Notes 277The names of Muhammad’s earliest followers are listed in Ibn Hisham, pp.
159–65. Al-Tabari explicitly states that this group was “few in number.” There is a
disagreement between Sunnis and Shi‘ites as to whether Abu Bakr or Ali was the
first male convert, but this is an ideological argument. There can be no serious ques-
tion that Ali, as the closest person to Muhammad at the time, was the first male con-
vert to Islam. For the Qurayshi defense of polytheism see al-Tabari, p. 1175, and
Richard Bell (1968), p. 55. The quotation regarding religion and trade in Mecca is
from Muhammad Shaban, “Conversion to Early Islam,” in Conversion to Islam,
edited by Nehemia Levtzion (1979). For more on Luqman the Wise see The Fables
of Luqman, edited by Reyes Carboneli (1965). Maxime Rodinson’s book Mohammad
(1971) offers an interesting, if outdated, perspective on the life of the Prophet. His
comments about Muhammad’s marriage to Khadija can be found on page 51. My
physical description of Muhammad comes from the beautiful description of him
written by Tirmidhi as quoted in Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Mes-
senger (1985).
- The City of the Prophet
Ibn Batuta provides what is probably the earliest description of the Prophet’s
mosque in his famous Travels (1958). There is evidence to suggest that Yathrib’s
inhabitants already referred to the oasis as Medina (the City) before Muhammad’s
arrival, though Muhammad’s presence obviously changed the connotation of that
name.
Ali Abd ar-Raziq’s Islam and the Bases of Power is available in French as “L’Islam
et les Bases du Pouvoir,” translated by L. Bercher in Revue des Etudes Islamiques, VIII
(1934). An English translation of important sections of the work can be found in
Islam in Transition, edited by John J. Donohue and John L. Esposito (1982). Ahmed
Rashid’s The Taliban (2000) is the best introductory text on the history of the Taliban
in Afghanistan.
The Banu Nadir and the Banu Qurayza, each of which consisted of several
branches, may have had an alliance with each other. Together they were known as
the Banu Darih. But like all tribal relationships, this was a political and economic
affiliation and had nothing to do with their shared religious tradition. There is still
debate over whether Yathrib’s Jews were converts or immigrants. The majority of
scholars believe them to be Arab converts and, as we shall see, the evidence seems to
agree. For an outline of this argument see Watt, Muhammad at Medina (1956) and
S. D. Goiten, Jews and Arabs (1970). Barakat Ahmad calculates the Jewish popula-
tion of Yathrib to have been between 24,000 and 36,000 inhabitants in Muhammad
and the Jews: A Re-Examination (1979); that may be a bit high.
For more on the brief period of Persian control over the region, as well as the
division of Yathrib between the Jews and Arabs, see Peters, Muhammad; al-Waqidi’s
quote is from page 193 of Peters’s text. See Michael Lecker, Muslims, Jews, and
Pagans: Studies on Early Islamic Medina (1995) for a discussion of the late conversion
of the Aws.
A full discussion of the controversy over the date and meaning of the Constitu-
tion of Medina can be found in Moshe Gil, “The Constitution of Medina: A Recon-
sideration,” in Israel Oriental Studies (1974). For more on Muhammad’s role as
Shaykh of the Emigrants, see Watt, Islamic Political Thought. Watt also provides an
English translation of the Constitution of Medina in his appendix, pp. 130–34.
For a further discussion of the origins of the word Ummah, I suggest the
entry in Encyclopedia of Islam. Bertram Thomas’s portrayal of the Ummah as a