Charters

A founding document that constitutes a community and sets out how its members and its neighbours are to stand toward one another. A charter is not a ruling on a question already asked; it establishes the frame within which questions can be asked at all. Both entries here define the standing of religious groups living under a Muslim polity, one from the beginning of the community at Medina and one attributed to an early caliph in a text that reached its surviving form considerably later. The entries say which parts of each are securely dated and which are not.