Mecca Attacks: Battle of the Trench

Posted on January 13, 2021 by Ruth

In 627, the eighteenth year since Muhammad’s move to Medina, the Quraysh of Mecca gathered allies to make a full assault on the city of Medina. The first ally to volunteer was the banished Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir. They were now living about 100 miles north of Medina in the walled town of Khaybar. The Banu Nadir actively sought out more confederates for the army, paying a nomadic tribe called the Banu Ghatafan half their harvest to come and join. Some other nomadic tribes joined, including the Kinanah who had emigrated from Yemen at the time of the Marib Dam’s failure. The area around Medina from Khaybar in the north, and along the east where the nomads were, to Mecca in the south, was allied against the Muslims.

As many as 10,000 men with 600 horses marched from several directions to converge on Medina. Friendly nomads warned Muhammad just in time, so that he knew the army was coming with only a week to spare. The Muslims had to decide: given a week, what could they do? Choose a field, and meet them there? Send for their own allied nomads, but could they come in time? Stay in the city, to defend it?

One of the men now living in Medina was an unusual foreigner: Salman al-Farisi was a Persian (which is what al-Farisi means), a former Zoroastrian fire priest. He had traveled widely and lived a number of years as a slave in Medina. He had practiced Islam by himself, as a slave, with only sporadic contact with the other Muslims. At last, Salman had asked Muhammad to help him buy his freedom. He was now fully part of the Muslim community, and they must have recognized that he had linguistic and scientific knowledge from outside their scope.

In this case, Salman proposed that they stay in the city but create a barrier to prevent an effective cavalry charge. Persians, he said, would dig a trench. Since Medina was surrounded by rocky hills and the old lava beds, there were well-defined spaces that would need to be trenched. It was just possible that, given a week and all hands to work, they could get it done.

Salman had worked for the remaining large Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayzah, and he knew that they owned some excavating equipment. The Muslims borrowed these tools and set everyone to work. The planned trench would seal off the open end of the combination of hills, trees, and lava that surrounded them. It would be over five kilometers long, stretching from hill to hill. It had to be wide enough and deep enough to slow down horses, putting them at a disadvantage to archers and spearmen as they struggled up the other side. One estimate is that it was about 30 feet wide, and 10 to 15 feet deep. Muhammad came out to help dig, and he led the men in singing songs of faith as they worked. Boys helped carry away the dirt in baskets.

There is one story of the digging that is not believable to non-Muslims, but it’s worth telling because it shows the beginning of the idea to unite the Arabian peninsula (and beyond). Down in the ditch, there was a huge boulder that could not be moved or split. Muhammad struck it with three blows, and it split into movable pieces with flashes of light. In these flashes of light, he saw visions that Allah would soon give the Muslims control over the south (Yemen), the north (Syria), and even the east (Persia).

When the Meccan armies arrived, the trench was nearly finished; one place was still only a meter or two wide. The outlying villages had evacuated, taking their supplies into the city, and women and children had been sent into upper rooms of the fortresses. Muhammad and the 3000 fighting men—a few lucky teenage boys had been granted permission to join them—camped across from the trench, ready to defend its length. They pitched tents and built fires.

The Meccans had not expected anything like the trench. They moved up and down it, inspecting it and thinking. One of the Jews from Banu Nadir (i.e. he was an ex-Medina resident) offered to slip inside the city and speak to the Jewish tribe that had lent the Muslims their digging tools. He thought he could persuade them to turn on the Muslims. So he did it, and after some resistance, the leader of the Banu Qurayzah Jews agreed. He ripped up the parchment treaty with Muhammad. What seems to have persuaded him was the sheer size of the Meccan force. They wanted to be on the surviving side, obviously, and it didn’t look like it would be Muhammad’s side. He promised that the Banu Qurayzah would attack Medina from within the defenses. This way the Muslims would need to guard and fight on two fronts, so the trench defense would be weakened.

Then the war just fizzled. The trench was such an effective deterrent that no more than an occasional single horse could get through. The Banu Qurayzah knew that enough men had come back to Medina to patrol the streets that any attack would be a bloodbath, so they never got around to actually making their internal attack. It’s notable in these battles that Arabians seemed averse to bloodbaths, cf. the Meccans after Uhud being deterred by a force one-tenth their size. Arabians liked surprise attacks, quick raids, and overwhelming numbers.

As time went by, Muhammad negotiated with one of the nomadic tribes, offering dates for them to leave, and there were showers of arrows now and then. Then one of the nomad chiefs suddenly quit; he quietly went into Medina’s camp to declare that he was a Muslim now. Muhammad asked him to return just as quietly, as though nothing had happened, and see if he could get the confederation to break apart. So the Bedouin chief went first to the Jews of Medina (the Banu Qurayzah) and suggested to them that the Quraysh planned to sell them out with a separate peace. Then he told something similar about the Jews to the Quraysh.

Additionally, time was passing. The nomads had come to make a quick assault, not to sit around campfires for two weeks. Finally, a fierce storm fell on the valley, with torrents of rain and hurricane-strength wind. Toward dawn, the Meccan leader Abu Sufyan called for an end to the expedition and retreat to their homes.

After the dawn prayer, the Muslims could see the abandoned camp, and they too returned home. There really had been no battle at the Battle of the Trench, and it was over.

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Four Wives and Three Grandchildren

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Ruth

We focus a lot on the most sensational aspects of Muhammad’s marriages: A’isha’s age and the sheer number (8 or 9) of the widows he left at his death. He spent most of his life as an ordinary man with one wife, and even after her death, with A’isha betrothed, he was actually married to the widow Saudah. But during the years of the move to Medina and these battles, he married four more women, two named Zaynab (which was also the name of his oldest daughter, so it gets confusing).

We know that A’isha came to live in his household a short time after the move to Medina. Each time he added a wife, a new room was built onto the house whose courtyard was the mosque. The first addition to Saudah and A’isha was the daughter of his close friend, Umar. Hafsah’s husband was killed in the Battle of Badr, leaving her widowed at 18. Her father offered her hand to his friend Uthman, whose wife Ruqayyah (the Prophet’s daughter) had just died. But Uthman declined and Umar felt snubbed. Muhammad offered a different solution: the next daughter for Uthman, and Hafsah for himself. Hafsah became A’isha’s best friend (and recall that some believe A’isha was about the same age, not actually a child).

