The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Muhammad’s Career and Achievements

In Muslim belief, the religion of Islam is based on divine revelation and represents a divinely willed and established institution. In the perspective of history, the origins of Islam can be traced back to the prophetic career of Muhammad, its historical founder in the first third of the seventh century. Born around 570 in Mecca, a town in a rocky valley of the Hijaz—the northwestern quarter of the Arabian Peninsula—Muhammad began his prophetic proclamations circa 610. He appeared not as a mystic or visionary but as a prophet with the mission to convert the Quraysh, his fellow Arab tribesmen who had settled there.

The town of Mecca flourished on trade and commerce. It was built around a well, which provided a reliable yearlong water supply and held in its center the Ka‘ba, the sanctuary of the Black Stone and seat of the tribal deity Hubal. Most importantly, it was a pilgrimage site where fairs and festivals were held every year. Muhammad’s message to his fellow townsmen was based on the religious synthesis that had formed and fermented in him since his youth and that he understood to be the divine revelation that God had sent to him to proclaim. This message eventually became known as Islam, or “submission to God,” and grew into a universal and missionary religion whose current followers represent about a fifth of the world’s population. Muhammad experienced his revelations as inner promptings that inspired ad hoc utterances that he recited piecemeal to his listeners over about 20 years. These recitals were collected after his death in the Arabic Qur’an (literally, “recitation”), the holy book of Islam. They were couched in rhymed prose (saj‘), a mode of expression that facilitated memorization and distinguished them from Muhammad’s personal instructions.

Muhammad broke forth with his message, proclaiming faith in the one God (Allah), whose messenger he perceived himself to be. In God, the Prophet Muhammad recognized the divine creator of the universe and humanity as well as the final judge of all human beings on the Day of Judgment, which would bring this world to its end in an apocalyptic cataclysm. On that final day, all human beings would be raised in the general resurrection to account for their lives on Earth and enter into everlasting life in the world to come. The life offered in the hereafter would be either God’s reward of eternal bliss in paradise for those who had surrendered to His will in this world, obeying His commandments and putting them into practice, or His punishment of never-ending suffering in hellfire for those who had acted against His will by violating the divine commands and interdictions.

For some ten-odd years, Muhammad tried to convert his fellow tribesmen at Mecca to his newly found faith of Islam. Rejected by the majority of the Quraysh, however, he took flight from Mecca with a small group of followers, becoming a tribal dissident who breached the bonds of common descent with his clan, and, in 622, immigrated to Medina, situated about 200 miles to the north. Medina was a cluster of fortresses and compounds scattered over a large area. It was known as Yathrib at the time, but it later came to be called “the city of the Prophet” (madīnat al-nabī) after Muhammad had settled there. Medina was an agricultural settlement inhabited by two major Arab tribes and three smaller Jewish tribes that had assimilated to the Arab way of life and its customs, adopting the Arabic language but not the beliefs of the pre-Islamic Arab tribal religion. Medina offered the emigrants (muhājirūn) the livelihood of its fields, palm groves, and orchards and extended to them the welcome of the helpers (anṣār), a group of Medinan Arabs who accepted Islam and became brothers in faith with the emigrants. Muhammad’s emigration, known as the hijra and occurring in September 622, became the moment in history in which the small Muslim community of Medina was launched on its meteoric rise; by the time of Muhammad’s death, it had established its hold over the entire Arabian Peninsula. In the centuries after his death, both the religion and the empire of Islam spread over the Middle East, advancing westward along the North African shores of the Mediterranean into Spain and Sicily and pushing eastward across the Iranian plateau into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The first day of the lunar year in which the hijra took place came to mark the beginning of the Muslim era, and the Muslim calendar reckons its own lunar calendar from this year.

Muhammad’s time at Medina was characterized by a struggle for preeminence vis-à-vis the Meccan leadership of the Quraysh; his success in Medina represented a threat both to their authority and to their caravan trade that passed Medina on its route to Syria and Palestine. It also drew him into serious confrontations with the Jewish tribes of Medina, whose memory of their religious legacy was at variance with Muhammad’s proclamation of events surrounding major biblical figures, such as Abraham and Moses. In addition, Muhammad faced the challenge of providing leadership for his Meccan emigrants and Medinan helpers while arbitrating issues between the two Arab tribes (the Aws and Khazraj and their clients) who had emerged exhausted after a long history of fraternal feuds and their ensuing blood revenge and adjudication of blood money. Especially in the first few years at Medina, Muhammad had to deal with the “waverers” (munāfiqūn): those Medinan Arabs on whose loyalty and zeal he could not rely and whom it took time to convert. Furthermore, he had to find a means of channeling the tribal raiding tradition of the Arab clansmen away from fraternal warfare and into the constructive building of a community.

At the end of his life in 632 in Medina, Muhammad was able to claim three major achievements: the foundation of the Muslim community (umma), the proclamation of the Arabic scripture (Qur’an), and the dynamism of the “struggle on the path of God” (jihad). For the first time in history, he had united all the Arabs living in the Arabian Peninsula into one umma based no longer on the tribal principle of blood kinship and descent from a common ancestor but rather on the religious basis of a common faith expressed in the Muslim profession of faith (shahāda) that “there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” This achievement resembled a social revolution because it transformed Arab society from an unwieldy conglomeration of rivaling kinship groups into an ordered whole of individuals united by a common bond of faith. Rather than resting in the hands of freely elected tribal elders (shaykhs), community leadership rested thenceforth in the divinely chosen messenger (rasūl), to whom all owed obedience next to God. For the first time in history, Muhammad had given the Arabs a scripture in their own language that would remain the basis of their faith throughout the ages. It signified a religious revolution that uprooted the polytheistic beliefs and cultic practices of the pre-Islamic Arabs and substituted for them a strong monotheistic faith. The proclamations of this faith in the one God, understood as divine revelation, were written down and collected about two decades after the Prophet’s death in the first Arabic book ever produced: the holy writ of the Qur’an. From now on, each Arab was charged to surrender to God alone and to justify his actions before God rather than seeking protection as a clan member and living in submission to the customs of his forefathers and tribal ancestors. For the first time in history, the tribal energy of the Arab clansmen, spent in the past on nomadic raids or tribal blood feuds, became directed toward the common goal of building a coordinated polity. This polity was to be driven by jihad, which marshaled all means, whether peaceful or militant, available to the members of the community. Jihad became the engine that, through conquest, empowered the Arabs to establish a global empire and, through proselytization, propelled Islam in its missionary thrust toward its goal of a universal religion.

