The Charter of Madinah

Part oneA city of many clans

Picture Madinah in its early days under the Prophet ﷺ. It lay some 350 kilometres north of Makkah, a green oasis between fields of black volcanic rock. It was not one tidy town but a scatter of farms, wells, forts and clan quarters. The Aws and the Khazraj were the two largest Arab tribes of the oasis. Several Jewish tribes also lived there, among them the Banu Qaynuqa, who worked as goldsmiths and traders, and the Banu Nadir and Banu Qurayza, who owned farms. Now the Muhajirun from Makkah had joined them.

The city had a sore history. The Aws and the Khazraj had fought many wars, and the Jewish tribes had been drawn in as allies on different sides. A few years earlier the bloody fighting at Bu'ath had left everyone exhausted. This is a large part of why the people of Madinah had asked the Prophet ﷺ to come. They wanted a trusted person who could settle disputes and end the cycle of revenge.

Not everyone welcomed the change. Some who accepted Islam in name held back in their hearts. They are called the munafiqun, the hypocrites, and Abdullah ibn Ubayy, a respected leader of the Khazraj, is the best known. Some Jewish people of Madinah did accept Islam, among them the scholar Abdullah ibn Salam (may Allah be pleased with him). Others kept their faith, and the Prophet ﷺ found common ground with them. When he saw them fasting on the day that remembers Musa's deliverance from Pharaoh, he said the Muslims had a closer claim to Musa, and he fasted that day too.

A city with so many different interests needed agreed rules, written down and understood by all.

Part twoWhat the charter said

The agreement is known as the Charter of Madinah, or the Sahifah. It is preserved in the early biographies and is among the earliest documents from the Prophet's ﷺ life. Accounts differ on exactly when it was written, and on whether it began as one document or several. All agree it belongs to the first years in Madinah.

It lists the clans of Madinah one by one, among them the Banu Awf, the Banu Najjar and the Banu Sa'idah, and it speaks of the believers of Quraysh and of Yathrib, and those who joined them, as one community, an ummah, set apart from other people. It also names the Jewish tribes of Madinah and treats them as part of the city's alliance. They would keep their own religion, and the Muslims would keep theirs. The word ummah meant something broader in this document than it usually does today. The Jewish tribes were described as joining with the believers as one community for defence and mutual help, each keeping its own faith.

The main terms

• Everyone party to the agreement was to defend Madinah together if it was attacked, and each group would bear its own costs.
• No one was to help a wrongdoer, shelter a criminal or support an outsider against the community. Each person answered for his own wrongdoing.
• A neighbour under someone's protection was to be treated as that person himself, without harm or injustice.
• Believers were not to leave a debtor or a man with a large family without help.
• No one was to make a separate peace in the middle of a fight.
• Existing customs for paying blood money and ransoming prisoners continued, with fairness as the standard.
• Madinah was declared a sanctuary for those who were party to it. Disputes that could not be settled among themselves were to be taken to the Prophet ﷺ.

The Quraysh were named too. The agreement said that no one should give protection to the Quraysh or to those who helped them. The city was making it clear whom it stood with.

This set Madinah apart from the tribal world around it. In Arabia, a person's safety depended entirely on his clan. In Madinah, safety was now guaranteed by the whole community and by written terms. The Prophet ﷺ was both a leader and a judge whom people of different backgrounds agreed to trust.

Part threeThe charter in practice

A document only works if people keep it, and Madinah's years ahead would test it. The Quraysh remained hostile. The Muslims were few and still poor. Not everyone in the city was equally at ease with the new order.

Over the next years, each of the three large Jewish tribes of Madinah came into conflict with the Muslims, as the next chapters show. Historians and scholars have long discussed the causes. The Charter still shows what the Prophet ﷺ first offered: a shared city and the right to follow one's own faith.

Its tone is practical. It does not preach or argue. It tells a city of rival clans how they will protect one another, who will carry which burden and where they will take a quarrel before it becomes a feud. The Prophet ﷺ is named as the one to whom serious disputes return. For the people who had invited him, that was exactly what they had hoped for.

Many people call it the first constitution in Islamic history. It was not a constitution in the modern sense, with courts and parliaments. It was a promise between neighbours, which put in writing that people of different religions could live in one city under common rules.

In Arabia, a person's safety depended entirely on his clan. In Madinah, safety was now guaranteed by the whole community and by written terms.

WatchLectures for this chapter

Lecture Towards EternityO Messenger, Ep. 5: The Hijrah (opens on YouTube)

Lecture Islamic GuidanceNew Legislations Made With The Leaders Of Madinah (Seerah of Muhammad, part 50) (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• The quarters of the Aws
• the quarters of the Khazraj
• the lands of the Banu Qaynuqa
• the lands of the Banu Nadir
• the lands of the Banu Qurayza

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter