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This essay starts from a somewhat simple question: What was the ummah of Muḥammad? It has become commonplace in the historiography of early Islam to understand the ummah of Muḥammad as primarily the “religious community” that he founded – “a community of believers” in modern scholarly parlance. But this received scholarly wisdom sits ill at ease with the Qurʾān, which more often asserts that its messenger was called from, and sent to, an ummah that pre-existed his mission. This ummah is never given an explicit name in the Qurʾān, but the Qurʾān does convey several interesting facts about it: most notably, this ummah speaks the same language as the messenger, the Arabic language. May one conclude, therefore, that the ummah to which the messenger was initially sent is merely the Arabs? Many early authors of the first and second Islamic centuries certainly do follow this line of reasoning, but are they correct or mistaken? This essay cross-examines their reasoning, as well as the warrant ostensibly behind it, and follows the development of the conviction that Arabs were the ummah of Muḥammad into its full bloom in the Arabic epistolography of the Umayyad period.

The Arabs and the Ummah of Muḥammad