The first Islamic state was established by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the city of Medina in 622 CE/1 AH under the Constitution of Medina. It represented the political unity of the Muslim Ummah (nation). After Muhammad's death, his companions known as the Rightly Guided Caliphs (the Rashidun) founded the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661) which began massive expansion and motivated subsequent Islamic states, such as the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) and Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258).
According to the traditional sirah account, Muhammad was born in Mecca—an important caravan trading center—around the year 570 CE/52 BH"The very first question a biographer has to ask, namely when the person was born, cannot be answered precisely for Muhammad. [...] Muhammad's biographers usually make him 40 or sometimes 43 years old at the time of his call to be a prophet, which [...] would put the year of his birth at about 570 A.D." F. Buhl & A.T. Welch, Encyclopaedia of Islam 2nd ed., "Muhammad", vol. 7, p. 361. to a family belonging to the clan of Quraysh, which was the chief tribe of Mecca and a dominant force in Hejaz region. When he was about 40 years old, he began receiving at mount Hira' what Muslims regard as divine revelations delivered through the Archangel Gabriel, which would later form the Qur'an. These inspirations urged him to proclaim a strict monotheistic faith, as the final expression of Biblical prophetism earlier codified in the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity; to warn his compatriots of the impending Judgement Day; and to castigate social injustices of his city."Key themes in these early recitations include the idea of the moral responsibility of man who was created by God and the idea of the judgment to take place on the day of resurrection. [...] Another major theme of Muhammad's early preaching, [... is that] there is a power greater than man's, and that the wise will acknowledge this power and cease their greed and suppression of the poor." F. Buhl & A.T. Welch, Encyclopaedia of Islam 2nd ed., "Muhammad", vol. 7, p. 363. Muhammad's message won over a handful of followers and was met with increasing resistance from Meccan notables."At first Muhammad met with no serious opposition [...] He was only gradually led to attack on principle the gods of Mecca. [...] Meccan merchants then discovered that a religious revolution might be dangerous to their fairs and their trade." F. Buhl & A.T. Welch, Encyclopaedia of Islam 2nd ed., "Muhammad", vol. 7, p. 364. He had been invited to Medina by city leaders to adjudicate disputes between clans from which the city suffered. Muhammad came to the city of Medina following the migration of his followers in what is known as the Hijrah in 622 and received positively by the city's Jewish and pagan residents as an arbitrator. As a result, he was accepted by popular consensus as the city's political leader, establishing the first Islamic state with his role.
The first Islamic state was governed largely by the Constitution of Medina—in modern terminology—which dictated Muhammad's unification of Medina's tribes and the muhajirun (Muhammad's followers).
Historicity
Prophetic biography, known as sīra, along with attributed records of the words, actions, and the silent approval of Muhammad, known as hadith, survive in the historical works of writers from the second and third centuries of the Muslim era (−1000 CE),William Montgomery Watt, Muhammad in Mecca, 1953, Oxford University Press, p.xi and give a great deal of information on Muhammad.
The general Islamic view is that the Quran has been preserved from the beginning by both writing and memorization, and its testimony is considered beyond doubt. The earliest Muslim source of information for the life of Muhammad, the Quran, gives very little personal information and its historicity is debated. A group of researchers explores the irregularities and repetitions in the Quranic text in a way that refutes the traditional claim that it was preserved by memorization alongside writing. According to them, an oral period shaped the Quran as a text and order, and the repetitions and irregularities mentioned were remnants of this period.Bannister, "Retelling the Tale", 2014: p.1-4
Historicity can be based on sealed documents, orders, treaty texts, archaeological findings and internal and external correspondence of neighboring states or communities, as well as the discovery of Muhammad's genetic makeup and kinship through his personal belongings and physical remains (hair, beard, etc.) that are among his alleged legacies. Although the sources concerning the Sasanian realm of influence for the 6th century AD, which represents the time period before the beginning of Islam, are poor, the sources for the Byzantine provinces of Syria and Iraq in the same period, complemented by Syriac Christian writings, provide a relatively superior quality.
Most Islamic history was transmitted orally until after the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate. At the same time the study of the earliest periods in Islamic history is made difficult by a lack of sources. The stories were written in the form of “founding conquest stories” based on nostalgia for the golden age then. Humphrey, quoted by Antoine Borrut, explains that the stories related to this period were created according to a pact-betrayal-redemption principle.Borrut A., "From Arabia to the Empire - conquest and caliphal construction in early Islam", in The Historians' Quran, vol. 1, 2019, pp. 249-289
There are a relatively small number of contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous non-Muslim sources which attest to the existence of Muhammad and are valuable both in themselves and for comparison with Muslim sources. Non-Islamic testimonies about Muhammad's life describe him as the leader of the Saracens,"Chapter 1. "A Prophet Has Appeared, Coming with the Saracens": Muhammad's Leadership during the Conquest of Palestine According to Seventh- and Eighth-Century Sources". The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, pp. 18-72. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812205138.18 believed to be descendants of Ishmael, lived in the regions Arabia Petrae and Arabia Deserta in the north. According to some sources, Muhammad is not a name but a title.Volker Popp, Die frühe Islamgeschichte nach inschriftlichen und numismatischen Zeugnissen, in: Karl-Heinz Ohlig (ed.), Die dunklen Anfänge. Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam, Berlin 2005, pp. 16–123 (here p. 63 ff.)