The Battle of Uhud left even more widows–and orphans–who needed provision. At this time, Muhammad recited the Quranic verses suggesting marriage up to four wives. Widows and unmarried daughters, now orphans, were sent back to their fathers or brothers, where they were extras in the household. The Muslims were now encouraged to marry as many of them as they could afford. The Prophet set an example by marrying his cousin’s widow, Zaynab. His cousin had been killed in a single combat at Badr. And it was this marriage to Zaynab that opened the opportunity to send missionaries to her tribe (although that turned out badly due to massacres).

This brought the Prophet up to the limit of four wives, but two things changed (I’m not sure which one happened first). Zaynab #1 died less than a year after she married into the family, so that the Prophet now had only three wives. And a further revelation freed Muhammad, individually and specifically, from the rule of four. Because of his unique burdens, he was freed to marry as many as he wanted to.

His next marriage was to another cousin’s widow. We know her as Umm Salamah, which implies she had at least one child already. She was the first widow to raise objections to marrying into Muhammad’s family. Her monogamous marriage had been very close and warm, so she did not think she could handle being a plural wife. But Muhammad persuaded her to trust to Allah to remove the sin of jealousy, and she then agreed. We don’t know how she handled jealousy, but we do know that A’isha got upset. Many of the hadiths come through A’isha, so we have more stories about her than about the others. A’isha felt that this was the first wife to come along who might get Muhammad spending more evenings with her.

There was another new wife during this period, and she was the most controversial. You’ll remember that Muhammad had adopted his teenage slave, Zayd, who was only ten years younger than him. Zayd had married a much older woman at first—this seems to have been a typical “starter marriage” solution for young men without money. He had a son with this first wife, who was by now a teenager. Zayd may have married several more women; in this last case, perhaps just before the Battle of Badr he had married Muhammad’s cousin Zaynab bint Jahsh. We have on record that she did not want to accept this marriage. Part of her objection may have been that Zayd was merely the adopted son, a former slave, and not of the Quraysh. Muhammad may have used the marriage as an object lesson in going against social class customs, since he viewed Zayd as having high standing in Islam. But Zayd and Zaynab were never happy together. The marriage didn’t last more than two years and produced no children.

I’ll cut to the headline: after a divorce, Zaynab married Muhammad himself. And this was a problem, because for 20 years, Zayd had been known as Zayd ibn Muhammad. Marrying across an age gap meant nothing to the Arab culture, since a young woman was honored by being placed in an important older man’s house. But marrying your son’s ex-wife was not cool.

There’s a hadith that seems to report a rumor such that Muhammad came to see Zayd but found Zaynab in a revealing underdress; in his confused attraction, he left without waiting, so that Zayd remarked on it, asking if he wanted her. It doesn’t seem likely; this is an example of a hadith that can’t be trusted. But it does give us a sense of the types of rumors and scandal that rose when he married her. Whoever reported that hadith to al-Bukhari may have been correctly reporting the gossip passed down through five generations.

The Quran directly speaks to Muhammad about this situation. Surah al-Ahzab, number 33, is addressed to Muhammad and tells him (translation is by Dr. Mustafa Khattab, “The Clear Quran”):

Allah does not place two hearts in any person’s chest. Nor does He regard your wives as ˹unlawful for you like˺ your real mothers, ˹even˺ if you say they are.1 Nor does He regard your adopted children as your real children.2 These are only your baseless assertions. But Allah declares the truth, and He ˹alone˺ guides to the ˹Right˺ Way.

Let your adopted children keep their family names. That is more just in the sight of Allah. But if you do not know their fathers, then they are ˹simply˺ your fellow believers and close associates. There is no blame on you for what you do by mistake, but ˹only˺ for what you do intentionally. And Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

The Prophet has a stronger affinity to the believers than they do themselves. And his wives are their mothers. As ordained by Allah, blood relatives are more entitled ˹to inheritance˺ than ˹other˺ believers and immigrants, unless you ˹want to˺ show kindness to your ˹close˺ associates ˹through bequest˺.1 This is decreed in the Record.2 

From that time, Zayd reverted to “ibn Harithah,” his biological father. At this point, he probably didn’t expect to inherit from Muhammad, as he would have done in much earlier years, but now he was specifically excluded.

And Surah 33 had more thoughts addressed to the Prophet’s growing tribe of wives:

O wives of the Prophet! If any of you were to commit a blatant misconduct, the punishment would be doubled for her. And that is easy for Allah.

And whoever of you devoutly obeys Allah and His Messenger and does good, We will grant her double the reward, and We have prepared for her an honourable provision.

O wives of the Prophet! You are not like any other women: if you are mindful ˹of Allah˺, then do not be overly effeminate in speech ˹with men˺ or those with sickness in their hearts may be tempted, but speak in a moderate tone.

Settle in your homes, and do not display yourselves as women did in the days of ˹pre-Islamic˺ ignorance. Establish prayer, pay alms-tax, and obey Allah and His Messenger. Allah only intends to keep ˹the causes of˺ evil away from you and purify you completely, O  members of the ˹Prophet’s˺ family! (33:30-33)

Last, the Surah explicitly tells the believers that Muhammad’s marriage to Zaynab was entirely God’s will:

And ˹remember, O  Prophet,˺ when you said to the one1 for whom Allah has done a favour and you ˹too˺ have done a favour,2 “Keep your wife and fear Allah,” while concealing within yourself what Allah was going to reveal. And ˹so˺ you were considering the people, whereas Allah was more worthy of your consideration. So when Zaid totally lost interest in ˹keeping˺ his wife, We gave her to you in marriage, so that there would be no blame on the believers for marrying the ex-wives of their adopted sons after their divorce. And Allah’s command is totally binding. (33:37)

The social revolution was ongoing: it aimed to take the old sunnah and replace it with a completely new one. The new Muslim sunnah would include remarriage of widows, typically as plural wives, and would cross both age gaps and some previously-important taboo relationships, such as adopted children. Adoption in the sunnah would mean raising a child with love, but not putting the child in line for inheritance.

