Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

70 t CHAPTER FOUR
accept his judgments. Though he is called the “Prophet of God” in
the document as it is preserved, the terms themselves demonstrate
that the Medinese by no means pledged to all become Muslims.
The signatories formed, however, one community (umma); Medina
polytheists and Jews preserved their tribal organization, while
Migrants and Helpers slowly—and very imperfectly—merged into
a religious community without regard to tribal or even family ties.
There is no indication that Muhammad was intended to “run” the
oasis in any sense. The arrangement simply made him the sole and
final arbitrator in all disputes, and it seems likely that the settlement
operated much as it had before, through a series of agreements
among the various tribes and clans. What Muhammad’s
authority did was suspend sine die—it is difficult to believe
that anyone there actually forgot or forgave—the annually compounded
costs of blood feuds within the tight confines of an oasis
settlement.
The Practice of Islam
The chronology of the Quran’s Meccan suras can be laid out with
some reasonable degree of certainty, though there are notable soft
spots as to which are early, middle, or late within that twelve-year
span. There is no such conviction about the long suras that date
from Medina. Pieces of suras can be connected with specific events
like the battles at Badr or Uhud or later Hunayn, but no one has
succeeded in arranging in sequence the whole or even a considerable
part of them over Muhammad’s ten years at Medina. We do
not know, for example, when some of the primary ritual obligations
of Islam began to be practiced. Ritual prayer (salat) would
probably have been impossible in the hostile climate of Mecca; we
can guess, however, that it began to be practiced soon after the
Prophet arrived in Medina. Obligatory tithing (zakat) would likewise
make sense in Medina, where early on there were Muslims of
some substance, the Helpers, and others with little, the Migrants.
The mention of tithing in Quran 2:177 in connection with the
change in the qibla, or prayer direction, makes it seem an early act