Muhammad’s Life from ca. 570 to 610

Western scholarship has studied the life of the Prophet assiduously and meticulously, beginning in earnest in the 19th century with F. Wüstenfeld and J. Wellhausen. The harvest of scholarship since then on the biography of the Prophet has been synthesized in two standard works: the one-volume masterpiece of F. Buhl, Das Leben Muhammeds (1934), and the two-volume set of W. M. Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (1953) and Muhammad at Medina (1956). Many studies, monographs, and articles have been added since World War II, but none has produced a radically new analysis that would change the basic assessment of Muhammad’s achievements or alter the historical development of his career. Western scholarship is ultimately based on the principal work of the traditional Islamic biography of the Prophet, known as his “way of life” (sīra). This work of Ibn Ishaq (704–767), the famous Sirat Rasul Allah (Life of God’s Messenger), is extant in the recension by Ibn Hisham (d. 833). Compiled more than a century after Muhammad’s death, it portrayed the Prophet as a revered figure and the glorified founder of the religion. Other early Islamic works that include important information on the Prophet’s life are those on his “campaigns” (maghāzī), such as the one by Waqidi (d. 823), as well as the history of Tabari (d. 923), which includes the valuable reports of ‘Urwa b. al-Zubayr (d. 712). The Qur’an itself offers limited historical data for the construction of Muhammad’s biography. On the whole, the traditional biographical literature on Muhammad neglects the early phase of his life, focusing instead on his career as a prophet, which began with his call to proclaim the Qur’an in about 610. For the early period (ca. 570–610), only a small number of historical facts were recorded, such as those concerning his humble origins, his early career as a merchant, and his marriage to a widow in Mecca.

Muhammad was born into the family of the Banu Hashim, one of the clans of the Quraysh tribe. That his birth occurred in the “Year of the Elephant” (Q. 105:1–5), when Mecca was unsuccessfully threatened by a group of Abyssinian invaders, is not based on a reliable tradition. Because his name, Muhammad (worthy of praise), can be understood as an Arabic epithet, some scholars doubt whether this actually was his given name; yet it is the name by which he is mentioned four times in the Qur’an (3:144; 33:40; 47:2; 48:29) without, however, being addressed by it directly. In general, Islamic literature addresses him by his Qur’anic titles—“the Prophet” (al-nabī) and “God’s Messenger” (rasūl Allāh)—and frequently calls him “the Chosen One” (al-muṣṭafā) and honors him with the eulogies such as “peace be upon him” and “may God bless him and grant him salvation” after his name, while Muslim mystics tend to revere him as “the beloved of God” (ḥabīb Allāh). Muhammad grew up in poverty as an orphan, his father, ‘Abdallah, having died before his birth. Raised by his mother, Amina, and looked after by his grandfather, ‘Abd al-Muttalib, he may have spent a year with a wet nurse among the nomads. His mother died when he was six years old, and his grandfather died two years later. After passing into the custodianship of his uncle Abu Talib, the young boy showed an interest in the life of a trader and merchant, possibly making a trade journey to Syria while still a young man. Noticed for his business skills by Khadija, a well-to-do merchant’s widow who was twice married before and possibly divorced, Muhammad became an agent in her employ. According to tradition, Khadija was 40 years old when she proposed marriage to him, and Muhammad was about 25 years of age. They had four daughters, who later were given in marriage to some of Muhammad’s Companions, and several sons, all of whom died in infancy.

The legendary stories that Muhammad’s breast was cleansed by angels shortly after his birth and that, in his youth, Muhammad placed the Black Stone in the wall of the Ka‘ba during its reconstruction, thereby solving a squabble of the tribal elders of Mecca for the privilege of doing so, are later creations of tradition to signify immunity from sin and leadership qualities already manifested by Muhammad as a youth. Equally doubtful are encounters in his youth with a Christian monk, named either Bahira or Nastur, who is presented as prophesying Muhammad’s later career. In his early life, Muhammad proved his mettle as a merchant, and he used a good portion of commercial vocabulary in his Qur’anic proclamations. He proved to be a responsible father, an energetic member of his clan, and a sound and capable person; this is in contrast to many discrediting assessments of his personality in European accounts from medieval times until today. Unfortunately, the traditional biographical literature tells us little about the provenance of the religious ideas Muhammad acquired during his early life. These ideas came from two principal sources: on the one hand from the religious environment into which he was born, the tribal Arab cult of pre-Islamic Arabia with its fatalistic notions and pagan practices that were observed in his hometown, and on the other hand from a medley of mainly Christian sectarian beliefs, certain Jewish practices, and some Manichean notions that he encountered during his youth in Mecca.

