610–632 CE
Prophetic Era
The Prophetic Era spans Muhammad's activity in Mecca (c. 610–622 CE) and, following the emigration (hijra) to Yathrib/Medina in 622 CE, his role there as both religious and political leader until his death in 632 CE. Sources for this period are predominantly later Islamic historiography (sīra, hadith) rather than contemporary documentary evidence, which is one of the central methodological challenges in its historical study.
Content from this period
- Research Paper
Islam: History, Authority and the Development of Islamic Tradition
A historical-critical review of the Qur'an and Hadith as sources of religious authority in Islam, distinguishing established fact, scholarly consensus, majority and minority opinion, disputed claims, and theological interpretation at every step.
- Research Paper
Women in Mainstream Islam: Protection, Restriction, and the Historical Development of Religious Practice
A historical-critical review testing whether practices commonly described as Islamic requirements for women — segregation, face-veiling, travel guardianship, exclusion from mosques and public office — rest on the Qur'an itself or on later hadith, jurisprudence, dynastic custom, and regional practice.
- Article
The Constitution of Medina: A Primary Source Overview
A short guide to the document known as the 'Constitution of Medina': what it says, where it comes from, and why historians treat it as unusually old despite surviving only in a much later text.
- Article
Islam: A Reader's Guide to the Qur'an, Hadith and Early Islamic History
A plain-language companion to Revert Way's academic review of the Qur'an and Hadith: the same evidence, sources, and arguments, with every technical term and historical figure introduced on first use.
- Evidence Library
The Constitution of Medina
A set of clauses, preserved in Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad, establishing relations between the Emigrants, the Medinan Muslims, and Medina's Jewish tribes shortly after the hijra.
- Book Review
Book Review: Muhammad and the Believers
Fred Donner's argument that the earliest Muslim community was an ecumenical 'Believers' movement, only later crystallizing into a distinct religious identity.