In the year 622, the leaders of Mecca hatched a plot to assassinate Muhammad. Just in time, Muhammad learned about the plan and decided to flee to the city of Medina, where he had allies. This flight is known as the Hijra, and it was such an important event in the history of Islam that the Islamic calendar starts in year one with the Hijra. Find out more about this pivotal moment here.
Hijra Meaning
Hijra in Arabic means 'migration' or 'emigration'. In Islam, the Hijra refers to the 200 mile journey Muhammad made from his hometown of Mecca to the city of Medina in order to escape religious persecution. However, Muslims remember the Hijra not as an act of weakness but instead as a strategic act of triumph that enabled the foundation of the Islamic community.
Image of the people of Medina welcoming the Prophet Muhammad at the end of the Hijra. Wikimedia Commons.
The decision to leave Mecca for Medina occurred when Muhammad learned of a plot to assassinate him. He sent many of his followers ahead of him, and left last with his close friend Abu Bakr. Therefore, the Hijra was a planned flight in order to preserve Muhammad's life and the lives of his followers.
Religious persecution
A systematic mistreatment of people based on their religious beliefs.
The Hijra Timeline
Before we dive into the detail about the events leading up to the Hijra, let's take a look at a short timeline summarising the key moments that led to the Muslim migration to Medina in 622.
| Year | Event |
| 610 | Muhammad's first revelation. |
| 613 | Muhammad began preaching in Mecca. He attracted some followers and many opponents. |
| 615 | Two Muslims were killed in Mecca. Muhammad arranged for some of his followers to escape to Ethiopia. |
| 619 | The leader of the Banu Hashim clan, Muhammad's uncle, died. The new leader did not like Muhammad's teaching and withdrew the clan's protection of Muhammad. |
| 622 | The Hijra. Muhammad fled with Abu Bakr to Medina. |
| 639 | Caliph Umar decides that the start of the Islamic calendar should be dated to the Hijra as the start of the Islamic community. |
The Revelation and Hijra
The origins of the Hijra can be seen to go back to Muhammad's first revelation. This event occurred in 610 when Muhammad was meditating in the Hira cave on the mountain Jabal an-Nour. The angel Gabriel suddenly appeared and commanded Muhammad to recite. Muhammad asked what he should recite. At this, the angel Gabriel responded by revealing to Muhammad the first lines of the 96th chapter of the Qur'an:
Recite in the name of your Lord who created, created man from clots of blood.
Recite! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One, who by the pen taught man what he did not know."1
- The Quran, as quoted in Dawood
The reference to blood clots was probably a reference to the embryo in the womb. Muhammad was initially worried about what this revelation meant. However, he was reassured by his wife Khadijah and her Christian cousin Waraqah who both encouraged him to believe that God was calling him to be a prophet. The revelations continued and in 613 C.E. he started to preach his revelations in the city of Mecca.2
Growing Opposition
The central message that Muhammad preached was that there was no God beside Allah. This message opposed the polytheistic religion that was dominant in Mecca at the time. He also criticised some of the social practices of the Meccans, including female infanticide - the practice of killing baby girls because of their gender.
Polytheistic religion:
A religion that believes in many different deities.
As a result, Muhammad faced opposition from the leading tribe of Mecca, the Quraysh tribe. Although Muhammad's own clan, the Banu Hashim, gave him physical protection, violence against his followers started to escalate. In 615, two Muslims were killed by Meccan opponents. In response, Muhammad arranged for some of his followers to escape to Ethiopia where a Christian king offered them protection.
Then several events occurred which made Muhammad's situation more precarious. For one thing, his closest follower and wife Khadijah died. After that, his uncle and guardian, who was the leader of the Banu Hashim clan, died in 619. Leadership of the Banu Hashim passed to a different uncle who was not sympathetic to Muhammad's teachings and decided to withdraw the clan's protection to Muhammad. This meant that Muhammad's life was in danger.
Isra and Miraj
During this difficult period, in the year 621, Muhammad experienced a special revelation which is known as the Isra and Miraj, or the Night Journey. This was a supernatural journey in which Muhammad travelled with the angel Gabriel to Jerusalem and then to heaven where he conversed with prophets and with Allah himself. According to Islamic tradition, Allah instructed Muhammad that people should pray fifty times a day. However, Muhammad negotiated this number down to five times a day. This is why Muslims pray five times daily to this very day.
The Decision to Leave for Medina
During Muhammad's preaching in Mecca, several traders from Medina became interested in his message. There was a large community of Jews who lived in Medina, so the traders from this city were already used to monotheistic religion and were more open to it than the polytheistic Meccans.
Monotheistic religion
Religions that believe in only one God. Monotheistic faiths include Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Muhammad met with the two dominant clans of Medina, the Aws and the Khazraj, in a couple of meetings just outside of Mecca. In these meetings, the Aws and Khazraj pledged allegiance to Muhammad and promised him safety if he migrated to Medina. Muhammad then encouraged his followers to migrate to Medina ahead of him. This was the start of the Hijra.
According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad himself only left Mecca when he received direct instruction from Allah to leave for Medina.
Hijra History
According to the tradition, Muhammad left for Medina on the night he learned of an assassination plot against him.