In Islamic historiography, the epoch of Arabia prior to the promulgation of Islam is generally called the age of “ignorance” (jāhiliyya), against which Islam is contrasted as the age of enlightenment and knowledge. The jāhiliyya was a time when the Arabs were known for their virtues of courage and bravery, their generosity and hospitality, their excesses in eating and drinking, their drinking songs and love poetry, their worship of idols and stone cults, and their beliefs in a variety of local and tribal deities, both male and female. Muhammad grew up in this environment of the jāhiliyya, as indicated by some scattered references in the Qur’an: he was found erring (93:3), did not know scripture and belief (42:52), offered animal sacrifices to deities (cf. 108:2), once brought a sheep as a sacrifice to the female deity al-‘Uzza, and believed in spirits (jinn) and demons (shayāṭīn). His uncle Abu Lahab, cursed in the Qur’an (111:1), was a violent defender of paganism, and his uncle and tribal protector Abu Talib never embraced Islam. Furthermore, Muhammad’s early Qur’anic proclamations were expressed in cryptic rhymed prose that resembled the oracles of the pre-Islamic soothsayers (kāhin). To assert their truth, he would introduce them with oaths, swearing by natural phenomena, such as the heavens and the Earth, the sky and the constellations, the sun and the moon, the stars and the planets, the dawn and the forenoon, or the fig tree and the olive tree.

Muhammad speaks of the Jews and Christians with whom he came into contact cumulatively as “possessors of the scripture” (ahl al-kitāb) without specific reference to their religious differences. It is possible that the occasional reference to Sabaeans in the Qur’an (Ṣābi’ūn, 2:62; 5:69; 22:17) implies contact with Manicheans as well. The biblical lore of Jews and Christians made an overpowering impact on Muhammad; he firmly believed that his revelations agreed with the content of their original scriptures, and on occasion he asked them for clarification of his newly found ideas (Q. 10:94). In our present state of research, it is impossible to pinpoint the sources from the Jewish-Christian background that Muhammad may have had for his religious ideas. It is certain, however, that he received his knowledge by oral information and that he had not read the scriptures of Jews and Christians. In his time, the Bible had not yet been translated into Arabic, and Muhammad was unable to read either Hebrew or Greek. In fact, only one verse of the Bible (Psalms 37:29) is quoted verbatim in the Qur’an (21:105). As a merchant he may have had a rudimentary knowledge of Arabic writing and record keeping, though it is a general Muslim perception that he was illiterate (ummī—a term that in the Qur’an means not “illiterate” but rather denotes Muhammad as “the heathen prophet,” al-nabī al-ummī; 7:157–58).

Most of the biblical lore included in the Qur’anic proclamations shows similarities with the Book of Genesis and signals midrashic or apocryphal origin. In the case of Christianity, it points to sectarian rather than normative and orthodox beliefs and possibly includes some traces of Manichean ideas. The significant number of Syriac and Ethiopic loan words in the Qur’an further document that Muhammad not only assimilated elements of biblical and extra-biblical lore but also absorbed some foreign ritual vocabulary. Furthermore, the Qur’an retains traces that reveal Muhammad’s rather distinct knowledge of circumstances linked with Mount Sinai, its monastery, and the tradition of the burning bush (28:29–30; 44–6; 52:1–6; 95:2). It also shows some familiarity on his part with Christian prayer practices and some awareness of the lives of Christian hermits. There is not sufficient evidence, however, to link Muhammad with particular Christian monks as his teachers. In general, all information about Christian themes and topics came to him by word of mouth, probably through contact with Christian traders or slaves in Mecca itself. Some scholars refer to accounts in Muslim tradition that signal Waraqa b. Nawfal, a cousin of his wife Khadija, as a possible channel of Christian ideas for Muhammad. Most of these accounts, however, treat him as one of the ḥanīfs, or seekers of a pure worship of God, who were dissatisfied with idol worship and inspired by an innate monotheistic belief. It should not be overlooked, however, that pre-Islamic Arabia was exposed on its borders to Christian beliefs. There were Christians living in Najran in Yemen in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, and Arab principalities had formed on the northern fringes of the Arabian desert: these included the Ghassanids, who adhered to a Monophysite creed, and the Lakhmids, who had adopted Nestorian beliefs.

Muhammad’s Career in Mecca from ca. 610 to 622

In about 610 Muhammad began to proclaim his message at a decisive moment of his life when he suddenly broke through to the unshakeable conviction that he had to proclaim to the people of Mecca the inner promptings he received as the word of God. Muslim tradition places this event—“his call to prophecy”—in a cave on a mountain outside Mecca, when he was impelled to recite, “Recite in the name of your Lord who created . . .” (Q. 96:1–5). Tradition describes him as experiencing states of spiritual excitement and ecstatic seizures; at times he asked to be wrapped (Q. 73:1; 74:1) in a mantle, and his cryptic speech resembled the words of a magician (sāḥir) possessed by demonic forces (majnūn). According to tradition, he hesitated for an “interval” (fatra) of three years before he came forward publicly with his message, but then he continued fearlessly persevering in proclaiming it until his death. When explaining his revelations, Muhammad conceived of them as originating from an archetypal book (umm al-kitāb, Q. 43:3), a guarded tablet (lawḥ maḥfūẓ, Q. 85:22), kept in the presence of the angels, its noble scribes (Q. 80,15–16). Rather than reading this heavenly book, Muhammad received from it individual revelations of a few verses at a time, orally communicated to him by a spirit of revelation later identified as the angel Gabriel (Q. 2:97).

The content of his proclamations was focused on praise for God the Creator and the warnings of God the Judge, the one and only God, Allah. Muhammad saw himself as both a “warner” (nadhīr) of an apocalyptic end of the world followed by an eschatological punishment for unbelievers and a “bringer of good tidings” (bashīr) about God as the bountiful creator of the heavens and the Earth as well as the fashioner of each and every human being. His most prominent role was that of a prophet who proclaimed an uncompromising monotheism centered on God who had neither partners nor associates. He singled out the prophets of old as prototypical recipients of revelation in history and referred to them by their biblical names in Arabic, such as Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim (Abraham), and Musa (Moses), as well as certain heroes of pre-Islamic Arab lore. He made no reference, however, to any of the great prophets of the Bible, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, yet he mentioned central figures of the gospels, such as Yahya (John the Baptist) and ‘Isa b. Maryam (Jesus, son of Mary), the Messiah (masīḥ); he saw himself standing in line with these prophets of old as their final representative, the “seal of the prophets.”

