The early military victory of the Prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Badr (624 CE) seriously damaged Meccan prestige while strengthening the political position of Muslims in Medina and establishing Islam as a viable force in the Arabian Peninsula.
Since their emigration from Mecca (622), the Muslims in Medina had depended for economic survival on constant raids on Meccan caravans. When word of a particularly wealthy caravan escorted by Abu Sufyan, head of the Umayyad clan, reached Muhammad, a raiding party of about 300 Muslims, to be led by Muhammad himself, was organized. By filling the wells on the caravan route near Medina with sand, the Muslims lured Abu Sufyan’s army to battle at Badr, near Medina, in March 624. Despite the superior numbers of the Meccan forces (about 1,000 men), the Muslims scored a complete victory; and many prominent Meccans were killed. The success at Badr was recorded in the Qur’an as a divine sanction of the new religion: “It was not you who slew them, it was God. . . in order that He might test the Believers by a gracious trial from Himself” (8:17). Those Muslims who fought at Badr became known as the badriyun and make up one group of the Companions of the Prophet.
Of alliances between his ummah and neighbouring tribes, and so competed with the Meccans at their own game. He managed and distributed the booty from raiding, keeping one-fifth for the ummahs overall needs and distributing the rest among its members. In return, members gave a portion of their wealth as zakat, a tax paid to help the needy and to demonstrate their awareness of their dependence on God for all of their material benefits. Like other sheikhs, Muhammad contracted numerous, often strategically motivated, marriage alliances. He was also more able to harass and discipline Medinans, Muslim and non-Muslim
Alike, who did not support his activities full). He agitated in particular against the Jews, one of whose clans, the Banu Qaynuqa‘, he expelled.
Increasingly estranged from nonresponsive Jews and Christians, he reoriented his followers’ direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. He formally instituted the hajj to Mecca and fasting during the month of Ramadan as distinctive cultic acts, in recognition of the fact that Islam, a generic act of surrender to God, had become Islam, a proper-name identity distinguished not only from paganism but from other forms of monotheism as well. As more and more of Medina was absorbed into the Muslim community and as the Meccans weakened, Muhammad’s authority expanded. He continued to lead a three-pronged campaign—against nonsupporters in Medina, against the Quraysh in Mecca, and against surrounding tribes—and he even ordered raids into southern Syria. Eventually Muhammad became powerful enough to punish nonsupporters severely, especially those who leaned toward Mecca. For example, he had the men of the Qurayzah clan of Jews in Medina executed after they failed to help him against the Meccan forces at the Battle of the Ditch in 627. But he also used force and diplomacy to bring in other Jewish and Christian groups. Because they were seen, unlike pagans, to have formed ummahs of their own around a revelation from God, Jews and Christians were entitled to pay for protection (dhimmah). Muhammad thus set a precedent for another major characteristic of Islamicate civilization, that of qualified religious pluralism under Muslim authority.
Muhammad’s Later Recitations
During these years of warfare and consolidation, Muhammad continued to transmit revealed recitations, though their nature began to change. Some commented
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