Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in. From a reader:
Mr. Goldberg –
I don’t have anything to add on what is the Platonically correct
classification of the document traditionally known as the “Constitution
of Medina”, but I do think you are underestimating the extent to which
accession to it was consensual. According to Ralph Peters’s book /Mecca:
a Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land /(Princeton University Press,
1994, pgs. 67-68) the Constitution of Medina was a “contract between
Muhammad and his partisans and the citizens of Medina . . . [where]
Muhammad unexpectedly — from the point of view of a later Muslim –
agrees that the signatories, the Muslims, pagans, and Jews of Medina,
shall henceforward constitute a single community (/umma/).” The
agreement was “the result of some very hard bargaining.”
So an agreement negotiated between the governors and governed, and
signed by all the relevant parties. I don’t think the same could be said
for the Code of Hammurabi.