Another point in the new sunnah arose from this same set of revelations:

O believers! Do not enter the homes of the Prophet without permission ˹and if invited˺ for a meal, do not ˹come too early and˺ linger until the meal is ready. But if you are invited, then enter ˹on time˺. Once you have eaten, then go on your way, and do not stay for casual talk. Such behaviour is truly annoying to the Prophet, yet he is too shy to ask you to leave. But Allah is never shy of the truth. And when you ˹believers˺ ask his wives for something, ask them from behind a barrier. This is purer for your hearts and theirs. And it is not right for you to annoy the Messenger of Allah, nor ever marry his wives after him. This would certainly be a major offence in the sight of Allah. (33:53)

There’s a lot to unpack in this one ayah. But notice the part in which believers must ask the wives from something only from behind a barrier. The verse is talking about coming into someone’s home, so its initial reference is to a curtain in the house, beyond which outsiders were not to pass, which gave the wives more privacy in a house that functioned as a seat of government. However, once the rule was given, it had to be followed out in the street, too. And so Muhammad’s wives began wearing the veil, the hijab (curtain).

When Muhammad had four wives, three of whom were clearly of child-bearing age, at least one of these (Umm Salamah) having proven her ability to bear, the community expected that babies would soon follow. Surely one of these women would bear a son, an “ibn Muhammad” by blood who would not die in infancy. But meanwhile, his daughters by Khadijah were producing some children. The oldest (another Zaynab) had a 3 year old daughter who came to Medina with her when Muhammad separated her from her husband. The child’s name was Umamah, and Muhammad was very fond of her. Once, teasing his wives, he said he would give a necklace to his best girl: and chose little Umamah, doubtless producing tense laughter among the adults.

Next in age to Umamah was Hassan, Fatimah’s son. He was about a year old when his younger brother, Huseyn, was born. Muhammad was very fond of Hassan and Huseyn. One hadith tells of how he let the boys ride on his back, pretending he was their horse. We know that in the distant future, these boys would be as important to Muslim history as their father, Ali. But for now, they were just cute. And everyone expected them to have some little uncles their own age any day, as Muhammad himself had grown up with his same-age uncle Hamzah.

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The Jewish Tribes of Medina

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Ruth

The Jews of Medina are an important topic because they’re one of the footballs that get kicked around in the current ideological wars. Since anti-Semitism is a problem in many modern Muslim countries, we wonder if it has always been so. The Quran presents a very mixed picture of how to view Jews, coming out of the mixed experiences the Muslims had. The events in Medina were a large part of this.

The town of Medina, perhaps like all towns of its time in Arabia, was not organized like a European town, with a city hall and a main street. Each family group lived in a village clustered around a fortress-house where the tribal chief lived. When trouble came, they could all pull inside the fortress, which was impregnable to typical means and methods of the time. The Yathrib oasis was eight miles wide, with various farms and villages spread out through it. There were three main Jewish extended-family tribes, and their fortress-village were near Medina, enough to be part of the city life, but also separated a bit.

These Jews were very Arabicized, that is, very assimilated to the place where they had lived for a few hundred years. They practiced Judaism, but they spoke Arabic and lived by the same cultural rules as their neighbors. Somewhere I picked up the idea that they were probably Jews who had left Babylon after the Captivity. They may have still made use of a trade network extending back into Persia. The picture we get in the Muslim stories is that some of them were most active as date farmers, some as craftsmen, some as merchants. There was also an even larger Jewish settlement to the north, which they probably passed through on trips to Persia.

When the Arab tribes of Aws and Khazraj invited Muhammad to come be their judge and stop the endless feuding, the Jewish tribes had to work out their place in the new system. Each of the Jewish tribes had pre-existing alliances to one of those Arab tribes, as well as to other outside tribes. They had been caught up in the endless feud, too, through their allies. Muhammad asked them to sign a treaty that stipulated Judaism and Islam would be considered essentially the same (no need to convert) and they would leave each other alone, cooperatively, with Muhammad as chief arbiter of disputes. The treaty also stated that they were bound to mutual defense, and to boycotting the Quraysh of Mecca.

I wonder if the Jews knew how significant defense was going to be. “How often is Medina attacked?” they had to be thinking. They may not have realized to what extent the Muslims would actively go to war against Mecca, when they signed the treaty during the first six months.

The first tribe to have a treaty-breaking issue was the Bani Qaynuqa. They lived in two fortresses near the marketplace; they did not farm, but were craftsmen and goldsmiths. They kept close ties with the Quraysh, in spite of the treaty. They did not help in the Battle of Badr. They made it clear in various ways that they preferred the old order.

In the weeks after Badr, a Muslim woman went into a Jewish goldsmith’s shop, and they got into an argument. The Muslim woman’s legs were exposed in the scuffle, and a passing Muslim man killed the Jew; some Jewish men killed a Muslim. This budding feud (typical for life in this oasis) should have been arbitrated by Muhammad, but the Jewish tribe decided to go back to the old customs. They called for their allies and retreated into their fortress, and Muhammad sent Ali to lead a siege. The problem here is not that they were Jews, but that they refused to use the arbitration process, and small infractions and refusals were taken very seriously in a place with governments that were only as stable as they could enforce that they were. The Bani Qaynuqa fortress held out for two weeks, with as many as 700 fighting men inside, so most of the Muslims must have been involved in the siege. Their allies did not come to help, probably unwilling to break their own agreements with the Prophet and return to old feuding ways.

When the Bani Qaynuqa surrendered, the chief of the Arab Khazraj tribe, which had converted to Islam, pleaded for mercy for them. This Arab chief, known as Ibn Ubayy, was going to cause many worries for Muhammad. He had almost become the king of Medina, and he resented the Muslims but he also converted as a matter of form. (It was Ibn Ubayy who would soon take his 300 men home from the Battle of Uhud.) He negotiated with Muhammad for the tribe to be treated less harshly than full enemies would be. The outcome was an agreement for expulsion: the tribe left with what they could carry, leaving behind their weapons and tools. Along with their houses, these riches were distributed as spoils of war. The Bani Qaynuqa moved north, joining other Jewish communities in Syria.

The next problem came with the Bani Nadir, when Muhammad paid them a formal call to ask them to contribute to pay the blood-wite of a quarrel against their Arab allies. Everyone was on edge, but it should have been a simple matter, since the Jews agreed to help pay it. What happened next surely sounds different, depending on whose side you take.

