The Hijra

The Islamic calendar does not count from the birth of the Prophet, nor from the first revelation, nor from any victory. It counts from the year in which Muhammad and his followers left Mecca for the oasis town of Yathrib, which became Medina, the city of the Prophet. The era was instituted under the caliph Umar some years afterwards, and the choice of starting point was a deliberate judgment about what had actually begun.

The migration followed years of pressure at Mecca, where the small community had been boycotted, harassed and in some cases driven to seek refuge in Ethiopia. The move north was arranged with representatives of Yathrib who had accepted the Prophet's message and invited him to arbitrate among the town's feuding groups, a role that made him a public authority rather than the leader of a persecuted sect.

What the choice of era says is that Islam dates itself from the point at which its community became responsible for its own affairs. Before the Hijra there is preaching, revelation and a group of believers. After it there is a polity: agreements binding the tribes of the city, a mosque as a public building, a treasury, a body of law developing case by case, and armed conflict with Mecca. The distinction is built into every date a Muslim writes.

The material revealed at Mecca and the material revealed at Medina differ, and the difference is one of the standard tools of Quranic study. The Meccan passages are largely concerned with the oneness of God, the resurrection and judgment, the fate of earlier peoples who rejected their prophets, and the moral demands on the individual. The Medinan passages address a community that has to govern itself: inheritance, marriage and divorce, debt, warfare, treaties, the treatment of other religious groups within the city.

Several of the practices that define Muslim life are established in this period. The direction of prayer was changed from Jerusalem to Mecca. The fast of Ramadan was prescribed. The alms tax became an institution rather than a virtue. The document usually called the Constitution of Medina set out the terms on which the emigrants, the local Muslims and the Jewish tribes of the city belonged to a single community for purposes of defence while keeping their own religion and law.

For the historian this is where Islam becomes visible as a social order rather than a message, and for Islamic law it is the period that supplies most of the precedents. The consequence is a religion in which the founder was also a legislator, a judge and a head of state, which distinguishes the shape of Islamic tradition from that of the traditions it grew up beside.