At first, Muhammad’s proclamations were given little attention by most Meccans. They made an impact, however, on a small group who became his followers, honored in history as the first Muslim converts. Among them were his wife Khadija; his cousin ‘Ali, a youth at the time; the well-to-do merchant Abu Bakr, who adhered to him with unswerving loyalty; as well as a handful of young men who would later play a significant role in the succession struggles to Muhammad’s leadership of the community. One early convert to Islam, perhaps the first, was Zayd b. Haritha, a slave bought in Syria and given by Khadija to Muhammad, who freed and adopted him. Ten years younger than Muhammad, he hailed from the region of Dumat al-Jandal, an oasis halfway between Mecca and Damascus, where the idol Wadd was worshipped and a considerable Christian colony had found shelter. Until his death in 629 as standard bearer of the Muslim forces on an unsuccessful expedition at Mu’ta against Arabs on Byzantine soil in Transjordan, Zayd b. Haritha remained very close to the Prophet; his extreme solicitude for Muhammad may be seen in the fact that he divorced his wife Zaynab a few years after the hijra so that the Prophet might marry her.

The Meccans stiffened in their opposition to Muhammad’s revelations when they realized that his message attacked their tribal religion and its polytheistic pantheon, threatening their authority and trade by challenging their tribal oligarchy and endangering their fairs. When their opposition turned into persecution, Muhammad sent a group of weaker followers away to seek the protection of the Christian ruler of Abyssinia in a migration (hijra), which occurred about 615 (most of these emigrants drifted back later to rejoin their Muslim brethren). In Mecca itself, Muhammad tried to gain the goodwill of the Meccans by accepting as special intercessors with God their three favorite female deities, whom they worshipped as “daughters of Allah.” These three goddesses were al-Lat, a solar deity, who had her sanctuary in a valley near Tai’f, a neighboring town of Mecca; al-‘Uzza, an astral deity, to whom animal sacrifices were made at her sanctuary in an acacia grove located in a valley on the road from Mecca to Tai’f; and Manat, the goddess of fate and death, whose sanctuary was a Black Stone on the road from Mecca to Medina. Realizing that the recognition of “daughters of Allah” harmed his radically monotheistic message, Muhammad withdrew this compromise and abrogated it by altering the relevant verses included in the Qur’an (53:19–23). The most trying hostile scheme of Muhammad’s Meccan adversaries, however, occurred about 616, when the tribesmen of the Quraysh engaged in a full tribal boycott of the Banu Hashim, Muhammad’s clan. Although most of the Banu Hashim, including his custodian Abu Talib, had not accepted Islam, the clan stood by Muhammad in loyalty to their tribal code of honor and protected him during this difficult period. Only his uncle Abu Lahab, together with his wife, remained resolute in his hostility toward Muhammad (Q. 111:1). This boycott failed, however, because it proved to be more of a disruption to the communal life in Mecca than a successful step to silence Muhammad.

Most scholars place Muhammad’s vision of a miraculous night journey (isrā’) in the later period of his life at Mecca. According to the legend, Muhammad was carried by a flying steed in the company of the angel Gabriel from the sacred area of the Ka‘ba to the “farthest place of worship” (Q. 17:1), interpreted as either the temple precinct in Jerusalem or the place of prayer of the angels in heaven. Furthermore, Muslim tradition links the nocturnal journey with Muhammad’s ascension to heaven (mi‘rāj). This heavenly ascent, seen as initiation to his prophetic career, would need to be placed at the beginning of his Qur’anic proclamations. Though connected with a vision recorded in the Qur’an (53:1–18; 81:19–25) in which Muhammad is approached by a heavenly figure rather than being carried off, this would seem to refer to a separate experience. The interpretation of the Prophet’s ascension to heaven as an ascent through the seven heavens into the very presence of God, with Muhammad passing beyond the spheres of other prophets (among them Adam, Jesus, Abraham, and Moses), is a further elaboration of Muslim tradition. According to the legend, Muhammad began his heavenly ascent from the rock in Jerusalem, which became associated with the Dome of the Rock, the symbol of Islam’s triumph over Judaism and Christianity, erected in about 694 by the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik on the temple precinct of Jerusalem and opposite the hill crowned by the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Certain significant events occurred during the last third of Muhammad’s prophetic activity in Mecca. In about 618, ‘Umar b. al-Khattab, a young man of a certain social status, converted to Muhammad’s cause and became one of his strongest supporters as well as the founder of the Arab Empire about a decade after Muhammad’s death. ‘Umar’s joining of the Muslims in Mecca, however, was followed in the next year by the deaths of Khadija and Abu Talib, resulting in a loss of both deep personal and strong tribal support. Exhausted and discouraged by the obstinate opposition of the Meccans to his reforms and unsuccessful in his initiative to find a welcoming audience for his proclamations in Tai’f, Muhammad came to despair of converting his fellow townsmen, convinced that God had destined them to unbelief. At this point in time, he realized that he had to cut the blood bonds with his tribe and find a new theater for his message to be accepted. At this juncture, something happened that was beyond his control.

The settlement of Medina had reached an impasse in its communal life due to tribal warfare and bloodshed between the Aws and Khazraj, the two major Arab tribes living in the town together with three smaller Jewish tribes that were drawn into the altercations. Because of this predicament, the inhabitants of Medina were looking for a political leader who could arbitrate their tribal conflicts. Muhammad, for his part, was looking for a new environment that would be receptive to his teachings. Medina answered this need. It had been prepared for a monotheistic message and the vision of a history of prophets through the presence of the three Jewish tribes—the Banu Qaynuqa’, Banu al-Nadir, and Banu Qurayza—who had settled in the town before the arrival of the Aws and Khazraj. At the same time, it offered Muhammad a platform to combine his role as a prophetical reformer with that of a political leader. It so happened that some peasants from Medina, who had come as pilgrims to Mecca, saw Muhammad as the person who could provide the solution to their communal strife. Muhammad found willing listeners for his message among them, and in 621, he met about a dozen of them on the hill ‘Aqaba outside Mecca. A year later, a formal pledge was made at the same place between him and a group of 73 men and 2 women from Medina that they would receive him and his followers as brethren into their community and offer them their tribal protection by the force of arms if necessary. On the basis of this “pledge of war” (bay‘at al-ḥarb), Muhammad had successive groups of his followers leave Mecca for Medina and then finally left the town himself with Abu Bakr and ‘Ali, hiding in a cave, according to tradition, as the Meccans were in pursuit. The Meccans failed in their attempt to prevent Muhammad’s group of fugitive dissidents from forming a new polity allied with other tribal groups in the neighboring town of Medina.

Muhammad’s Career in Medina from 622 to 632

The emigration from Mecca to Medina in 622, known as the hijra, was to become a key historical event, marking as it did the decisive moment Muhammad became an exemplary political leader. Muhammad integrated the people of Medina into one cohesive community by subsuming the Arab tribal elements into his community and by eventually eliminating the Jewish tribes altogether from the town. With regard to the Arabs, Muhammad could rely on two groups: the muhājirūn, who were firmly identified with his message and had given up their livelihood and left their homes, and the anṣār, the group of tribesmen (mainly belonging to the Khazraj but some also to the Aws), who welcomed him and his followers into their midst and accepted Islam wholeheartedly. Henceforth the Muslim community of believers, established by and loyal to Muhammad, would be founded on these two groups who acquired rights of kinship with one another rooted not in common blood but rather in common faith. Many people of Medina, however, remained noncommittal toward Muhammad and as such were identified as “hypocrites” (munāfiqūn), turncoats on whose loyalty Muhammad could not rely, and “waverers,” who irritated him because of their reluctant support and persistent doubt about his message. They were led by ‘Abdallah b. Ubayy, a rather irresolute leader of the Khazraj who did not manage to organize them into an opposition to Muhammad; he did, however, incite the three smaller Jewish tribes to resist Muhammad but left them in the lurch when it came to blows.

It is not known whether the three Jewish tribes living in Medina, each of them about 500 to 800 men, were descendants from Hebrew stock or Arabs who had adopted Judaism. They spoke Arabic, lived according to Arab customs, and were organized as tribal units but held to basic religious principles and practices of Judaism. Muhammad called the Jews (yahūd) “children of Israel,” knew that they followed the laws of Moses, and was aware that they had their own scripture (called Tawrat in the Qur’an) and the psalms of David (called Zabur). Among the Jewish tribes that settled in Medina, the Banu Qaynuqa’ lived in two strongholds in the southwest of the town, becoming clients of the Khazraj; as they did not possess any lands, they made their livelihood by trading. Muhammad perceived them as a challenge to his message, obstructing his way with their religious claims and mockeries of his person. He would eventually expel them from Medina after the Battle of Badr in 624, demanding that their arms and tools be left behind for the Muslims and taking a fifth of the spoils for himself. The Banu al-Nadir, believed to have come from Palestine at an unknown date, had connections with the Jews of the oasis of Khaybar and probably had an admixture of Arab blood in their veins. Though they bore Arabic names, they spoke their own peculiar dialect and lived in fortified compounds half a day’s journey to the south of Medina. They were clients of the Aws and entered into alliance with Muhammad in the first year after the hijra. Muhammad, however, became suspicious of them and feared that they intended to kill him. Laying siege on them and cutting down their palm trees, he forced them to surrender and made them leave with their possessions to the oasis of Khaybar and Syria; he gave their lands to the emigrants and kept part of them for himself. The Banu Qurayza, related to the Banu al-Nadir, lived as agriculturalists of cereals and palms on lands outside the city to the southeast of Medina. They were known to have adhered firmly to Jewish traditions and had intermarried with Arabs, becoming allied with the Aws. After the Battle of the Trench (khandaq) in 627, they were made to surrender unconditionally; the men were put to the sword and their women and children sold as slaves. It remains a mystery why the Jewish tribes did not rally together to prevent their expulsion from Medina.

In Medina, facing the task of creating a united community—bringing together emigrants and helpers, overcoming the reluctance of the “waverers,” and dealing with the Jewish tribes—Muhammad displayed considerable political acumen. After establishing a link of brotherhood between the emigrants and helpers, he realized that he needed a practical mechanism to form a true unity of highly different and incongruous elements of the Medinan society. He pursued this end soon after the hijra by promulgating a document, recorded in his biography, known as the “Constitution of Medina” (ṣaḥīfat al-Madīna); it may be considered authentic. This legal document drafted on Muhammad’s initiative had two sections: the first defining the duties of the believers (mu’minūn), including both emigrants and helpers from various clans of the Aws and Khazraj, and the second guaranteeing the rights of the yahūd and their clients. It was a significant document of brotherly solidarity that formed the foundation for the communal life of the umma, now no longer based on the traditional tribal system of blood kinship groups. Indeed, it broke up the tribal system of Medina by severing links of some of its tribesmen, based on common blood, and bonded the helpers with the emigrants who belonged to the Quraysh, a separate blood kinship group. From now on, this new political order of society would make a radical distinction between those loyal to Muhammad and those who did not follow him. As a consequence, it fortified Muhammad’s position as the highest authority, next to God, of the newly established community and demonstrated the eminent practical sense of purpose with which he established himself as the political leader of the new polity in Medina.