Muhammad, Abu Bakr, Umar, and other Companions were in the Bani Nadir fortress to discuss the matter, and the chiefs asked them to stay for a meal. While the meal was being cooked, Muhammad received a direct revelation from Gabriel/Jibril that warned him the Jews were about to assassinate him. He got up and left quietly, and he walked out of their fortress and back to his home. It’s not clear that there was any evidence of a plot apart from the angelic message, but Muslim historical sources don’t ask for more evidence. It would be interesting to know how this story was told among the Jews, but we don’t know that. Did they admit to a plot, or did they feel wrongly accused?

The Prophet sent a message telling the Bani Nadir that they had ten days to leave. When the Jews protested to the Arab messenger that this message ran against all of their past history together, he said simply, “Hearts have changed.” I wonder if he told them that they were suspected of a plot, but that’s all we have. Now what? The Jews debated what to do, and here Ibn Ubayy got involved as well. He urged them to make a defiant stand. If all of their past allies came to their aid, both Arab tribes and the other Jews of the oasis, they could win. So when they delivered a message of defiance to Muhammad, he declared war on them.

Their fortress was in a date grove south of the main city. As the Jews withdrew and set archers on the walls, Muhammad walked an ad-hoc Muslim force to the settlement and began a low-level attack. Ali was in command of a force that camped outside the Bani Nadir for ten days, while the Jews learned, slowly, that none of their allies would come. Iby Ubayy had interfered and over-promised, but even his people were not coming. The other Jews of Medina didn’t want to touch it, and other Bedouin allies stayed home. Finally, the Jews in the fortress surrendered when Muhammad told some of his men to start cutting down date palms. If their agriculture was all ruined, what good would it be to try to stay?

The Bani Nadir were given just a few days to leave with whatever their camels could carry, except for armor and weapons. They took the order seriously. Some even removed pieces of their houses, like doors, as long as the camels could carry it all. When they walked out through the town, the Arabs were astonished to see how just much wealth was being carried out.

The Bani Nadir families went north to where many of them already owned land in the other Arabian Jewish settlement, Khaybar; it was stronger than Medina. The Muslims in Medina distributed the Bani Nadir land, houses, and arms, but they knew that a lot of portable property had just left the community. Many wondered if the terms had been too generous. Remaining in the community, there were still some small Jewish tribes, plus one more large one: the Bani Qurayzah. The Bani Qurayzah also had shaky allegiance to Muhammad, maintaining ties with his enemies. For now, they were stable in Medina’s economy, but the next big battle would spell their end.

These bad experiences with the Jews of Medina changed Muhammad’s view of Jews. He had hoped that they would all become Muslims, or that they’d at least assimilate enough that it wouldn’t matter. When he came to Medina, the Muslims had been facing Jerusalem to pray, to emphasize their Abrahamic origin. But after the Bani Qaynuqa siege, there was a revelation that now they should face Mecca, which Abraham had also established. That became the qibla, the prayer direction, from them on. Muhammad hadn’t declared all Jews to be evil, far from it. But he had realized that they did not view his new faith as either the same as theirs or better. They began to stand out among his enemies as the ones that would never give in, and they could work to undermine him. He began to see the Jews as a fifth column, an enemy in their midst.

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When blood flows…

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Ruth

I want to write briefly about some of the very minor incidents that happened in the Medina Muslims vs. Mecca war. They’re important because they set up a context for understanding decisions that were made. In a war, emotions don’t start out running high, but with every death, they run higher. Arabia was a society that based its justice on the family’s right to hunt down and kill a killer. They had a second tradition, paying a heavy fine to stop the feud, called a “blood wite” or, in Anglo-Saxon, the wergild. But that was not relevant during a battle, where blood was going to be shed. So after a few battles, men on both sides had strong feelings of vengeance.

In the first incident, the Muslims had sent an assassin to kill a desert chief who was especially hostile to them. Looking for revenge, some men of that tribe came upon six Muslims who were giving religious instruction to some neighboring tribes, and in the fighting, they killed all but two of them. The two captives were sold to the Quraysh tribe in Mecca, both purchased as objects of vengeance. In Mecca, they executed both men in public, in the one case by giving battle-orphan boys spears and saying “go get ’em.”

In the second incident, Muhammad sent 40 men to instruct the Bani Amir tribe in Islamic principles, and they ended up dead. A chief of the Bani Amir had promised them protection, but nobody realized that this chief’s power was disputed, so one of his rivals killed one of the Muslims. The rest of the tribe didn’t want to get involved, so the rival sent word to an enemy tribe and asked them to do it, and they massacred the rest. Two of the Muslims in the party were away from their camp, and returned to find the scene of slaughter. One was killed in subsequent combat, while the other was interviewed and set free. On his way home, he killed two random Bani Amir men, since that tribe had started it.

Muhammad did not demand vengeance for the slain Muslims, because he considered them martyrs for Allah. One of the dead men had puzzled his killer by calling out something like “I win, by God!” when the spear ran him through. The Muslims had a very literal sense that the spirit was immediately carried away by angels to a better place, so that was a win. But the loss of 40 leading disciples of the Prophet all at once must still have left a real hole in the community. Their culture mandated vengeance which their new religion did not allow them to take.

But then Muhammad went further: because those last two men had been killed by mistake, he wanted to pay blood-wite to the Bani Amir tribe, to stop the vengeance cycle. This meant levying a tax among the people of Medina to come up with a significant payment. He decided, moreover, that one of the Jewish tribes had ties to the Bani Amir, so they should contribute to the payment. It was time to pay a formal call to their fortress: and that brings us to the next topic: the Jews of Medina.

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The Battle of Uhud at Medina

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Ruth

After the Battle of Badr, the Muslims at Medina continued to attack Meccan shipping. When a caravan took a northeastern route to Iraq, Muhammad’s adopted son Zayd led 100 men to stop it and bring its trade goods back to Medina. Their business in overland hauling was effectively blocked. And so Mecca mobilized for war.

Abu Sufyan ibn Harb led 3000 men from all of the Quraysh clans, and he also let his wife come along. Some of the other fighters brought their wives, too. In their customs, this meant they were getting serious. The women would be a vulnerability that would force them to fight harder, and the women also beat drums and screamed at them to fight harder. Abu Sufyan’s wife, Hind, promised an Abyssinian slave that if he would kill Hamzah, Muhammad’s same-age uncle, she would free him. She intended to eat Hamzah’s liver.

