Governance · a Light

Medina's founding document named Jews as part of one community

Soon after arriving in Yathrib in 622, the Prophet ﷺ set out the terms on which a mixed town would live. The text, preserved by the early biographer Ibn Ishaq and usually called the Sahifa or Constitution of Medina, lists the tribes by name, including the Jewish clans, and states that they form one community alongside the believers. It guarantees them their religion, fixes who pays blood money for whom, requires joint defence of the town, and says disputes go to arbitration rather than feud. Historians treat it as one of the earliest written constitutional documents anywhere, and it was written for a place with more than one faith in it.

Yathrib, later Madinah · 622 CE