When Muhammad arrived in Medina, he came with the firm conviction of his status as the bearer of a revelation in Arabic that confirmed the revelations “the possessors of the scriptures” had received in their own languages. In this spirit he tried to win over the local Jews by adopting their fast on the day of atonement (‘āshūrā’), introducing the midday prayer (al-ṣalāt al-wusṭā, Q. 2:238) in emulation of Jewish custom, easing the rules of ablutions before prayer, and maintaining the direction (qibla) of the ritual prayer (salat) toward Jerusalem. He soon realized, however, that he misjudged their openness to his message when they ridiculed his version of biblical stories due to discrepancies with their own traditional lore. In a religious sense, it was not possible for the Jewish tribes of Medina to welcome an Arab as their promised Messiah or accept Muhammad’s claim to be “the seal of the prophets” (khātam al-nabiyyīn, Q. 33:40)—a title Mani (216–77), the founder of Manicheanism, had applied to himself—and whose coming Jesus is said to have predicted in the Qur’an under the name of Ahmad (Q. 61:6). Faced with overwhelming rejection from the Jews, Muhammad abruptly reoriented his religion, transforming it into an Arab religion focused on the sanctuary of the Black Stone in Mecca and dismissing the existing Jewish and Christian scriptures as a corruption of their original revealed form. He ordered that the direction of ritual prayer be changed toward the Ka‘ba, making Mecca the hub of the true religion (Q. 2:144). He stressed Friday as the day of congregational prayer (Q. 62:9) yet not as a day of rest like the Sabbath because, in his view, God did not rest after his work of creation. Substituting for the fast on ‘āshūrā’, he instituted, following Manichean custom, the lunar month of Ramadan (Q. 2:183–5) as a month of fasting from daybreak until sunset requiring abstention from food, drink, and sexual intercourse during daylight hours. He introduced what was to become an essential element of the Muslim pilgrimage (hajj) by celebrating the day of sacrifice on the tenth day of the month of pilgrimage (Dhu al-Hijja) in Medina, and most of all, he identified Islam as a restoration of the primordial religion of Abraham (millat Ibrāhīm). Abraham, neither a Jew nor a Christian, thus became the prototype of the true Muslim and ḥanīf, the monotheist who had rejected all pagan polytheism. He now maintained that Abraham, assisted by his son Isma‘il, had erected the Ka‘ba (Q. 2:127) and celebrated the rites there that Muhammad sought to restore to their original purity.

Distancing himself somewhat from his identity as a prophet called to warn people of an oncoming apocalyptic judgment and to confirm the revelations other groups of people had received in their own languages before him, Muhammad now embraced his new role as legislator and leader of the burgeoning Muslim community. It now became the duty of his followers to obey God and the Prophet. He pursued his newfound role not only in Medina but also in his relations with the Meccans, who constituted the major challenge he faced outside Medina. With Mecca as the focus of his religious thrust and with the responsibility of providing sustenance for his group of emigrants, Muhammad turned his attention to Mecca and focused the energies of the Arab tribesmen who were accustomed to raiding. His altercations with the Meccans, developing from skirmishes to full-fledged war, were driven by the idea of jihad, the all-out struggle on the path of God that demanded the total devotion of his Muslim followers such that they would go to war against the Quraysh of Mecca.

A new chapter began in the life of Muhammad and that of his community with a sequence of battles with the Meccans. A first instance of war was triggered by a raid made by some of Muhammad’s followers on a caravan at the oasis of Nakhla. In it a Meccan was killed during the holy month of Rajab, in which raiding was forbidden by current pre-Islamic custom, and the spoils of his operations were taken to Medina. Emboldened by this success, Muhammad led a group of his Medinan followers in a new raid on a caravan of the Quraysh that was advancing from Syria to Mecca. In their attempt to ambush the caravan at Badr in 624, Muhammad’s small contingent was forced to engage an army sent from Mecca to protect the caravan (Q. 3:123); surprisingly, however, they succeeded in routing the superior enemy, whose leader Abu Jahl was slain. Muhammad interpreted his glorious victory as divine confirmation of his religion and believed that angels fought at his side, enabling him to overpower the forces of the mighty commercial hub of Arabia. Islamic historiography upholds this day as a great watershed in the course of Muslim ascendancy as granted by divine assistance. To follow up on his victory, Muhammad not only expelled the Banu Qaynuqa’ but, more importantly, sent letters to Bedouin tribes to contract alliances of mutual assistance with them, now recognized as a leader well beyond the confines of Medina. Trying to avenge their losses at Badr, the Meccans equipped an army of 3,000 men and sent them against Muhammad’s forces in 625 under the leadership of Abu Sufyan, defeating them decisively at the hill of Uhud outside Medina (Q. 3:118, 121; 33:23). In this battle Muhammad was severely wounded and his uncle Hamza was killed. The Meccans, however, did not follow up on their victory and returned home thinking that they had put the upstart in Medina in his place; for his part, Muhammad expelled the Banu al-Nadir from the town and confiscated their possessions in order to replace the spoils his force had failed to secure in the battle.

Further harassed by Muhammad’s raiders and realizing that their assessment of their victory at Uhud was premature, the Meccans assembled a force of Quraysh and tribesmen from the surrounding areas, specified as 10,000 men in the tradition, to advance against Medina in 627. Whether or not this was at the suggestion of a Persian by the name of Salman, Muhammad had a trench (khandaq) dug around the unprotected parts of Medina, which caused a long siege to drag on and gave Muhammad time to plot against the besieging force, who eventually lost heart and returned home without ever engaging in open battle. In the aftermath of the “Battle of the Trench,” Muhammad felt free to deal harshly with the Banu Qurayza, executing their men and selling their women and children into slavery.

Still intent on bringing Mecca under his control, Muhammad called on a group of his followers in 628 to accompany him on a peaceful pilgrimage (‘umra) to the Ka‘ba in Mecca; in the process he tried to negotiate his way into the town. He encamped with his group at Hudaybiyya and sent ‘Uthman b. ‘Affan, who was related to the Meccan leadership, ahead to make arrangements for their peaceful passage. When ‘Uthman did not return at first, Muhammad had his men swear an oath that they would fight for him to the last. This proved to be unnecessary when the Meccans offered the compromise proposal of a ten-year truce that would allow Muhammad to visit the town for a pilgrimage in the following year. Muhammad accepted this proposal, but his followers were disappointed by this apparent about-face, though history would later call it a stroke of brilliance on Muhammad’s part to induce the Meccans to recognize a tribal dissident as an opponent of equal rank.

