Emigration to Madinah could never be attributable to attempts to escape from jeers and oppression only, but it also constituted a sort of cooperation with the aim of erecting the pillars of a new society in a secure place. Hence it was incumbent upon every capable Muslim to contribute to building this new homeland, immunizing it and holding up its prop. As a leader and spiritual guide, there was no doubt the Noble Messenger (Peace be upon him), in whose hands exclusively all affairs would be resolved.

 

In Madinah, the Prophet (Peace be upon him) had to deal with three distinctively different categories of people with different respective problems:

• His Companions, the noble and Allah fearing elite (May Allah be pleased with them).
• Polytheists still detached from the Islam and were purely Madinese tribes.
• The Jews.
• As for his Companions, the conditions of life in Madinah were totally different from those they experienced in Makkah. There, in Makkah, they used to strive for one corporate target, but physically, they were scattered, overpowered and forsaken. They were helpless in terms of pursuing their new course of orientation. Their means, socially and materially, fell short of establishing a new Muslim community. In parallel lines, the Makkan Chapters of the Noble Qur’ân were confined to delineating the Islamic precepts, enacting legislations pertaining to the believers individually and enjoining good and piety and forbidding evils and vices.

In Madinah , things were otherwise; here all the affairs of their life rested in their hands. Now, they were at ease and could quite confidently handle the challenges of civilization, construction, means of living, economics, politics, government administration, war and peace, codification of the questions of the allowed and prohibited, worship, ethics and all the relevant issues. In a nutshell, they were in Madinah at full liberty to erect the pillars of a new Muslim community not only utterly different from that pre-Islamic code of life, but also distinctive in its features in the world at large. It was a society that could stand for the Islamic Call for whose sake the Muslims had been put to unspeakable tortures for 10 years. No doubt, the construction of a society that runs in line with this type of ethics cannot be accomplished overnight, within a month or a year. It requires a long time to build during which legislation and legalization will run gradually in a complementary process with mind cultivation, training and education. Allah, the All-Knowing, of course undertook legislation and His Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), implementation and orientation:

“He it is Who sent among the unlettered ones a Messenger [Muhammad (Peace be upon him) from among themselves, reciting to them His Verses, purifying them (from the filth of disbelief and polytheism), and teaching them the Book (this Qur’ân, Islamic laws and Islamic Jurisprudence) and Al-Hikmah [As-Sunna: legal ways, orders, acts of worship, etc. of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him)].” [62:2]

The Prophet’s Companion (May Allah be pleased with),  rushed enthusiastically to assimilate these Qur’ânic rules and fill their hearts joyfully with them:

“And when His Verses (this Qur’ân) are recited unto them, they (i.e. the Verses) increase their Faith.” [8:2]

With respect to the Muslims, this task constituted the greatest challenge for the Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him). In fact, this very purpose lay at the heart of the Islamic Call and the Muhammadan mission; it was never an incidental issue though there were the matters that required urgent addressing.

The Muslims in Madinah consisted virtually of two parties: The first one already settled down in their abode, land and wealth, fully at ease, but seeds of discord amongst them were deeply seated and chronic enmity continually evoked; they were Al-Ansar (the Helpers). The second party were Al-Muhajirun (the Emigrants), homeless, jobless and penniless. Their number was not small, on the contrary, it was increasing day by day after the Prophet (Peace be upon him) had given them the green light to leave for Madinah whose economic structure, originally not that prosperous one, began to show signs of imbalance aggravated by the economic boycott that the anti-Islamic groups imposed and consequently imports diminished and living conditions worsened.

• The purely Madinese polytheists constituted the second sector with whom the Prophet (Peace be upon him) had to deal. Those people had no control at all over the Muslim. Some of them nursed no grudge against the Muslims, but were rather skeptical of their ancestors’ religious practices, and developed tentative inclination towards Islam and before long they embraced the new faith and were truly devoted to Allah. However, some others harboured evil intentions against the Prophet (Peace be upon him) and his followers but were too cowardly to resist them publicly, they were rather, under those Islamically favourable conditions, obliged to fake amicability and friendliness. ‘Abdullah bin Ubai, who had almost been given presidency over Al-Khazraj and Al-Aws tribes in the wake of Bu‘ath War between the two tribes, came at the head of that group of hypocrites. The Prophet’s advent and the vigorous rise of the new spirit of Islam foiled that orientation and the idea soon went into oblivion. He, seeing another one, Muhammad (Peace be upon him), coming to deprive him and his agents of the prospective temporal privileges, could not be pleased, and for overriding reasons he showed pretension to Islam but with horrible disbelief deeply-rooted in his heart. He also used to exploit some events and weak-hearted new converts in scheming malevolently against the true believers.
• The Jews (the Hebrews), who had migrated to Al-Hijaz from Syria following the Byzantine and Assyrian persecution campaigns, were the third category existent on the demographic scene in Madinah. In their new abode they assumed the Arabian stamp in dress, language and manner of life and there were instances of intermarriage with the local Arabs, however they retained their ethnic particularism and detached themselves from amalgamation with the immediate environment. They even used to pride in their Jewish-Israeli origin, and spurn the Arabs around designating them as illiterate meaning brutal, naïve and backward. They desired the wealth of their neighbours to be made lawful to them and they could thus appropriate it the way they liked.