The Meccan army settled in around the mountain of Uhud, north of Medina. It had enough agriculture for their men and horses to live off the unharvested crops, and it allowed them to wait for the Muslims to come out to fight on the plain.

The Muslims made the decision to summon their best numbers and go meet the battle. Muhammad set out with 1000 men, but along the road, one of the Arab leaders took his clan and turned back, leaving only 700 to go on. They camped on the opposite side of the same mountain, facing Medina.

Muhammad knew that the key to managing their grossly unequal numbers was going to be an archery squad perched on the hilltop above the camp, watching for cavalry coming round to encircle them. Determined archers could pick off horses and riders, maintaining a defensive wall from a distance. He put 50 archers there, and he told them sternly that they were not to leave the hilltop no matter what. No. Matter. What. The mountain itself was also a key, since the Meccan cavalry could not ride on or over it. A surprise attack could come from around it (which the archers would stop), but its bulk acted as a wall to their backs, otherwise.

The battle began with some single-combat duels, as before, then it broke into full-scale battle. By numbers, the Meccans should have won, and then they would have gone on to occupy Medina. But although the Muslims were a smaller force, they had more spirit and determination, and for a while it looked like they would prevail. Using Muhammad’s sword, a fighter called Abu Dujunah cut down many Meccans. He was remembered for wearing a red turban, while Ali had a white plume, and two other champions had green and yellow turbans. But in the middle of these Muslim victories, the Prophet’s kinsman Hamzah was killed by the Abyssinian who had been sent in for this task.

When the archers looked down the hill and thought they saw some of their army heading out to plunder the Meccan camp, they ignored Muhammad’s orders and most of them ran down the mountain to join in. With the archery post so greatly weakened, a Meccan force was able to overwhelm the rest of them, and then their cavalry could come around to the rear of the Muslim army. Many of the Muslims who were stationed there grew frightened and ran up the mountain, where horses could not follow.

In this hour, the greatest danger came closest. Muhammad was wounded on the head and fainted, so that some were afraid he had died. A rumor spread that he was dead, and one man called out “Let us die with him,” plunging into the battle recklessly. But the rumor of Muhammad’s death also worked for the Muslims, because the Meccans got the idea that it was over, too. One of the men with Muhammad gave him some very simple first aid, and he was again able to stand.

At the end of the Battle of Badr, one Meccan had promised Muhammad that he would be back on his horse to kill him. Now this man closed in, charging the small group around the Prophet. But borrowing a spear, Muhammad stepped out and speared him through the neck as he rode forward. The man rode back to his camp and died.

If that wasn’t literally the end of the battle, it was nearly so. Both sides were falling back, exhausted, unsure who had won, to count and tend their dead. The mountain was large enough that they were soon out of each other’s sight, and once the event of the battle was over, neither side sent anyone to seek out further fights or assassinations. It was just over. The Meccans were pretty sure Muhammad had been killed, so they searched for his body. The losses they counted on their side had been only 22 out of their 3000, while the 700 Muslims had lost 65. Modern battle customs would not have armies breaking off and going home with so few dead and so many alive, but this was not a time of “total war.”

But it was a time when they practiced something we take pains to stop our men from doing: mutilating the dead. Abu Sufyan’s wife Hind did indeed take a bite out of Hamzah’s liver, then she went onto the field and cut more bits of him off (but not to eat). Some of the women strung pieces of mutilated warrior onto string, as jewelry. Then the Meccans packed up to leave. They did think about assaulting Medina, but they had heard that a force of men stayed there (true, but outnumbered 10 to 1 by the Meccans, so it’s a bit odd that they were scared off by 300).

The Muslims’ first act was to have their noon prayer, and they only returned to the battle plain when the mutilation was over and the Meccans had pulled back. The Muslims encouraged the Meccans to beat a fast retreat home by setting many campfires as though one of their allied tribes had come in after dark. They buried their dead on the field, and even some who died later in Medina were carried back to the new memorial cemetery. One of the surprises among the dead was a rabbi from one of the Jewish tribes that had decided not to honor its defense pact with Muhammad. He had believed them to be in the wrong, so he went on his own. We’ll come back to the Jewish tribes of Medina.

Who won the Battle of Uhud? If you add up the dead, the Meccans won. But the goal of the Meccans had been to stop the Muslims from raiding their caravans. They had set out with an overwhelming force but went home without anything being settled. In a defensive situation, the defender who is left standing has won. As things played out, Medina’s power to raid caravans and cause problems for Mecca was far from diminished.

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After the Battle of Badr: Muhammad’s Social Revolution

Posted on December 30, 2020 by Ruth

The aftermath of the first Battle of Badr has many details and incidents that show just how revolutionary Muhammad’s new way was. His message was one of radical individualism pitted against the old systems of clan solidarity and social class. Every person had to submit to Allah himself; the same surah that says there is no compulsion in religion also says that on the day of judgment, your soul won’t have a lawyer or a friend to help out. Nor would the old traditional ways, the sunnah, be enough any more. Leaving Mecca at all had been a radical statement of tearing free from the clan system, and the choice to fight at Badr even more so.

Umar, one of the men closest to Muhammad and later a Caliph, lobbied for the captives to be executed, not ransomed. He reasoned that radically cutting ties with their clans should be pushed to the limit: let each man execute his brother, uncle, or father. This tells us a lot about Umar, of course. He was a warrior at base; he always chose the most aggressive, lethal way of solving things, and as Caliph he would lead the wave of rapid military conquest. But Muhammad and Abu Bakr overruled Umar, choosing to host the captives in Medina until they were ransomed. Each close relative was responsible for negotiating the ransom price with the other family members in Mecca. That, alone, was a gross violation of Arab clan values.

The dilemmas began in the Prophet’s own family. Dilemma #1: his second wife, Saudah, found her cousin as a captive with his hands tied to his neck. She was convulsed with grief and cried out that it was better if he had died in battle than to be a captive. For a moment, she was on the Meccans’ side, because she reacted mainly as a kinswoman and cousin. But Muhammad heard her, and he remined her not to cause trouble for the Muslims by siding with their enemies.