Muhammad made use of the lull in the struggle with the Meccans to capture the oasis of Khaybar in 628 and constrained its Jewish inhabitants to pay taxes every year. However, the tradition that holds that, in the same year, Muhammad began to send letters to the governor of Alexandria, the ruler of Abyssinia, the Byzantine emperor, and the Persian king, inviting them to adopt Islam, cannot be trusted. More certain is his dispatching of letters to chiefs of Bedouin tribes in different parts of Arabia, demanding that they join the fold of Islam, perform the ritual prayer, and pay the alms tax (zakat) incumbent on every Muslim. In the following year, 629, Muhammad performed the pilgrimage to the Ka‘ba as agreed and welcomed Khalid b. al-Walid, later a great general of the Muslim conquests, into Islam. Khalid b. al-Walid proved his mettle soon thereafter in 630 when he subdued the inhabitants of Dumat al-Jandal and forced their leader to come to Medina to sign a treaty with Muhammad. Then in the Battle of ‘Aqraba’ in 632, Khalid b. al-Walid crushed the apostasy of the tribes after the Prophet’s death and defeated Musaylima b. Thumama, the leader of the Banu Hanifa, who inhabited the oasis of Yamama in central Arabia. Musaylima rivaled Muhammad with his claim to be a prophet and to receive revelations from God the Merciful (al-Raḥmān). He aspired to be Muhammad’s successor after his death, but when both of them met in Medina, the Prophet had him summarily dismissed, refusing to give him “even a splinter of a palm branch.”

Using the pretext of a conflict that led to bloodshed between two tribal bands—one affiliated with him, the other with the Quraysh—Muhammad broke the ten-year truce of Hudaybiyya and set out to conquer Mecca at the head of an army of emigrants, helpers, and Bedouin tribesmen. They were met in the field by Abu Sufyan, the leader of the Quraysh, who accepted Muhammad’s terms and received lavish gifts for himself and other chiefs of the Quraysh. The town of Mecca was opened to Muhammad’s forces, and its inhabitants nominally adopted Islam en masse; the idols were destroyed and some poets who had ridiculed Muhammad were executed. In 630, then, Muhammad achieved his ultimate victory, the conquest of Mecca, and was able to defeat a remaining hostile alliance of Bedouin tribes from central Arabia at Hunayn, after which the town of Ta’if was opened to him as well. Muhammad sent letters to various tribes, demanding that they adopt Islam and pay tribute, and he received their embassies in Medina. However, there were some signs of inner division among the Muslims, caused by a rival “mosque of dissension” (masjid al-ḍirār, Q. 9:108–9) where Muhammad, in his early years at Medina, used to perform a ritual prayer on the Sabbath. In fact, this mosque was the first established in Medina, founded by the exiled Abu ‘Amir, “the monk” (al-rāhib), of the clan ‘Amr b. ‘Awf, who lived in the compounds at Quba’ in the southern part of the town. The unrest did not prevent Muhammad, however, from setting out in 630 on an expedition to Tabuk on the northern border of Arabia, where he received some petty Christian rulers and Jewish towns into Islam. New converts from tribes all over Arabia formally entered Islam—many out of fear, others more nominally than fervently—in hope of material and political advantages.

It is not fully clear to what extent Muhammad perceived his message to be a local or a universal one. At the beginning of his mission he directed his message primarily toward the people of Mecca (qawm), just as the prophets of old spoke to their own people, but he also addressed all of humanity (al-nās, al-‘ālamūn) without confining his audience to a specific group. The expeditions to Mu’ta and Tabuk across the northern borders of the Arabian Peninsula in the latter years of his career may indicate a shift in his consciousness toward a more universal applicability of his message. In addition, Muhammad sent letters from Medina to numerous Arab tribes in the desert demanding their conversion and received tribal delegations in Medina from all over Arabia in the last years of his life. They pledged their allegiance to his cause, a phase described by the Qur’an as being characterized by “men entering God’s religion in throngs” (Q. 110:2). The actual spread of Islam beyond the confines of Arabia, however, did not occur during Muhammad’s lifetime but would come about with astonishing rapidity during the age of the Muslim conquests that began shortly after his death. In 631, Muhammad sent Abu Bakr to Mecca to read a declaration of “exemption” (barā’a) from the hajj that excluded all pagans from performing it. Then, in 632, at the climax of his career, Muhammad performed his “Farewell Pilgrimage”—referred to in the Qur’an with the words “Today I have perfected your religion” (Q. 5:3)—that reformed some of the pagan rites and became the standard of the pilgrimage until today. On his way back to Medina from the pilgrimage, Muhammad had stopped at the watering place of Ghadir Khumm and, taking ‘Ali b. Abi Talib by his hand, apparently signaled him to be his successor as leader of the Muslim community with the cryptic words, “For whomever I am the patron (mawlā), ‘Ali is also his patron.” A few months later, Muhammad died in Medina after a short fever in the lap of his beloved wife ‘A’isha on June 8, 632, a day that according to tradition saw an eclipse of the sun.

Throughout history all factions within Islam have maintained that prophecy, in the sense of the proclamation of a sacred scripture, had come to an end for all times with Muhammad’s demise. In political terms, however, an intense struggle for succession began immediately during the preparations for his burial. Abu Bakr, ‘A’isha’s father and an early Meccan convert, managed to secure the leadership, backed by the majority of the clans of the Quraysh, who acclaimed him as Muhammad’s successor (khalīfa, or caliph) at the Portico of the Banu Sa‘ida. ‘Ali, Muhammad’s cousin, son-in-law, hero of many battles, and a man of great merits, was pushed aside despite his legitimate claim to being Muhammad’s successor as champion of the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt) and leader of the Banu Hashim. A major bone of contention was that, during Muhammad’s career at Medina, his family was assigned a certain religious privilege that entitled Muhammad and his kin to a fifth (khums) of the war booty as well as property (fay’) that came into possession of the community by means other than war. Upon his accession to leadership, Abu Bakr stripped the family of the Prophet of this entitlement and transferred it to the clans of the Quraysh, thereby solidifying their support for his caliphate (632–34). In this succession struggle lie the roots of the primary Islamic schism between the majority Sunnis and the minority Shi‘is, the party of ‘Ali (Shi‘at ‘Ali). In its origin, the ultimate issue driving the schism was political and material rather than religious and spiritual; in the history of the ideological development of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in Islam, however, it took on theological dimensions.

