56 No god but God
primary role was as “Shaykh” of his “clan” of Emigrants, it also clearly
endows him with a privileged position over all other tribal and clan
Shaykhs in Yathrib.
The problem lies in determining exactly when the Constitution of
Medina was written. The traditional sources, including al-Tabari and
Ibn Hisham, place its composition among the Prophet’s first acts upon
entering the oasis: that is, in 622 C.E. But that is highly unlikely, given
Muhammad’s weak position during those first few years in Yathrib. He
was, after all, forced to flee Mecca and hunted throughout the Hijaz
like a criminal. And, as Michael Lecker has shown, it was not until
after the Battle of Badr in 624 (an event that will be discussed in the
following chapter), and perhaps not even until 627, that the majority
of the Aws tribe converted to Islam. Before then, few people outside
the Ansar (which at that point consisted of only a handful of members
of the Khazraj) would have known who Muhammad was, let alone have
submitted to his authority. His movement represented the tiniest frac-
tion of Yathrib’s population; the Jews alone may have totaled in the
thousands. When Muhammad arrived in the oasis, he had brought
fewer than a hundred men, women, and children with him.
The Constitution of Medina may reflect several early pacts of
nonaggression among Muhammad, the Arab clans, and their Jewish
clients. It may even reproduce certain elements of Muhammad’s arbi-
tration between the Aws and the Khazraj. But there is simply no way it
could have been completed as it has been preserved before 624 C.E.
Only after Badr could Muhammad have dreamed of the powers attrib-
uted to him by the Constitution of Medina; indeed, only after Badr
could Yathrib even be thought of as Medina.
Muhammad’s role during those first couple of years in Yathrib was
very likely that of a Hakam—albeit a powerful and divinely inspired
one—whose arbitration was restricted to the Aws and Khazraj, and
whose authority as a Shaykh was confined to his own “clan” of Emi-
grants: one clan out of many; one Shaykh out of many. Muhammad’s
claim to be the Messenger of God would not have had to be either
accepted or rejected for him to function properly in either of these
two roles. Both the pagan Arabs and the Jews of Yathrib would have
considered his prophetic consciousness to be proof of his supernatural
wisdom, especially since the ideal Hakam was almost always also the