“… because they say: “There is no blame on us to betray and take the properties of the illiterates (Arabs)” [3:75]

Religiously, they showed no zeal; their most obvious religious commodity was fortunetelling, witchcraft and the secret arts (blowing on knots), for which they used to attach to themselves advantages of science and spiritual precedence.

 

They excelled at the arts of earning money and trading. They in fact monopolized trading in cereals, dates, wine, clothes, export and import. For the services they offered to the Arabs, the latter paid heavily. Usury was a common practice amongst them, lending the Arab notables great sums to be squandered on mercenary poets, and in vanity avenues, and in return seizing their fertile land given as surety.

 

They were very good at corrupting and scheming. They used to sow seeds of discord between adjacent tribes and entice each one to hatch plots against the other with the natural corollary of continual exhaustive bloody fighting. Whenever they felt that fire of hatred was about to subside, they would nourish it with new means of perpetuity so that they could always have the upper hand, and at the same time gain heavy interest rates on loans spent on inter-tribal warfare.

 

Three famous tribes of Jews constituted the demographic presence in Yathrib (now Madinah): Banu Qainuqua‘, allies of Al-Khazraj tribe, Banu An-Nadir and Banu Quraizah who allied Al-Aws and inhabited the suburbs of Madinah.

 

Naturally they held the new changes with abhorrence and were terribly hateful to them, simply because the Messenger of Allah was of a different race, and this point was in itself too repugnant for them to reconcile with. Second, Islam came to brabout a spirit of rapport, to terminate the state of enmity and hatred, and to establish a social regime based on denunciation of the prohibited and promotion of the allowed. Adherence to these canons of life implied paving the way for an Arab unity that could work to the prejudice of the Jews and their interests at both the social and economic levels; the Arab tribes would then try to restore their wealth and land misappropriated by the Jews through usurious practices.

The Jews of course deeply considered all these things ever since they had known that the Islamic Call would try to settle in Yathrib, and it was no surprise to discover that they harboured the most enmity and hatred to Islam and the Messenger (Peace be upon him) even though they did not have the courage to uncover their feelings in the beginning.

The following incident could attest clearly to that abominable antipathy that the Jews harboured towards the new political and religious changes that came to stamp the life of Madinah. Ibn Ishaq, on the authority of the Mother of believers Safiyah (May Allah be pleased her)  narrated: Safiyah, daughter of Huyayi bin Akhtab said: I was the closest child to my father and my uncle Abi Yasir’s heart. Whenever they saw me with a child of theirs, they should pamper me so tenderly to the exclusion of anyone else. However, with the advent of the Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) and setting in Quba’ with Bani ‘Amr bin ‘Awf, my father, Huyayi bin Akhtab and my uncle Abu Yasir bin Akhtab went to see him and did not return until sunset when they came back walking lazily and fully dejected. I, as usually, hurried to meet them smiling, but they would not turn to me for the grief that caught them. I heard my uncle Abu Yasir say to Ubai and Huyayi: “Is it really he [i.e. Muhammad (Peace be upon him)]?” The former said: “It is he, I swear by Allah!” “Did you really recognize him?” they asked. He answered: “Yes, and my heart is burning with enmity towards him”

 

An interesting story that took place on the first day, the Prophet (Peace be upon him) stepped in Madinah, could be quoted to illustrate the mental disturbance and deep anxiety that beset the Jews. ‘Abdullah bin Salam, the most learned rabbi among the Jews came to see the Prophet (Peace be upon him) when he arrived, and asked him certain questions to ascertain his real Prophethood. No sooner did he hear the Prophet’s answers than he embraced Islam, but added that if his people knew of his Islamization they would advance false arguments against me. The Prophet (Peace be upon him) sent for some Jews and asked them about ‘Abdullah bin Salam, they testified to his scholarly aptitude and virtuous standing. Here it was divulged to them that he had embraced Islam and on the spot, they imparted categorically opposite testimonies and described him as the most evil of all evils. In another narration ‘Abdullah bin Salam said, “O Jews! Be Allah fearing. By Allah, the only One, you know that he is the Messenger of Allah sent to people with the Truth.” They replied, “You are lying.” ... That was the Prophet’s first experience with the Jews.

 

That was the demo-political picture within Madinah. Five hundred kilometres away in Makkah, there still lay another source of detrimental threat, the archenemy of Islam, Quraish. For ten years, while at the mercy of Quraish, the Muslims were subjected to all sorts of terrorism, boycott, harassment and starvation coupled by a large scale painstaking psychological war and aggressive organized propaganda. When they had emigrated to Madinah, their land, wealth and property were seized, wives detained and the socially humble in rank brutally tortured. Quraish also schemed and made attempts on the life of the first figure of the Call, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) . Due to their acknowledged temporal leadership and religious supremacy among the pagan Arabs, given the custodianship of the Sacred Sanctuary, the Quraishites spared no effort in enticing the Arabians against Madinah and boycotting the Madinese socially and economically. To quote Muhammad Al-Ghazali: “A state of war virtually existed between the Makkan tyrants and the Muslims in their abode. It is foolish to blame the Muslims for the horrible consequences that were bound to ensue in the light of that long-standing feud.”