Muhammad managed to slip out of the city unnoticed, by leaving his son-in-law Ali behind with his cloak as a decoy. Therefore, by the time the assassins realised that Muhammad had already left the city it was too late. Ali risked his life, but the assassins did not kill him and he was able to join Muhammad and the other Muslims in Mecca shortly after.
The story goes that Muhammad made the migration to Medina with his close friend Abu Bakr. At one point they had to hide in a mountain cave for three days while Quraysh opponents were out hunting for them.
To start with, Muhammad and Abu Bakr went south to take shelter in the mountains near Mecca. Then they headed north up the Red Sea coastline towards Medina. They found a warm welcome by the people in Medina as well as the Muslims who had made the journey ahead of them.
Map showing the locations of Mecca and Medina. Wikimedia Commons.
Importance of the Hijra
For Muslims, the Hijra is the pivotal moment that changed the face of the world forever. Dr Ibrahim B. Syed argues:
Throughout the history of Islam, the migration was a transitional line between the two major eras regarding to the message of Islam: the era of [Mecca] and the era of [Medina]. In its essence, this signified a transition from one phase to another."3
- Former Islamic Research Foundation President, Ibrahim Syed.
Some of the transitions between the Meccan era and the Medinan era caused by the Hijra included:
Transition from Muslims representing a small, persecuted religious minority to a strong regional power with allies.
Transition from an informal group of believers to a political community/state with a strong centralised leadership and constitution. This represented the start of Islam as a political and religious force.
Transition from a local focus on converting the Quraysh tribe in Mecca to a universal focus on reaching all people with the word of God.
For these reasons, the Hijra is often cited as the beginning of the Islam.
Calendar
The Hijra was such a defining moment for the Islamic community that early on they decided to make this the foundation event from which they would organise time. Therefore, the first year of the Islamic calendar corresponds with the date of the Hijrah - and accordingly the year 622 AD is the first year of the Islamic calendar.
This decision was made in 639 by a close companion of Muhammad, Umar, who became the second caliph to lead the Islamic community after Muhammad's death.
Caliph
The ruler of the Islamic political and religious community after the Prophet Muhammad's death.
This calendar continues to be used in some Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Others prefer to use the Gregorian calendar (the one used in Britain) for civic events and only use the Islamic calendar for religious events.
Challenges of the Hijra
The normal narrative around the Hijra is that the Hijra was the crucial turning point at which Islam was born. Before the Hijra, it is usually argued, Muhammad and his followers were a weak and disorganised group of friends. After the Hijra, this small community became a powerful regional entity which was capable of winning wars against their enemies and conquering new territories.
Historian Falzur Rahman challenges this narrative of the Hijra. He argues that there were important continuities between the Meccan and Medinan period as well as changes, so that the Hijra was less of a sudden rupture in time than it is usually seen. Let's take a closer look at the changes and continuities before and after the Hijra in this table.
| Changes | Continuities |
| Small persecuted minority to powerful group with allies | Muhammad's central message remained monotheism throughout the Meccan and Medinan eras |
| Informal group of friends to a political state with a constitution | The Muslim community grew in Mecca despite persecution. This growth continued in the Medinan period. |
| Focus on converting local population in Mecca to focus on converting everyone in the world (universalism) | Accounts usually overemphasise how weak the Muslims were in Mecca. The Quraysh were not powerful enough to launch a sustained campaign against them. Moreover, Muslims were powerful enough to retaliate - some verses of the Quran written in Mecca permit Muslims to respond to attacks with physical violence, though it recommends patience. This indicates that Muslims were already powerful enough to defend themselves and attack back. |
| Weak enough to flee for physical safety to strong enough to conquer territories and win battles | |
Falzur Rahman concludes that:
There is, thus, a continuity and a transition from the late Meccan to the early Madinan period and not a clear break as so many of the modern writings...project."4
- Historian Falzur Rahman.
Hijra - Key takeaways
- Hijra is Arabic for 'migration'. It refers to the momentous event when Muhammad escaped to Medina to avoid being assassinated in Mecca in the year 622.
- The origins of the Hijra go back to Muhammad's revelations in the mountains around Mecca. His monotheistic preaching antagonised the Quraysh tribe in Mecca and they opposed his message.
- The Hijra was such a crucial defining moment for the early Islamic community that they decided that the Islamic calendar should start with this event.
- The usual narrative around the Hijra is that it was the pivotal moment that launched Islam as a political and religious force to be reckoned with. Before this, the believers had been an informal group who were extremely weak in the face of sustained persecution. After the Hijra, they became powerful and gained many allies.
- However, there were also important continuities between the Meccan and Medinan periods. Therefore, the Hijra was not necessarily so clean a break between two eras as it is often seen as.
References
- N.J.Dawood, 'Introduction', The Koran, 1956, pp.9-10.
- W.Montgomery Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, 1961, p.22.
- Dr Ibrahim Syed, The Significance of the Hijrah (622C.E.), History of Islam, The Significance of the Hijrah (622 CE) – History of Islam [accessed 28/06/22].
- Falzur Rahman, 'The Religious Situation in Mecca from the Eve of Islam Up to the Hijra', Islamic Studies, 1977, p.299.
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