Additional Information

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According to traditional Islamic belief, in Prophet Muhammad's (ﷺ) last years in Mecca, a delegation from Medina from its twelve important clans invited him as a neutral outsider to serve as the chief arbitrator for the entire community. There had been fighting in Medina involving mainly its pagan and Jewish inhabitants for around 100 years before 620. The recurring slaughters and disagreements over the resulting claims, especially after the Battle of Bu'ath in which all the clans had been involved, made it obvious to them that the tribal conceptions of blood feud and an eye for an eye were no longer workable unless there was one man with the authority to adjudicate in disputed cases. The delegation from Medina pledged themselves and their fellow citizens to accept Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) into their community and to protect him physically as if he was one of them.

After emigration to Medina, Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) drafted the constitution, "establishing a kind of alliance or federation" of the eight Medinan tribes and Muslim emigrants from Mecca and specifying 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: the Jews and the other "Peoples of the Book".[7] According to chroniclers such as Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi (785-845 CE), the composition of the population of Medina at that time consisted of two supergroup local Arab tribes, the Aus and the Khazraj, with eight clans and 33 other smaller groups under them.[citation needed] Meanwhile, the Jewish tribes at least consisted of around 20 groups, with the most well-known tribes Qaynuqa, Nadhir, and Qurayza among them.