 

The Muslims in Madinah were completely eligible then to confiscate the wealth of those tyrants, mete out for them exemplary punishment and bring twofold retaliation on them in order to deter them from committing any folly against the Muslims and their sanctities.

That was a resume of the major problems that the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) had to face, and the complicated issues he was supposed to resolve.

 

In full acknowledgment, we could safely say that he quite honestly shouldered the responsibilities of Messengership, and cleverly discharged the liabilities of both temporal and religious leadership in Madinah. He accorded to everyone his due portion whether of mercy or punishment, with the former usually seasoning the latter in the overall process of establishing Islam on firm grounds among its faithful adherents.

We have already mentioned that the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him) arrived in Madinah on Friday, 12th Rabi‘ Al-Awwal 1 A.H., i.e. September 27th. 622 A.D. and took the downstairs of Abi Ayyub’s house as a temporary residence.

 

The first task to which the Prophet (Peace be upon him) attended on his arrival in Madinah was the construction of a Mosque, in the very site where his camel knelt down. The land, which belonged to two orphans, was purchased. The Prophet (Peace be upon him) himself contributed to building the Mosque by carrying adobe bricks and stones while reciting verses:

“O Allâh! no bliss is there but that of the Hereafter, I beseech you to forgive the Emigrants and Helpers.”

The ground was cleared, of weeds and shrubs, palm trees and rubbish, the graves of the polytheists dug up and then levelled and the trees planted around. The Qiblah (the direction in which the Muslims turn their faces in prayer) was constructed to face Jerusalem; two beams were also erected to hold the ceiling up. It was square in form, each side measuring approximately 100 yards, facing towards the north and having three gates on each of the remaining sides. Nearby, rooms reserved for the Prophet’s household were built of stones and adobe bricks with ceilings of palm leaves. To the north of the Mosque a place was reserved for the Muslims who had neither family nor home. The Adhân (summoning the Muslims to the Mosque by the Call for prayer) was initiated at this early stage of post-migration era. The Mosque was not merely a locus to perform prayers, but rather an Islamic league where the Muslim’s were instructed in Islam and its doctrines. It served as an assembly place where the conflicting pre-Islamic trends used to come to terms; it was the headquarter wherein all the affairs of the Muslims were administered, and consultative and executive councils held.

 

The Mosque being thus constructed, the Prophet (Peace be upon him) next turned his attention to cementing the ties of mutual brotherhood amongst the Muslims of Madinah, Al-Ansar (the Helpers) and Al-Muhajirun (the Emigrants). It was indeed unique in the history of the world. A gathering of 90 men, half of whom Emigrants and the others Helpers assembled in the house of Anas bin Malik where the Prophet (Peace be upon him) gave the spirit of brotherhood his official blessing. When either of the two persons who had been paired as brothers, passed away, his property was inherited by his brother-in-faith. This practice continued till the following verse was revealed at the time of the battle of Badr, and the regular rule of inheritance was allowed to take its usual course:

“But kindred by blood are nearer to one another regarding inheritance.” [8:75]

“Brotherhood-in-faith” to quote Muhammad Al-Ghazali again, “was holding subordinate every distinction of race and kindred and supporting the Islamic precept: none is superior to the other except on the basis of piety and God-fearing.”

 

The Prophet (Peace be upon him) attached to that brotherhood a valid contract; it was not just meaningless words but rather a valid practice relating to blood and wealth rather than a passing whim taking the form of accidental greeting.

 

The atmosphere of brotherhood and fellow-feeling created a spirit of selflessness infused deeply in the hearts of his followers, and produced very healthy results. For example, Sa‘d bin Ar-Rabi‘, a Helper, said to his fellow brother ‘Abdur Rahman bin ‘Awf, “I am the richest man amongst the Helpers. I am glad to share my property half and half with you. I have two wives, I am ready to divorce one and after the expiry of her ‘Iddah, (the prescribed period for a woman divorcee to stay within her house unmarried) you may marry her.” But ‘Abdur Rahman bin ‘Awf was not prepared to accept anything: neither property nor home. So he blessed his brother and said: “Kindly direct me to the market so that I may make my fortune with my own hands.” And he did prosper and got married very shortly by his own labour.

The Helpers were extremely generous to their brethren-in-faith. Abu Hurairah reported that they once approached the Prophet (Peace be upon him) with the request that their orchards of palm trees should be distributed equally between the Muslims of Madinah and their brethren from Makkah. But the Prophet (Peace be upon him) was reluctant to put this heavy burden upon them. It was, however, decided that the Emigrants would work in the orchards alongwith the Helpers and the yield would be divided equally amongst them.

Such examples point directly to the spirit of sacrifice, altruism and cordiality on the part of the Helpers, and also to the feeling of appreciation, gratitude and self-respect that the Emigrants held dear to their hearts. They took only what helped them eke a reasonable living. In short, this policy of mutual brotherhood was so wise and timely that many obstinate problems were resolved wonderfully and reasonably.