In Medina Muhammad and his Medinan hosts also came to a formal political agreement. Muhammad and his Meccan followers were to form one political group with the clans of Medina, called an umma--still the word for the community of Muslims. Meccans and Medinans would act as one in the defense of Muhammad and of Medina against outsiders. No clan would make a separate peace. No one would aid the Quraysh of Mecca, the presumptive enemy. The charter specified that all disputes would be brought before Muhammad. For Muhammad, moreover, the agreements were the first step toward converting political followers into religious believers. Without unity or effective leadership, his opponents were too divided to resist the consolidation of his power. The pagan clans were converted to Islam.

In the consolidation of Muhammad's power was the elimination of the Jewish clans. In his early vision of himself as a prophet, Muhammad was sent by God to all Arabians--Jews and Christians as well as pagans--to restore the purity of the faith already revealed, preach a renewal, and end the corruption that had crept into daily life. Thus in Medina Muhammad had at first wanted to include the Jews in his nascent community. Religious practices such as an equivalent to the Jewish Day of Atonement and Jerusalem as the direction of prayer were meant to appeal to the Jews. The Jewish clans, however, rejected Muhammad's claim to being a prophet in the Hebrew tradition. They disputed his accounts of sacred history. In the course of this struggle new revelations denounced the Jews for having broken their covenant. They revealed that Abraham was the prophet par excellence, the first hanif, the builder of the Ka'ba, and the father of the Arabs. The Quran now stressed that Muhammad was sent to restore the pure monotheism of Abraham. Bypassing the Jewish and Christian scriptural legacy, Muhammad's community would no longer include Jews and Christians, but would be a distinct religion superseding Judaism and Christianity. To carry out his mission, Muhammad went on to exile two of the Jewish clans, execute the male members of a third, and seize their property for his followers. By winning over the Medinan pagans and destroying his opponents, including the Jewish clans, Muhammad made all of Medina a Muslim community under his rule.

In the years that followed, Muhammad worked to create a community based on shared religious beliefs, ceremonies, ethics, and laws--a community that would transcend the traditional social structure based on families, clans, and tribes, and would unite disparate groups into a new Arabian society. This work proceeded on several levels. First, the Quran set down the rituals of Islam. These include the five pillars of the faith: salat (ritual prayer); zakat (almsgiving); hajj (pilgrimage); the fast of Ramadan; and shahada (the obligation to bear witness to the unity of God and the Prophethood of Muhammad). The five pillars were derived from Arabian, Christian, and Jewish precedents and were public rituals that, when collectively performed, reinforced the collective awareness of the Muslim community and its members' consciousness of a special destiny. Brothers in religion shared alms just as clan brothers shared their livelihoods. Prayer, fasting, and the bearing of witness humbled men before God and made them open to his will. The pilgrimage was derived from an ancient Arabian rite. Almsgiving was a symbol of the renunciation of selfish greed and acceptance of responsibility for all members of the community of faith.

The Quran also defined the social norms of the new community. Its teachings on family law were the crux of a social and metaphysical revolution. In pre-Islamic Arabian society, the basic family unit was the patriarchal agnatic clan, a group of people descended directly in the male line from a common ancestor and under the authority of the eldest male or chief member of the family. This was an extended family of several generations, and several groups of married couples and their offspring, with collaterals and clients, were all considered part of one household. Status, duties, and rights stemmed entirely from the clan. Property was regulated by the customs of the group. Marriages were arranged by the heads of the families with a view to the interests of the families rather than the wishes of the couple to be married. Women were of inferior status and were not full members of the group. A good marriage brought honor to the clan; if its female members were violated, the clan was dishonored. The group was responsible for defending the other members and making restitution in case of any crime committed by a member.

However, alongside the agnatic clan, various forms of polyandrous marriage of one woman to several men with varying degrees of permanence and responsibility for paternity, including temporary "marriages," were also known in Arabia. Polygamous arrangements varied from multiple wives in one residence to arrangements in which a man had several wives living with their own tribes whom he would visit on a rotating basis. No single norm was universally accepted. It was increasingly difficult to hold people to the ideal obligations regarding the distribution of property, the protection of women, or the guardianship of children. In these confused conditions, Quranic teachings attempted to strengthen the patriarchal agnatic clan. The Quranic rules against incest were crucial for the viability of group life, for biological heredity, and for the creation of marriage bonds between families. Divorce, though still relatively easy, was discouraged. Polyandrous marriages were condemned because they undermined patriarchal family stability. Since the family descended through its male heirs, the Quran provided rules to assure knowledge of paternity. For example, in the event of divorce, a woman could only remarry after having three menstrual periods.