Muhammad as a Political Leader

That one man could achieve so much in such a short time is astounding. Muhammad can truly claim the status of one of humanity’s greatest founders of religion who made a global impact over more than a millennium and whose cause continues to exert a worldwide attraction today. His message has stood the test of time for more than a thousand years, and his community has grown steadily over the centuries. Except in small corners of the Muslim world, Islam has never receded but rather has always expanded without losing any substantial region to any other religion. Throughout history, conversions from Islam to other religions have been rare and conversions to it plentiful.

Inasmuch as it can be gathered from the sources, Muhammad was a man of average height and sturdy build. He had a prominent forehead, a hooked nose, and black eyes. His hair was long and slightly curled and his beard was full and thick. His charming smile was endearing and his energetic stride difficult to keep pace with. He experienced periods of silence and withdrawal and was at times plunged into deep thought and meditation. He showed great self-control and spoke with clarity, frankness, and precision. He treated people with great friendliness, was fond of children, and was apt to break into tears during moments of grief and sadness. He lived in modest circumstances all his life and was known for his courage, impartiality, and resolve. Most of all, Muhammad was a deeply religious man whose strongest characteristic was, without doubt, his deep personal conviction that he was called by God. This consciousness of a call from God gave him an unshakeable faith in his divine mission. On the strength of this conviction, he persisted in proclaiming his message of an uncompromising monotheism over more than 20 years in the face of all adversities and hostilities, whether in times of disappointment or in moments of success. He was a charismatic personality with enormous leadership qualities, stupendous political gifts, and persuasive diplomatic skills. He commanded intellectual superiority at critical moments of his career and was capable of savvy and executive decision making, even if this required an abrupt reversal of approach. He was a very practical man who found ways to compromise and adapt when presented with unforeseen circumstances. He showed an uncanny ability to maneuver through the labyrinth of tribal bonds, rivalries, and compacts. His strong personality gave him real power to influence others and win them over to his cause. After his death, his followers began to regard him as the model of the ideal Muslim and the perfect Prophet, placing him on the highest pedestal and attributing to him the qualities of impeccability and infallibility as well as the powers of intercession for his community at the Last Judgment.

Contrary to the oft-repeated claim that Muhammad functioned as a religious reformer and prophet in Mecca and became a political leader and statesman only in Medina, his qualities of political leadership were already evident during his Meccan days. From the beginning of his preaching in Mecca, Muhammad showed great political skills in building a network of followers woven together from family relations, young men belonging to influential clans of Meccan society, men nominally related to clans but without close ties to them, and a few older men of considerable social standing. It was essential for him to establish these bonds because, as an orphan, he lacked the natural protective power of the nucleus of his family and faced hostility from his uncles Abu Lahab, a determined opponent, and ‘Abbas, who joined his cause only reluctantly after the conquest of Mecca, while his uncle Abu Talib granted him loyal protection but never accepted Islam.

Muhammad’s political acumen may also be seen in the way he strengthened his bonds with the core group of his followers through ties of marriage. Through his marriage with ‘A’isha, Abu Bakr’s daughter, and Hafsa, ‘Umar’s daughter, he established family bonds that tied him to the two caliphs who would succeed him at the head of his community. His marriages with widows of Companions who died in warfare or women who belonged to the group that early on had migrated to Abyssinia served to strengthen his bonds with his community early in the Medinan phase of his career. Other unions established links with a Jewish woman of the Banu al-Nadir in Medina and a Christian woman given to him by the ruler of Egypt. By giving his own daughters, Ruqayya and Umm Kulthum, to ‘Uthman in marriage, he forged a bond with a representative of an opposing clan who became his third successor. ‘Ali, the fourth caliph who became the leader of the Shi‘a, received Fatima, a third daughter from Muhammad’s union with Khadija, as his spouse and also married the daughter of Muhammad’s oldest daughter, Zaynab.

Two other political moves of great consequence include his decision to send a group of weaker members of his following in Mecca to Abyssinia and his decision to go with his group of emigrants as dissidents and fugitives on the hijra to Medina. The negotiations he held with the emissaries of the Medinans and the pledges he made with them shortly before the hijra paved the way for his subsequent political leadership in Medina. The draft of his first legal document soon after his arrival in Medina shows his sharp political insight into the new circumstances he and his followers faced in the new urban environment. It constituted the foundation of the social unity of the community established by Muhammad, integrated the Meccan immigrants with the Medinan helpers, and provided clauses of security for Jewish believers. With regard to military planning and strategy, Muhammad’s political gifts may be seen in the way in which he calmly conducted the Battle of Badr, decided on an innovative form of defense at the “War of the Trench,” and pragmatically reversed his position to arrive at a solution at the truce of Hudaybiyya. In the years after the conquest of Mecca, he exhibited shrewd political instincts in drafting the many treatises he concluded and in exacting tribute from the inhabitants of a number of oases, such as those with the people of Dumat al-Jandal in 630 and the Christians of Najran in northern Yemen in 631. In these later years of his activity he also forged alliances of mutual assistance and established ties of political dependence with many Arab tribesmen by sending a large number of delegations all over Arabia that served to tie them to his personal political authority. In all these political actions, Muhammad was led by a sense of flexible and adaptable pragmatism rather than by preset principles of political theory and may thus be considered a genius in the field of applied political practice.