History Background
A delegation from Yathrib, consisting of the representatives of the twelve important clans of Medina, invited Muhammad as a neutral outsider to serve as the chief arbitrator for the community.Esposito (1998), p. 17. There had been conflict in Yathrib between its Arab and Jewish tribes for around a hundred years prior. The recurring disagreements, fighting and killing over competing claims, especially after the Battle of Bu'ath in which all the clans were involved, rendered the tribal conceptions of blood-feud and eye for an eye justice unworkable without a neutral authority to adjudicate in disputed cases.The Cambridge History of Islam (1977), p. 39 The delegation from Medina pledged themselves and their fellow-citizens to accept Muhammad into their community and to protect him as one of their own.Alford Welch, Muhammad, Encyclopedia of Islam
Muhammad instructed his followers to emigrate to Medina until virtually all of his followers had left Mecca. Being alarmed at the departure of Muslims, according to the tradition, the Meccans plotted to assassinate him. He instructed his cousin and future son-in-law Ali to sleep in his bed to trick the assassins that he had stayed (and to fight them off in his stead) and secretly slipped away from the town.Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shiʻism, Yale University Press, p. 5 By 622, Muhammad had emigrated to Medina, then known as Yathrib, a large agricultural oasis. Following the emigration, the Meccans seized the properties of the Muslim emigrants in Mecca.Fazlur Rahman (1979), p. 21
Among the things Muhammad did in order to settle the longstanding grievances among the tribes of Medina was drafting a document known as the Constitution of Medina (date debated), establishing a kind of brotherhood among the eight Medinan tribes and Muslim emigrants from Mecca, which specified the rights and duties of all citizens and the relationship of the different communities in Medina (including that of the Muslim community to other communities specifically the Jews and other "Peoples of the Book"). The community defined in the Constitution of Medina, umma, had a religious outlook but was also shaped by the practical considerations and substantially preserved the legal forms of the old Arab tribes.
Relationship with followers of Abrahamic religions The first group of pagan converts to Islam in Medina were the clans who had not produced great leaders for themselves but had suffered from warlike leaders from other clans. This was followed by the general acceptance of Islam by the pagan population of Medina, apart from some exceptions. This was, according to Ibn Ishaq, influenced by the conversion to Islam of Sa'd ibn Mua'dh, one of the prominent leaders in Medina.
In the course of Muhammad proselytizing in Mecca, he viewed Christians and Jews (both of whom he referred to as "People of the Book") as natural allies, part of the Abrahamic religions, sharing the core principles of his teachings, and anticipated their acceptance and support. Muslims, like Jews, were at that time praying towards Jerusalem. In the Constitution of Medina, Muhammad demanded the Jews' political loyalty in return for religious and cultural autonomy in many treaties.See: Esposito (1998), p.17 Neusner (2003), p.153
The Jewish clans however did not obey these treaties because of a feud with the Muslims though in the course of time there were a few converts from them.Watt (1956), p. 175, p. 177. After his migration to Medina, Muhammad's attitude towards Christians and Jews changed "because of experience of treachery". Norman Stillman states:Norman Stillman, Yahud, Encyclopedia of Islam
Internal disputes
Economically uprooted by their Meccan persecutors, the Muslim migrants turned to raiding Meccan caravans to respond to their persecution and to provide sustenance for their Muslim families, thus initiating armed conflict between the Muslims and the pagan Quraysh of Mecca.Lewis, "The Arabs in History," 2003, p. 44.Montgomery Watt, Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman, Oxford University Press, 1961, p. 105. Muhammad delivered Qur'anic verses permitting the Muslims, "those who have been expelled from their homes", to fight the Meccans in opposition to persecution (see Qur'an Sura 22 (Al-Hajj) Ayat 39-40).John Kelsay, Islam and War: A Study in Comparative Ethics, p. 21 These attacks provoked and pressured Mecca by interfering with trade, and allowed the Muslims to acquire wealth, power and prestige while working toward their ultimate goal of inducing Mecca's submission to the new faith.Watt, Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman, Oxford University Press, 1961, p. 105, 107Bernard Lewis (1993), p. 41.