The Verb Bāyaca in the Qurɔān: Allegiance to Muḥammad
The Verb Bāyaca in the Qurɔān: Allegiance to Muḥammad
This chapter aims to recover aspects of ideas about allegiance in the first Muslim community in Medina. This period is historically obscure because of the absence of corroborative, contemporaneous, non-Arabic evidence and because of the great importance of the Prophet Muhammad's life and conduct in the much later period. Much of the existing Prophetic biography is a product of later attempts to explain the Qur،ān or to understand problems of law and ritual. Due to the historiographical and evidential difficulties, this chapter focuses on the Qur،ān as a primary source for Muhammad's life and times. In the Qur،ān, the verb bāya،a is one of the nine words that denote religio-political covenant. Bāya،a is singled out in this chapter because of its rapid establishment as the name for an Islamic political institution and because it became the main word for the oath of allegiance to Muhammad and the caliphs. The chapter also aims to recover some of the semantic field of the quranic verb bāya،a in order to recover how it might have been understood by Muhammad and his contemporaries.
Keywords: allegiance, Muslim community, Medina, Muhammad, Qur،ān, bāya،a, religio-political covenant
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