The family ideal was buttressed by a clear definition of its collective duties in the all-important matter of responsibility for crimes. As in pre-Islamic times, all the male kin were held responsible for the protection of family members, but the Quranic teachings tried to reduce the devastating effects of the blood feuds that often resulted from this obligation. They urged that the aggrieved party accept compensation in money rather than blood, and ruled that if blood retaliation were insisted upon, only the culprit himself could be slain, rather than any male relative. This modification did not end the law of blood revenge or the strong common responsibilities of family members to one another, but by restricting feuds it gave security to families, who no longer had to fear that the indiscretion of one member would in the end destroy them all.

Furthermore, in the context of the patriarchal family the Quran provided for moral and spiritual reform and introduced a new freedom and dignity to individual family members. In particular, it enhanced the status of women and children, who were no longer to be considered merely chattels or potential warriors but individuals with rights and needs of their own. For the benefit of women, marriage was recognized as having important spiritual and religious values. It was a relationship sanctioned by the will of Allah. The Quran urged respect for their modesty and privacy, that they be treated as feeling persons. The Quran also granted women certain specific rights that they did not enjoy in pre-Islamic Arabia. A woman was now able to hold property in her own name, and was not expected to contribute to the support of the household from her own property. She was given the right to inherit up to a quarter of her husband's estate, and, in case of divorce, retained the agreed-upon bridal gift. In addition, the Quran tried to protect women from hasty and willful divorces by urging delay, reconciliation, and mediation by the families. The waiting period following a divorce also served to assure a woman of interim support and of support for a future child if she were pregnant. Finally, at least some possibility was opened for a divorce on the woman's initiative. Nonetheless, despite the emphasis on the security and status of women, the Quran did not establish equality of rights for men and women. While the spirit of its teaching encouraged mutuality between husband and wife, and a greater sensitivity to the personal and moral worth of individuals, the prerogatives of males were left fundamentally intact. The Quranic ideal and Muhammad's example were probably much more favorable to women than was later Arab and Muslim practice.

This idea of the family was at the core of the Muslim conception of the individual person and the umma--the community of believers. The family ideals reinforced the concept of individuality by stressing the religious importance of individuals as God's creatures rather than as mere objects in the clan system of society, and by stressing the individual's responsibility for moral relations within the family. This sense of individuality was essential for a true appreciation of the Quranic teachings about the oneness of God and the responsibility of human beings before him at the last judgment. Only an ethical individual who acted out of inner choices could comprehend the transcendence and unity of God. Thus, the family teachings were essential to ethical individuality, which was in turn the basis of religious insight. Conversely, religious insight cultivated ethical responsibility, which in turn influenced the organization and conduct of family life. The teachings of the Quran, in contrast to the pagan view, cultivated a sense of the wholeness of the world, the unity of society, and the integrity of the person as aspects of a single transcendent vision of reality.

Apart from family laws and morals, the Quran dealt with many other communal problems. Norms for business transactions were set down--injunctions to deal justly, honor contracts, give true witness, and not take usurious interest. These norms were often couched in ethical rather than legal terms. For example, the prohibition of usury did not specify a maximum rate of interest on loans, but taught that no one should exploit people in need. Such norms were also given for the conduct of war, the treatment of prisoners, and the distribution of booty. There were moral prohibitions against gambling and the consumption of intoxicating beverages.

Thus, one dimension of Muhammad's work was to communicate the shared beliefs, common social norms, and common rituals that were the basis of a community transcending the clan and tribe. The other aspect of his work in Medina was to build the political confederation that would extend his reforms to Mecca and to the rest of Arabia. This was part of Muhammad's religious ambition, but it was also a matter of political necessity. If Mecca were opposed to Muhammad, she could eventually crush him in Medina. However, to bring Mecca under his influence required controlling the tribes of Arabia as well. Meccan wealth and power derived from trading operations that depended on the cooperation of the Arabian tribes. In short, both religious ambition and the political logic of Muhammad's removal to Medina required an Arabian as well as a Medinan confederation.