caused them to neglect widows, orphans, and
the poor. Some were outraged by the prediction
that those who did not believe in allah would
be punished in the aFterliFe for their disbelief.
The Quraysh tried to impose a boycott against
Muhammad’s clan, the Banu Hashim, to cut them
off from intermarriage with other Meccans and
from the city’s commercial life. The boycott failed,
but Muhammad’s safety was seriously threatened
in 619 when his chief protectors died—his wife
khadiJa and his uncle Abu Talib.
To secure the position of himself and his
religious movement, Muhammad sought new
alliances with tribes in nearby towns and soon
completed one with the Aws and Khazraj tribes
of Yathrib, an oasis town located about 275
miles north of Mecca. In return for their con-
version to Islam and sheltering and protecting
his followers, he agreed to serve as the town’s
peacemaker, a role customarily assumed by holy
men in Middle Eastern societies. Muhammad
also sent one of his companions to Yathrib to
teach the Quran and win more converts. The
new Muslims of Yathrib were called the Helpers
(ansar). Meanwhile, persecution of Muham-
mad and his followers in Mecca by the Quraysh
intensified; the weaker ones were physically
tortured or imprisoned. Muhammad ordered his
followers to emigrate to Yathrib in small groups,
while he remained in Mecca with his friend abU
bakr and his loyal cousin ali ibn abi talib. The
Quraysh plotted to murder Muhammad and
invaded his house only to find Ali sleeping in
his bed. Muhammad had secretly escaped with
Abu Bakr, and the two of them hid in a cave for
three days before making their way to Yathrib.
After they arrived, Muhammad built the city’s
first two mosqUes and established an agreement,
also known as the Constitution of Medina, that
called for mutual support among the Helpers,
the emigrants from Mecca, the Jews, and non-
Muslim Arabs. The agreement also recognized
Muhammad as the leading aUthority of the new
community, the umma. Thereafter Yathrib became
known as Madinat al-Nabi (City of the Prophet),
or simply Medina.
Muslim sources also speak of an earlier hijra of
Muslims to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) between 615 and- Muhammad may have sent some Muslims
there to receive the protection of the country’s
Christian king, the Negus. Some of them returned
to Mecca before the Hijra to Medina, but most
seem to have rejoined their coreligionists in
Medina after 622.
The caliph Umar ibn al-khattab (r. 634–644)
signaled the importance of the Hijra in Islam when
he declared that it would be used to set the official
Muslim calendar in 638. Its importance was also
reflected in the division of the Quran into Meccan
(pre-Hijra) and Medinan (post-Hijra) chapters.
The Medina chapters contain most of the Quran’s
ritual rules and social laws, which originally
applied to the governance of the new community
Muhammad had created after the Hijra. Most of
the authentic hadith are thought to have started
to circulate during this era. In Islamic law, the
issue of emigration was debated by jurists when
Muslims in andalUsia and later other Muslim
lands found themselves being ruled by non-Mus-
lims. Some jurists, especially those of the maliki
legal school, said that Muslims were obliged to
emigrate to Muslim territories, as the Prophet had
done. Others said that residence in non-Muslim
lands was permissible as long as Muslims were
allowed to fulfill their religious duties. In a similar
vein, sectarian groups such as the khaWariJ called
for true Muslims to emigrate from territories ruled
by corrupt Muslims.
The ideal of the Hijra has continued to be an
important one for Muslims in more recent cen-
turies. Reform and revival movements in West
aFrica and South Asia used it to organize oppo-
sition to colonial rule. abd al-aziz ibn saUd (d.
- established settlements called hijras in
central Arabia, where bedoUins were indoctri-
nated with Wahhabi teachings. When india and
pakistan were partitioned in 1947, the Muslim
migration into Pakistan was called a hijra. More
Hijra 299 J