People & Histories
622

The Hijra: Emigration to Medina

Facing persecution in Mecca, Muhammad and his followers emigrate to Yathrib (Medina), founding the first Muslim community.

  • Muhammad — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam — Fred M. Donner, Harvard University Press (2010)
  • Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources — Martin Lings, George Allen & Unwin (1983)
  • Islam: The Straight Path — John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press

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Losing protection

By 619 life in Mecca had become dangerous for the small Muslim community. That year, remembered as the “Year of Sorrow”, Muhammad lost both Khadija and his uncle Abu Talib. Abu Talib had never become a Muslim, but as head of the clan he had protected his nephew, and his successor would not.

  • Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources — Martin Lings, George Allen & Unwin (1983)
  • Muhammad — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Muslim tradition places in this period the Isra’ and Mi’raj, the Night Journey in which the Prophet was carried to “the furthest mosque”, identified with Jerusalem, and ascended through the heavens, where the five daily prayers were prescribed. This is one reason Jerusalem is so dear to Muslims.
  • Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources — Martin Lings, George Allen & Unwin (1983)
  • Islam: The Straight Path — John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Islam — John L. Esposito (ed.), Oxford University Press (2003)

An invitation from Yathrib

Some 350 kilometres north lay the oasis of Yathrib, torn by feuding between its Arab tribes, the Aws and Khazraj, and home also to several Jewish tribes. At pilgrimage seasons in 621 and 622, men from Yathrib met Muhammad, accepted Islam and pledged to protect him. They invited him to come as an arbiter and leader.

  • Muhammad — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources — Martin Lings, George Allen & Unwin (1983)
  • Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam — Fred M. Donner, Harvard University Press (2010)

Over the summer of 622 his followers slipped away in small groups. Muhammad left last, with Abu Bakr. The tradition tells that Ali slept in the Prophet’s bed to fool the Quraysh men sent to kill him, and that the two fugitives hid in a cave on Mount Thawr, where a spider’s web over the entrance convinced their pursuers that no one was inside. They reached Yathrib in September 622. The town became Madinat al-Nabi, “the City of the Prophet”: Medina.

  • Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources — Martin Lings, George Allen & Unwin (1983)
  • Muhammad — Encyclopaedia Britannica

The first community

In Medina, the Muslims became a community, the umma, with a political as well as a spiritual life. The Meccan emigrants (Muhajirun) were paired in brotherhood with the Medinan “helpers” (Ansar), who shared homes and property with them, a story Muslims still tell about generosity to refugees.

  • Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources — Martin Lings, George Allen & Unwin (1983)
  • Islam: The Straight Path — John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press
  • Islam: A Short History — Karen Armstrong, Modern Library (2000)
A simple mosque was built beside the Prophet’s house, and here much of Islam’s practice took shape: the call to prayer, the Ramadan fast, and almsgiving. In about 624 the direction of prayer (qibla) was changed from Jerusalem to the Kaaba in Mecca.
  • Islam: The Straight Path — John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press
  • Islam — Encyclopaedia Britannica

An agreement known as the Constitution of Medina set out the rights and duties of the town’s groups, including Jewish tribes, as one community for mutual defence. Historians widely regard its text as genuinely early, and some, like Fred Donner, use it to argue that the first “Believers” movement was more open to pious Jews and Christians than later Islam.

  • Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam — Fred M. Donner, Harvard University Press (2010)
  • Muhammad — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization — Marshall G. S. Hodgson, University of Chicago Press (1974)
But relations broke down during the wars with Mecca. Two Jewish tribes, the Qaynuqa and Nadir, were expelled, and after the siege of Medina in 627 the men of the Qurayza were executed for siding with the enemy, according to the sira. The episode is painful and debated, both over the details and over how the traditional sources should be read.
  • Muhammad — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Islam: A Short History — Karen Armstrong, Modern Library (2000)
  • Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam — Fred M. Donner, Harvard University Press (2010)

Year One

Some sixteen years later, the caliph Umar chose the year of the Hijra as the starting point of the Islamic calendar. This is a lunar calendar of twelve months, about eleven days shorter than the solar year, which is why Ramadan moves through the seasons.

  • Islam: The Straight Path — John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Islam — John L. Esposito (ed.), Oxford University Press (2003)
The choice says something important: the founding moment of Islam was not the Prophet’s birth or even the first revelation, but the creation of a community trying to live by God’s guidance.

Why it matters today

Islam

The Islamic calendar counts its years from the Hijra, so 2026 CE falls in the years 1447–1448 AH ("after Hijra"). Medina, where the Prophet is buried, is Islam's second-holiest city, and the Hijra remains a model of leaving oppression to build a just community, and of how newcomers and hosts should treat each other.