The early Muslim community

The first Muslims were a small group who believed the Prophet ﷺ in Mecca while they were weak, and they bore harm with patience. Some, like Sumayya, were hurt for their faith and never gave it up, and some emigrated to Abyssinia and then to Medina. From this small group a great nation began.

The first Muslims are the community that believed the Prophet ﷺ in the early years of the call in Mecca: women and men, free and enslaved, from different clans. They were a vulnerable minority worshipping in secret, and they endured mockery, boycott and hard treatment; Sumayya bint Khayyat (may God be pleased with her) was their first martyr. Some emigrated to Abyssinia twice, and then they emigrated to Medina, where they became the Muhajirun and, with the Ansar, one community. In Sunni ordering the people of precedence are named first: the Meccans, then the Muhajirun, then the Ansar. From this small nucleus grew the nation that later spread through Arabia and beyond.

The early Muslims are the first community to answer the call in Mecca, the nucleus from which 'the Muslims' became a nation with borders and sovereignty. It included free and enslaved, women and men, nobles and poor, from Quraysh clans and beyond; the best-known early names include Abu Bakr, Khadija, Ali, Zayd, Bilal, Ammar and Sumayya. In the Meccan decade the community was a vulnerable minority worshipping secretly in the house of al-Arqam, and the sira books record Quraysh's harm against them up to killing — Sumayya and her family were the first martyrs. Some emigrated to Abyssinia twice, and then came the migration to Medina after the two pledges of Aqaba, which turned the group into a society of Muhajirun and Ansar. In the Sunni ordering precedence ranks the Meccans first, then the Muhajirun, then the Ansar, and their generations fill the biographical dictionaries. For scholars, the community reads as an emergent religious movement that built loyalty across clan lines — which explains its rapid growth after Medina.