The Life of the Prophet ﷺ: The Emigration 🐫 🧳

After losing his family's support, being rejected by neighbouring tribes, and watching his own followers persecuted for their faith, Muhammad [ﷺ] recognised that a radical change was necessary if Islam was to survive at all. The opportunity for such a change came from an oasis town 300 kilometers north of Makkah, Yathrib. The two main tribes of Yathrib, Aws and Khazraj, were engaged in a perpetual suruggle for power that turned deadly in the 610s. Further exasperating the problem, numerous Jewish tribes also lived in Yathrib and had trouble coexisting with the local Arabs.

Muhammad's [ﷺ] reputation as a trustworthy and reliable man was already well-known in Yathrib, and it was in 620 when numerous notables from the town travelled to Makkah to seek his emigration to Yathrib to serve as their leader and a mediator of their disputes. Muhammad [ﷺ] accepted their offer and encouraged his followers in Makkah to make the journey with him, where the oppression of the Quraysh was absent.

Muhammad [ﷺ] himself was one of the last to leave Mecca in 622, when he journeyed with his close friend Abu Bakr, barely eluding Quraysh's plans to have him murdered before he could leave. In Yathrib, which was soon renamed al-Madinah al-Munawwarah (the radiant city), officially known as "Madinah" (the city), Muhammad [ﷺ] would find security, and the ability to spread Islam away from Quraysh's opposition.

The Prophet's [ﷺ] flight from Makkah was known as the hijrah, meaning ‘the emigration’. It marked a turning point in early Islamic history and is used to this day as the beginning of the Islamic calendar. No longer was the Muslim community a marginalised group and Muhammad [ﷺ] a social outcast.

The Muslim community would now turn Madinah into the first Muslim state, and Muhammad [ﷺ] into its leader. The example set by the Prophet [ﷺ] in his ten years in Madinah would inspire hundreds of years of Muslim politics, social order, and economics.

But life in Madinah was certainly not without challenges.