The present monograph offers an edited version and interpretation of the earliest and most important document from the time of Muḥammad. The document is often referred to as the “Constitution of Medina”. Although this is a misnomer, it appears at the title of this monograph because it is widespread. The document is referred to throughout this study by the neutral Arabic term “Kitāb”.

Detailed attention has been dedicated to the Kitāb by Muhammad Ḥamīdullah, who often employed political science terminology. In an article published in 1969 he described the Kitāb as “the earliest written constitution, promulgated by a sovereign for his own statal conduct, both in internal and foreign affairs”. It preceded the Magna Carta by several centuries; its second clause, according to Ḥamīdullah, is “the declaration of independence, be that against the pagan Mecca, Byzantine empire, Iran or any other state in the world”. Ten clauses were “devoted to social insurance” (i.e. the ransoming of captives and the payment of blood-money), and it was “the first step to abolish nationalities based on the accidents of birth, such as the identity of birth-place, language, race, colour of skin etc.” I find this terminology, above all the term “constitution”, rather disorienting. The document is sometimes referred to more appropriately as ‘ahd al-umma.

In 1889 J. Wellhausen published a short study of the Kitāb entitled Muhammads Gemeindeordnung von Medina, which was included in his monograph about Medina on the eve of Islam. I. Goldziher, with refer- ence to the preservation of written documents in the context of fabricated ḥadīth, was very sceptical regarding the possibility that such documents were at all authentic and assumed that written documents were produced to support certain legal practices. In his own words:

Goldziher himself acknowledged that had Wellhausen's monograph on Med- ina reached him before the second volume of Muslim Studies went to press, “the results of that work would have been used for the first chapters of the study of ḥadīth”. Indeed, Goldziher's conclusions are too sweeping. The Kitāb, which goes back to the early days of Islam, was preserved more or less in its original form.