What It Was
Within months of arriving in Madīnah, the Prophet ﷺ set down a written agreement between the emigrants from Makkah, the tribes of the city who had received them, and the Jewish clans living among them. Ibn Isḥāq preserves it in full, and it survives in Ibn Hishām's recension and in Abū ʿUbayd's Kitāb al-Amwāl — two independent transmissions whose agreement has persuaded even the most sceptical modern historians of its authenticity.12
W. Montgomery Watt, whose account of the period is otherwise cautious about the sources, judged the document genuine on internal grounds: its terminology is archaic, several of its clauses would have been embarrassing or obsolete within a few years of the Prophet's death, and no later forger would have produced a text that treats the Jewish clans as constituent members of the community. It is generally regarded as the earliest surviving document of Islamic political history.3
The text is not a constitution in the modern sense — there is no legislature, no separation of powers — but it does the work a constitution does: it names who belongs to the community, distributes obligations of defence and ransom, forbids private war among the signatories, and specifies where disputes go. What follows is an abridgement of the principal clauses.13
The Document
In the name of God, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. This is a document from Muḥammad the Prophet, governing relations between the believers and Muslims of Quraysh and Yathrib, and those who follow them and are attached to them and strive alongside them.
They are one community (ummah) to the exclusion of all other people.
The emigrants of Quraysh shall pay the blood money among themselves according to their custom, and shall ransom their captives with the kindness and justice common among the believers. And each clan of the Anṣār — Banū ʿAwf, Banū al-Ḥārith, Banū Sāʿidah, Banū Jusham, Banū al-Najjār, Banū ʿAmr ibn ʿAwf, Banū al-Nabīt, Banū al-Aws — shall do likewise, each group ransoming its captives with the kindness and justice common among the believers.
The believers shall not leave anyone among them burdened with debt without giving him help, in ransom or blood money, according to what is fair.
No believer shall take as an ally the client of another believer without his consent.
The God-fearing believers shall be against whoever rebels among them, or seeks to spread injustice, sin, enmity, or corruption among the believers; every hand shall be against him, even if he be the son of one of them.
A believer shall not kill a believer in retaliation for an unbeliever, nor shall he aid an unbeliever against a believer.
The protection of God is one and indivisible: the least of the believers may extend protection binding upon all.
The peace of the believers is indivisible. No separate peace shall be made when believers are fighting in the way of God, except upon terms of equality and justice among them.
Whoever is convicted of killing a believer deliberately, without right, shall be subject to retaliation, unless the next of kin is satisfied; and the believers shall be against him altogether.
The Jews of Banū ʿAwf are one community with the believers. The Jews have their religion and the Muslims have theirs — their clients and themselves alike — except for one who does wrong or commits treachery, for he brings evil only upon himself and his household.
[The same is stated in turn for the Jews of Banū al-Najjār, Banū al-Ḥārith, Banū Sāʿidah, Banū Jusham, Banū al-Aws, Banū Thaʿlabah, and their clients.]
The Jews shall bear their expenses and the Muslims theirs. Each shall help the other against anyone who wars against the people of this document. Between them shall be sincere counsel and honourable dealing, not treachery.
None of them shall go out to war except with the permission of Muḥammad.
Yathrib shall be a sanctuary for the people of this document.
Whenever among the people of this document there occurs any incident or quarrel from which trouble is to be feared, it shall be referred to God and to Muḥammad the Messenger of God.
Quraysh and those who aid them shall be given no protection.
Each shall help the other against whoever attacks Yathrib.
This document shall not protect the unjust or the sinner. Whoever goes out is safe, and whoever remains in Madīnah is safe, except one who does wrong or sins. God is the protector of him who is righteous and God-fearing, and Muḥammad is the Messenger of God.
What Came of It
The compact did not hold. Within five years all three of the major Jewish clans of Madīnah had been expelled or destroyed following episodes the sources treat as breaches of exactly the obligations set out here — most gravely at the Trench, when Banū Qurayẓah negotiated with the besieging army while the city was surrounded.4
But the document's significance is not measured by how long it lasted. It records what the Prophet ﷺ established on arrival in a city that had been tearing itself apart in a civil war between al-Aws and al-Khazraj for generations: a single polity built on a written agreement rather than on tribal blood, in which membership was defined by consent to the document rather than by descent, and in which religious difference was written into the text as a permanent feature rather than a problem to be solved — “the Jews have their religion and the Muslims have theirs.”13