Dilemma #2: Muhammad’s uncle Abbas was a captive. They had always been on excellent terms, and Abbas’s wife was an early Muslim convert. Further, the men of Medina viewed Abbas (like Muhammad) as a Medinan through his grandmother, so they were in favor of just letting him go. But in a clear break with clan custom, Muhammad insisted that Abbas must ransom himself and several others. Abbas claimed poverty, but his nephew repeated back to him a private conversation Abbas had had with his wife, laying out who would inherit what, if he died at Badr. Abbas was shocked. How could Muhammad know what he had said? On the spot, he recited the creed, saying that Muhammad was Allah’s prophet. He also chose to pay the ransoms, now as a donation since he was no longer a hostage but a Muslim!

Dilemma #3: Muhammad’s oldest daughter’s husband was also a captive. Of course she was a Muslim, but he was not, so he had not moved to Medina, and he had turned out for his clan’s war roster. When daughter Zaynab sent an emissary with ransom money, she included an onyx necklace that Khadijah had given her as a wedding gift. It had the intended effect: her father was aghast at seeing his dead wife’s necklace in the pay-off packet. He wanted these ties to mean nothing, but in this case, it was too hard. Muhammad stepped away from the negotiation and his son-in-law was just sent home for free, but with an agreement to send his wife and child to Medina.

It was a marital separation. Muhammad liked his son-in-law Abu al-As, but since the time they had been married, he had received a revelation that forbade believers to be married to unbelievers. This new rule was another point of radical individualism: the wife was not the property of the husband, she was an independent moral agent who could profess faith and step away from her family. Zaynab and her little daughter came to Medina, and although the family was reunited when Abu al-As converted, the separation lasted four years, which may have looked like forever.

The disruption of family ties comes out also in the story of how Muhammad’s youngest daughter Fatimah came to marry his adopted son/cousin Ali. The match was the Prophet’s idea, perhaps sentimentally viewing the pair as a younger replication of himself and Khadijah. Ali, however, was reluctant to be married, because he was very poor. But why was Ali poor? We can brush right past that detail, but in fact Ali was the youngest son of Abu Talib, a chief of the mercantile Quraysh.

Abu Talib’s fortunes had waned, but surely when he died, he left something? It appears that only Abu Talib’s oldest sons inherited. A revelation had forbidden believers to inherit from unbelievers, and both of the younger sons were among the first converts. At least, that’s the Sunni version; the Shi’ite version has Abu Talib confessing faith privately, so the rule against inheriting from an unbeliever would not apply. Ali was definitely poor, so Shi’ites may believe that Ali gave his possessions away, as Abu Bakr had done. In any case, the revelation had disrupted family inheritance: and perhaps even in the Prophet’s own family.

Further, when Fatimah and Ali were married, they lived in poverty. Fatimah ground their wheat with a hand-operated grindstone, and Ali hired himself out as a water-carrier, back-breaking work for low pay. A hadith tells us that they were exhausted and asked Muhammad for assistance, specifically a servant to help Fatimah with the hard work. As ruler of Medina, Muhammad was receiving one-fifth of all caravan-raiding spoils, and the same fraction of the battle spoils, as Arabian chiefs had always taken one-quarter of these things. But Muhammad viewed it as income to the faith, not his personal wealth. He used it for increasing defense capability and supporting the poor. A growing number of refugees and beggars lived in the courtyard of the mosque, supported primarily by Muhammad’s household. He told Ali and Fatimah that as long as there were poor to support, he would give them nothing. He recommended that they strengthen their wills by giving thanks to Allah many times each day.

It’s a staggering break from Arab custom for the chieftain’s daughter to live in poverty with blisters on her hands. What about a dowry, such as the older sisters certainly had? Shouldn’t Fatimah have had some camels to help carry water, at least? But in leaving Mecca, Muhammad may have walked away from Khadijah’s wealth. This may be one reason that the younger daughters stayed home, unmarried, for a number of years; Martin Lings says Fatimah was 20 when she married Ali, whereas the older girls had been married much younger. (Lings, 167) These two may not have had dowries. The second daughter, Ruqayyah, had just died from an illness, leaving Uthman a widower. Though still grieving, Uthman accepted Muhammad’s offer of Ruqayyah’s sister Umm Kulthum. In some ways, one dowry stood for both sisters, and Uthman had his own wealth. This left Fatimah as uniquely ungifted, nor was any of the community’s wealth passed to her.

It’s in these details that we really see just how revolutionary Muhammad’s new way was. In a society that based customs on the sunnah of the tribe’s patriarch, he was asking people to conceive of themselves as individuals with a primary allegiance to an idea. In America, we believe that immigrants become Americans by understanding and loving the same ideals. Back in the 7th century, Muhammad had a notion very much like that. He wanted to set up a theocracy in which people became citizens by professing a simple creed and adopting a handful of daily customs. He wanted that theocracy to be sincere: that citizens would truly see each other as family, forsaking prior family, and that the ruler would truly be Allah, not himself. And in this new society, new customs would be needed, however radical or difficult they might seem.

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Medina’s Foreign Policy (Battle of Badr)

Posted on December 25, 2020 by Ruth

Most of the Emigrants from Mecca had left their wealth (or their poverty) behind. Their clans would have re-absorbed the houses they were occupying, passing them to families that stayed. Some of their possessions were seized by others. I wasn’t able to get a firm sense of just how much wealth the city of Mecca received from the exit of the Muslim families. But in any case, Muhammad and his new government in Medina considered Mecca, and the Quraysh clan in particular, an enemy state that had appropriated their wealth. It may be that the attempt on Muhammad’s life had been taken as a declaration of war. What was Muhammad’s new city going to do about it? Not sit there.

It wasn’t long before some of the Muslims — all ones from Mecca — rode out in a war party to see if they could capture some Meccan caravans. They were city-dwelling merchants, but they were also part of the nomad culture that poetically praised the daring courage of raiders. At first the raiding parties were small, but gradually they grew to as many as 70 men, and Muhammad accompanied one of them. They seized whatever the caravan was carrying, and they captured the men to hold them for ransom, a typical feature of raiding. But in one caravan raid, a Meccan man died, and after that, Mecca’s leaders decided to fight back.

In past revelations at Mecca, Allah had told Muhammad to be patient with the unbelievers. Now, in Medina, the revelations went the other way. The second Surah of the Quran is called al-Baqarah, “The Cow,” because it talks about the golden calf of Exodus. Although it appears early in the Quran, it was actually a later revelation from this period at Medina. The Surah describes Allah as the “enemy of unbelievers.” (2:98) Muslims are directed to fight to the death against anyone who wages war and does not surrender. (2:191) They must retaliate even during sacred months, and they must persist until there is no more persecution. (2:194) Fighting would now be obligatory even if they didn’t like it. (2:216) Context suggests that Mecca was the main target of this new aggressive policy, since other verses talk about making pilgrimage to Mecca.

