The Religious Groups of Mecca and Medina in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries ce

Ancient and modern urban centres have been important loci for encounters between individuals of different identities. In this article, I present Mecca and Medina as multi-religious towns in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods of the sixth and seventh centuries ce. Mecca was a very small town, but the Kaaba shrine there served as a regional pilgrimage site that drew people from different faith communities. Medina was a larger settlement with a significant Jewish population. Jews, Christians and others (‘pagans’) lived in both towns. Some of these ‘others’ had also adopted some of the basic ideas of monotheism, although they had not actually converted either to Judaism or Christianity. The sources used in the article are, in particular, inscriptions, the Quran and Arabic poetry. Recent research based on these sources has required a reassessment of earlier scholarly reconstructions of Mecca, Medina and the Arabian Peninsula. According to the conventional narrative, between 610 and 632 ce, proselytisation by the Prophet Muhammad led to the rapid spread of Islam in these urban centres and the expulsion or forced conversion of non-Muslims. However, based on the new evidence provided by the inscriptions and a reexamination of relevant passages in the literature of the period, this no longer seems to be true.