Search Results (7)

The concept of covenant occupies a central place in the Qurʾān but has been understudied and underrepresented in discourses about Islam. This article contributes to redressing this lacuna by applying the method of content analysis to the Qurʾān, specifically the terms ‘ahd and mīthāq that refer to the concept of covenant. The aim of this article is to identify the maqāṣid (higher objectives) of covenants in Islam and discuss their implications for education about Islam and contemporary Islamic thought. This content analysis finds that covenants in the Qurʾān provide an overarching paradigm governing human existence and coexistence across six covenantal relationship categories. Covenants establish the terms and conditions of God-human and intra-human relations for human existence on Earth in relation to the afterlife, the dissemination of the divine message, the promotion of righteousness, welfare and wellbeing, and restricting the use of armed force to self-defense in response to treaty violation for preserving peace and security. This article recommends that the study of Qurʾānic covenantal knowledge ought to be integrated into courses and discourses about Islam commensurate, with its centrality in the Qurʾān and Prophet Muḥammad’s approach to building peaceful interreligious relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. Full article

Treaties and covenants have been the most important instruments of international relations in both ancient and modem times, playing a significant role in the promotion of religious freedom, peaceful coexistence, and interfaith harmony. The rapid spread and broad appeal of early Islam brought matters of international relations and cosmopolitan state governance to a cadre of Muslim leaders whose main political experience had been with parochial Arabian tribalism. The foremost issue was the position, rights, and responsibilities of non-Muslim religious communities within the Arab-Islamic empire. Consequently, numerous covenants and treaties were devised with subjects and with foreign states during the expansion of the Muslim world. This study examines the protection of non-Muslim places of worship under the rule of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ and his successors, including future caliphs and generals. It explores the practical application of the covenants by the successors of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ during early Islamic history, exploring the extent to which these covenants and treaties were effective in maintaining peaceful co-existence in a multi-faith society. In sum, for the sake of concision, only specific segments of the covenants and treaties are examined, which were devised with the non-Muslims for the protection of their worship places during the early Muslim Conquests. Full article

This study examines a covenant of the Prophet, namely, a treaty, patent of protection or charter of privileges, that was copied by Fāris al-Shidyāq at some time before the middle of the nineteenth century. It provides a biographical sketch of the copyist. It reproduces the Arabic original as found in Majmū‘ fawā’id along with an English translation. This is followed by a commentary on the covenant and a series of conclusions, namely, that the “Shidyāq Covenant” from 1857 is a copy of the “Rylands Covenant,” which appears to be an Ottoman-issued document dating from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. This “Shidyāq/Rylands Covenant” could represent the missing link between the “Covenant of the Prophet Muḥammad with the Christians of Najrān,” found in the Chronicle of Seert, and the “Covenant of the Prophet Muḥammad with the Christians of the World,” namely, the Testamentum et Pactiones made famous by Gabriel Sionita in 1630. The significance of this study resides in the fact that it shares a previously unpublished and unstudied covenant of the Prophet Muḥammad, in both Arabic and English, with the scholarly community, while exploring the problems posed by transmission. The more covenants that are rediscovered, the better we will understand their origin, diffusion, and relationship, allowing us to better assess their authenticity. What is more, if these documents are accepted by Muslims as authentic, either in word or in spirit, they can help counter and prevent radicalization, promote moderation, and help protect minorities. Full article

This article examines the Prophet Muḥammad’s covenant with Yūḥannah, Prince of Aylah, and illustrates the role it plays in understanding religious pluralism and civil rights as envisioned in Prophet Muḥammad’s dream of a “Muslim Nation”. The article also briefly makes use of other covenants contracted between the Prophet and other Arab Christian tribes. The covenants reveal Prophet Muḥammad’s desire for religious pluralism and the granting of rights to all people, regardless of religion, creed, or personal practices. Although Prophet Muḥammad’s covenants with the Christians of his time are used as a framework of analysis in this article, these documents have not received as much attention as they deserve, as few researchers in our time have shown interest in them. Early manuscripts and historical sources, both Arab and Western, are referenced in order to explore the circumstances and consequences of these early correspondences between Islam’s final Prophet and contemporary Arab Christians. The findings of this investigation are significant in that the covenants serve as critical milestones and reminders in light of current discussions about relations between Muslims and Christians. The contents of the covenants can also be used as models for improving relations between Muslims and Christians in religiously diverse communities the world over. Full article

This article analyzes the manuscripts in the Matenadaran in Yerevan, Armenia that are ascribed to the Prophet Muḥammad and ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and their translations into Farsi and Armenian. These important manuscripts have until now been neglected by scholars, and so we will here provide a general overview of them and how they were received by the Armenian Apostolic Church. I herein demonstrate how these documents were recognized by Muslim authorities, shedding light on how Muslim rulers managed the affairs of their Christian subjects. These documents, it would seem, also influenced the decrees of Muslim rulers to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Full article

In order to advance their argument that Imām ‘Alī was the divinely and prophetically designated spiritual and political successor of the Prophet Muḥammad, Shī‘ite Muslim scholars have primarily drawn evidence from the Qur’ān and Ḥadīth which was supplemented by reason and rational arguments. Oddly enough, in their quest to legitimize the Caliphate and Imāmate of Ahl al-Bayt, the People of the House of the Prophet, Shī‘ite scholars have generally ignored one of the most important bodies of literature, namely, the letters, treaties and covenants of the Prophet Muḥammad. The following study examines the Messenger of Allāh’s Covenants with Christians and Jews in search of previously overlooked material on the subject of succession, shedding light on the state of Islām prior to the definitive rupture of the early Muslim community into Sunnīs and Shī‘ites. Full article

The ḥadīth, “whoever harms a dhimmī I shall be his foe on the Day of Judgment’, can be found as an end clause to covenants which the Prophet Muḥammad issued to Christian, Jewish, and Magian communities. As it is highly unlikely for different non-Muslim communities to have forged this Prophetic statement at the end of their respective documents, this paper argues that this utterance is authentic and can be confidently traced back to the Prophet. This paper examines the occurrence of this statement as a ḥadīth in the Islamic literature and notes how it was dismissed by scholars of tradition who only accepted one of its variants. The paper then compares the rights granted to non-Muslims in the covenants to those conveyed in a number of ḥadīths and notes the discrepancies between early Islam’s official documents and the legal injunctions found in Muslim tradition. It argues that the ḥadīths on the rights of non-Muslims oftentimes reflect legal maxims of scholars living in the ‘Abbasīd era and that these were back-projected to the Prophet and his Companions using fictitious isnāds. Finally, this paper concludes by recommending the incorporation of the Prophet’s official decrees, which includes the covenants, within the fabric of Islamic law. Full article