About two years after the Muslims had left Mecca, they decided to target a very rich caravan led by one of Mecca’s rulers. Almost all of the Emigrants from Mecca joined the war party, and additionally many of the Helpers, the Medinan natives, came too. They numbered about 300 men with 70 camels. However, the Meccans got wind of it, re-routed the caravan, and turned out in force to meet the Muslims. Most of the clans participated, adding up to around 1000 men. As the armies faced each other and waited for a decisive moment to either attack or go home, some of the Quraysh clans went home. But among the remaining Meccan war party were many relatives of the Muslims, including Muhammad’s uncle Abbas and Ali’s older brother.

What to do? The Muslims could have just gone home, since they were not prepared for a real battle. After deliberating, they chose to fight; Muhammad spent a night awake in prayer over the decision. One of the Medinans suggested that they occupy or destroy all of the wells in the Badr Valley, and they did. Arabian battles apparently began with duels between champions; the Meccans sent out three champions who declared they would drink water from a Muslim-held well or die. Muhammad sent out Ali and two others. One of them was seriously wounded, but Ali won his duel. Soon after these duels, there was a charge and general melée.

Even outnumbered, the Muslims still won the battle. In human terms, we know that the group that has more conviction often wins, since an army is only as strong as the discipline of its individual members. The Muslims believed angels fought with them, while the Meccans probably had mixed feelings about what they were doing. Some of the chief enemies of Muhammad were killed in the battle, but at the end, the Muslims also held a number of living captives.

Based on their success in this battle, Muhammad’s team was able to start forming more alliances to isolate and box in Mecca. Mecca’s wealth depended on running caravans between Yemen and Syria, and there were only so many roads the caravans could take. Some Arab tribes that lived along the Red Sea coast allied with Medina, making it unsafe for Meccans to pass through their territory. Mecca countered these moves by forming or reinforcing alliances with tribes near Medina. The region began to polarize, with some allied tribes also adopting Islam.

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The Prophet’s Third Wife, A’isha

Posted on December 19, 2020 by Ruth

One of the diciest parts of Muhammad’s story is that as soon as his new house was completed, he and Abu Bakr decided it was time for A’isha to move into her wife-apartment in the house. Until this time, she had been living in her father’s house, although technically married. For her wedding, they dressed her nicely and had a private family dinner, and that was that. Nobody would find much to say about it, except that the official narrative is that she was nine years old. And that raises a lot of questions. If she was only nine, was the marriage a form of abuse or neglect of a child? It’s a point that generates a lot of negative press for Muhammad, sometimes amounting to accusations of pedophilia. The more I’ve read about the situation, though, the less I can see it that way.

Most of what we know about A’isha came from her own recollections, told to others and eventually collected as hadiths. By the time A’isha was narrating her memories, she was a widow who was barred from remarrying, due to an oath that all of the Prophet’s wives took. Without children, she struggled to find her place in the rapidly-growing community after both her husband and her father had died.

It was very much in her interests to emphasize just how close she and Muhammad had been, since she was the source of many hadiths that steered doctrine. The story of her wedding was part of this emphasis; it was A’isha herself who represented her age as nine. That might mean it’s plainly true, but it also might mean it was an exaggeration. Clearly, it never entered her or anyone else’s minds that “wife age nine” might later be seen as gravely wrong.

In medieval times, it was not uncommon to set up child marriages when property inheritance was at stake, so that a father’s early death might not leave his orphaned children at the mercy of fate’s whims. It was also common to see a twelve-year-old girl as prime marriage material, at least to start setting up an important match. By the time everyone finished negotiating and traveling, the girl would be fourteen, which was considered fully grown. Such early marriage makes sense in a world where life expectancy was very uncertain and inheritance was only through birth. It wasn’t until well into the 20th century that an age like fifteen was considered too young.

A’isha saw her early marriage age as a sign of how early in life she had been influenced by the Prophet. It was a mark of distinction and gave her memories more authority. It justified her continuing importance in the early Caliphs’ courts. Living there meant that she shared the common living space with Muhammad, Saudah, Ali, and the remaining unmarried daughters, while sleeping in her own room. She could be present at many discussions and recitations. The women in early Muslim stories were not sequestered: they went into the town, they approached men to speak or to argue, they made their own decisions. If Saudah had the housework under control, A’isha might have been free to sit with Muhammad’s students as much as she wanted. This was a great honor to Abu Bakr’s family.

But what if she hadn’t really been nine? In a time when few things were being written down, a little girl’s age was not important enough to memorialize. It’s possible that she was, say, twelve but remembered it as nine, trying to show how she had been at the Prophet’s side practically all her life. On the side of believing her age claim, she provided details about playing with toys while living in the Prophet’s house: her friends could still come over to play dolls, and Muhammad might sit with them for a while. That seems realistic for a child’s recollection, though it could also be a case of conflating memories from different times. But on the side of thinking she was actually older when all this happened, there are counter-anecdotes that suggest another picture.

Ibn Ishaq, born in Medina 85 years after the Prophet’s migration, was an early collector of hadiths about Muhammad’s life. He made a list of early believers, and among them he included A’isha, who should have been only a baby. (Mohiuddin, 162) What if she were at least six years old already at the time preserved by his list, old enough to repeat the confession of faith? If so, it would suggest that at the time of her informal wedding, she might have been fourteen, not nine. Further, there is a story that her first childhood betrothal was to a non-Muslim, and since Abu Bakr was one of the first converts, it suggests that perhaps she had already been born when he was still comfortable with idol-worship.

Another contrary bit of evidence is a hadith that says A’isha helped carry water-skins onto a battlefield, two years after her marriage. These skins were heavy, and a battlefield was dangerous. How much help could an eleven-year-old be? Muhammad is on record as not permitting boys to fight at such ages. But if she were sixteen by then, it makes more sense. Some accounts place her even older, walking the battlefield at nineteen, which is more like the ages Muhammad considered appropriate for a boy to be on the battlefield.

