Hegira: The 1,400 years of exile that mark the beginning of Islam

He was already over 50 years old. According to the Gregorian calendar, the Hegira took place exactly 1,400 years ago.

“In Mecca, Muslims had been persecuted. There was a lot of violence, a lot of arguments, a lot of attacks. A group of converts to Islam [de Médine] went to the Prophet Muhammad to tell him that he could realize there [son projet]that there would be importance because there was a conflict between the Jews and the idolaters”, explains the anthropologist Francirosy Campos Barbosa, professor at the University of São Paulo (USP-Ribeirão Preto) and author of the book entitled Hajj, hajja: the experience of pilgrimage.

“And that [l’arrivée de Mouhammad] was also important to pacify those disagreements that existed there”.

“In general terms, the Hegira was the immigration of the first Muslims, historically, to the city of Medina and also to Abyssinia, specifically where Eritrea and Ethiopia are,” explains Atilla Kus, researcher and master of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), and author of the book The Constitution of Medina.

There is no consensus on the exact date of this historic event. For several reasons.

Starting with the fact that the counting of time at that time was different from that of today.

Then, because for Muslims, who consider that the Hegira is precisely the zero point, the calendar is lunar, unlike the Gregorian calendar used in much of the contemporary world.

The Gregorian calendar itself, by the way, was implemented much less time ago – 440 years – and before that there were so many adjustments made from time to time to correct distortions in the counting the time it becomes very difficult to do an accurate update.

“Also, these events have long been transmitted orally, so some people say it was on such and such a date, others say it was on another date,” Kus explains.

Some argue that the hijrah began on June 21, 622. But there are also those who say July 15 or 16, or even dates in the month of September.

In the Muslim account, whose calendar is shorter than the Gregorian – which is based on the sun – the key Hijri event occurred 1444 years ago.

In this calendar, the current year started on August 10, 2021 and ends on July 28, 2022.

The word hegira literally means separation.

“It is distancing, moving away from certain people, from something, from a place. In the classic texts of Islam, such as the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, the hijrah is used as a distancing from what is bad,” says Kus.

“And in this evil is seen a society which has evil and injustice in it.”

Hijra is not only a physical immigration of the body to another place, but also a matter of spirituality,” he says.

“The real immigrant, for Islam, is the one who turns away from what God has forbidden, from what is sinful.”

In this sense, when hegemony occurred, Kus contextualizes that it was the turning away “from a society that is unjust, unequal and persecuting different opinions”.

It is interesting to note that the question of immigration appears to be fundamental in many religions. Moses is said to have freed his people from Egypt and led them to the promised land.

Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem because Joseph needed to be enrolled there, as part of a census that was to take place.

And Jesus himself, as an adult, will become a pilgrim preacher.

The same goes for Siddhartha Gautama, the father of Buddhism, who, at the age of 29, will end up leaving the palace where he lived to lead a wandering life.

“I find it very revealing that there are such similarities between religions. They are departures from places of oppression to places where people can live their religiosity and their spirituality in the best possible way”, analyzes the anthropologist Francirosy Barbosa.

“It is as if God were sending a sign to these people who have suffered that there is indeed the possibility of a certain redemption, a welcoming place where people can exercise and practice their religiosity. All these religious experiences, the sacred texts, mark this, so much so that one of the pillars of the Islamic faith is to believe in the holy books that predate the Koran, such as the Torah, the Psalms of David, the Old Testament… Because these texts also bear references to stories that are important to tell.”

Researcher Kus points out that this migratory movement of Muhammad represents “the initial milestone of Islamic culture and civilization, the initial milestone of Islamic society.”

“When addressing the question of the differentiation of identities, the Hegira serves as the basis for the differentiation between monotheism and polytheisms, but also within monotheism itself, or monotheisms, by differentiating Islam from Judaism and Christianity,” argues Kus.

In Medina, at the time called Yathrib, the first Muslims established, according to the specialist in religions, an “identity demarcation” which would ultimately constitute the “beginning of Islamic civilization”.

“In the text of the Quran, the idea of ​​social teachings begins, the Quran begins to have the tone of social normativity, teachings on how a Muslim should behave within the family, with others, on the attitude of a trader, a farmer, a seller, on how he should behave and on the principles of a government according to Islamic principles,” he explains.

For scholars, Medina became, at that time, a model city for Islam.

“There is an idealization of the virtuous city, a city where there will be no injustice,” says Kus.

Barbosa explains that at that time the Quran was being written. She notes that the suras – the name given to the chapters of the holy book – “revealed” in Medina are different from those in Mecca.

“Usually the surahs revealed in Makkah had phrases like ‘O people’, ‘O humans’. In Madinah the treatment is ‘O, believers’, because there God was already addressing the believers. In Madinah the people are already Muslims,” ​​she said.

In Medina, Muhammad establishes a constitution with the principles of Islam as the form of government. “This is why the Hegira is the passage to a totally Islamic society”, sums up the anthropologist.

Rules are fixed there such as the annual fast, prayers, the annual contribution which must be paid according to the income of each Muslim.

“The rules are put into practice. They have a format, a formula. Some of these things were already done in Mecca, but not exactly like today, in a religious setting. It was in Medina that religious practice took place. been established,” says Barbosa.

Kus, a scholar on the subject, believes that in the original society of Medina, democratic principles were visible in a way rarely seen at the time.

“In my opinion, the Hegira also symbolizes this: the relationship between Islam and democracy,” he comments.

“There is a very strong relationship. The constitution of Medina was a document signed by Christians, Jews, Muslims and polytheistic Arabs of the time.”

The text was formulated between the years 622 and 624 and, according to Kus’s research, it included a “very strong openness to freedom of expression”, which allowed, “after many centuries”, that there was “for the first time a political union between Arabs of different segments in a properly Arab society of that time”.

“In this sense, we can consider the Hegira as a confirmation, a political and democratic affirmation of respect for the search for freedom without renouncing that of others. Something like securing freedom so that your freedom is also secure”, he said.

The understanding of the Hegira as zero point of the Muslim calendar is the work of the second caliph, that is to say the second successor of Mouhamed.

Omar Ibn Al Katabd (586-644) ruled the Muslims from 634 to 644 and instituted the calendar seven years after the death of the founding prophet.

“In ancient Arab society, there was no fixed calendar marker, the dates always diverged because it was something like ‘this happened so many years after such an event’. To avoid any confusion, the caliph systematized the calendar from the hijra,” says Kus.