’s and Fatimah’s family. The Christian ruler had a belief that a prophet of God must have descendants, but he had heard that Muhammad had none or few. When his delegation came, Muhammad met them with Ali, Fatimah (probably still pregnant), Hassan and Hussein. He spread his cloak out over their heads to show that this was his core family. Muhammad’s family was generally called the People of the House, or Ahl al-Bayt. But this subset, the four genetic relatives, became known as the People of the Cloak (Ahl al-Kisa). The demonstration of the cloak is an important sign for Shi’ites that the genetic kin of Muhammad were intended to be his successors, and not just politically, but in passing on a genetic prophetic ability.
As this period drew to a close, most of Arabia was under Muhammad’s rule in one way or another. In some cases, there was conversion and direct rule, while in others, there was an alliance with some kind of tribute. Some of the high inner desert, the Najd, had to be conquered militarily. While Muhammad stayed home, some of his generals went out on these expeditions. As Islam had matured, it had created a new Arab nationalism based on their shared language, the language of the poets and of the Quran. When Islam’s sovereignty had been extended to the three coasts, the only place to continue was north toward the Ghassanid and Lakhmid kingdoms, those Christian Arab buffer states for Rome and Persia.