There is a deep rift between Sunni and Shi’ite accounts of A’isha. In Sunni memory, A’isha is the mother of all Muslims, a revered saint. It feels deeply sacrilegious to them to say she might have been wrong about her age. Older Islamic reasoning tended to see truth issues as starkly about deliberate lies, and how could A’isha have lived with the Prophet so long, and yet be a liar? So Sunnis tend to take A’isha’s word for it, that she was nine, and they are stuck with defending her very early marriage. By contrast, Shi’ites have no fondness for A’isha. They see her as the rival of Ali, the adopted son and intended heir. While her name is a popular choice among Sunni families, few to no little Shi’ite girls are named A’isha. So they don’t accept the hadith about her young age and are open to her having been a more normal age, like sixteen.

I have another idea to offer, which came to me as I read about the process of setting up the city-state of Medina. Let’s say A’isha was nine, but an outgoing, confident, rather mature nine-year-old, the type that doesn’t get homesick at cheerleader summer camp. Her father, Abu Bakr, is building a house in Medina also. He bought a building plot or house along the wall of Muhammad’s courtyard, which is now the mosque. He is having it modified to open into the mosque, like the Prophet’s house. The Prophet is now a man of great importance, settling disputes and teaching a growing number of students in the mosque area just outside his back door. Abu Bakr already settled his younger daughter’s fate a few years ago; she will someday be the Prophet’s wife, and nobody cares about the age difference (remember that Muhammad’s grandfather and father married a pair of cousins on the same day).

It seems obvious that Abu Bakr and his wife would say to themselves, “What are we waiting for? She’s legally married to him already, by contract, why not move her into that establishment to finish growing up?” She was going to become one of the First Ladies of Medina, and she would be more of an ornament to the household than Sawdah. So why not just do it? She’d be 100 feet away, they’d see her every day, and it’s not like she’d be sorry to become more important. If that’s the way it seemed, then sex had little or nothing to do with it. Wives who were too young were just moved in, and then they finished growing up, and assumed a sexual role when they felt like it. It probably became clear to A’isha that if she decided she was up for sex, it would increase her prestige in the new household, establishing her socially as a full adult. She may have been old enough without questions, or she may have been as young as she said. In either case, it doesn’t seem to have been about sexual attraction to children.

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The First Islamic State at Medina

Posted on December 19, 2020 by Ruth

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.

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The Move to Medina

Posted on December 19, 2020 by Ruth

Ten years had passed since the Prophet’s first revelations, and it was increasingly clear that Mecca was not going to have a change of heart regarding the new beliefs.

Toward the end of this time, six men from the oasis of Yathrib, to the north of Mecca, met with Muhammad secretly during their pilgrimage. These six adopted the new beliefs and returned home. The following year, a much larger group came to Muhammad, and this time, they made a formal (though verbal) contract with him. In this agreement, they gave military and other protection to Muhammad and his followers, as if he were of their own kin. In turn, he promised that he would become the judge, effectively an uncrowned king, and that he would not later abandon them if the Meccans grew friendlier.

The oasis of Yathrib lay between some hills and two ancient lava beds. It had one central town, called al-Madina, “the city,” and some smaller villages at the edges of the oasis. The oasis was covered with date palms and other agriculture. In the city, the important clan leaders had built houses that were like personal fortresses. (more pictures of Medina)

There were five main clans, two of Arabs and three of Arabicized Jews (or Jewish Arabs). The two Arab clans (Aws and Khazraj) had been carrying on a feud that rose to the level of pitched battles. The battles were growing larger and bloodier, so that the city’s population would be at risk soon if they weren’t stopped. The oasis was isolated, and apart from travelers, it functioned as its own complete marketplace. A population drop would risk the whole economy collapsing.

That is why some of the men had reached out to Muhammad. The clan system had become a dead end, so they were open to something new. They needed a ruler who could be impartial among the clans. Moving from Mecca to Medina would bring an entirely new lifestyle to Muhammad’s followers, too. In Medina, the set of beliefs that they may have referred to as something like “the Abrahamic Way” came into final form as the religion we know as Islam. In Medina, the Prophet had the opportunity to make laws that supported Islam.

The process of moving to Yathrib oasis and Medina is known as the hejira. It’s often spelled Hegira in English, and it’s often capitalized. It is the founding year of the Muslim calendar, abbreviated in English “AH,” Anno Hegirae.

At first, only some of the Muslims quietly moved to Medina. We have to remember that in Mecca, they lived in their paternal-line clan quarters where they were constantly around everyone they knew. If a clan realized that ten of its families were selling their houses and moving away, it would stop them. The Arab way of life was not individualistic or isolated; moving away would be viewed as an aggression against the family. As it turned out, some families did notice what was happening. They sent armed men to stop the travelers, and they brought back their relatives under close guard. Others were able to travel light, perhaps under pretense of visiting relatives, and just not return.

Muhammad himself stayed put with his second wife and younger children, and Abu Bakr and family also stayed. Muhammad’s daughter Zaynab’s husband decided to stay, but neither had he yet embraced Islam. Uthman, who had married Muhammad’s second daughter Ruqayya, went to Medina with her. Umar, another leader, and Muhammad’s cousin Hamza and adopted son Zayd also went, though at first without their families. The plan was that as many men would get out as could, before the top leaders made a move. They tried to move as many households as possible within two months.

One day, Muhammad heard that some Quraysh men were planning to kill him at his house that night. He and Abu Bakr quickly left town, leaving Ali and the women to keep up the appearance of normality. Expected to go north, they went south, staying a few days in a cave near Mecca. Search parties fanned out for them, since a bounty of a hundred camels was on their heads. When the coast was clear, they went to Medina by taking a very long way around. At the oasis, an armed honor guard escorted Muhammad into the city as its new ruler.

The move was not complete until the last of Muhammad’s and Abu Bakr’s households had paid off debts and moved as well. Meanwhile, the Meccans tried to fit into Medina. They were from different tribes themselves, and now they had to fit in with Medina’s clans and tribes. Cross-tribal bonding became a hallmark of Islam, beginning here. Muhammad termed the native Medinans who were volunteering “the Helpers” (al-Ansar), and the Meccans, “the Emigrants.” He set up a buddy system in which one Helper was paired with one Emigrant as new-made brothers, with responsibilities to each other as though they were actually related. The buddy system didn’t work well in the long run, but it set a good tone in this first year.

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