From roughly 1050 to 1300 CE, an era defined by the Crusades and their political aftermath, the relationship between Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land was profoundly shaped by a set of early Islamic documents known as the Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with Christian communities. Although the covenants originate in the 7th century, they continued to influence legal culture and interreligious norms in later Muslim polities, especially under the Fatimids, Ayyubids, and early Mamluks. During the tumultuous centuries of Crusader rule and counter-conquest, these texts served as a reference point for models of coexistence that contrasted sharply with the violence unfolding around them.
Among the most historically prominent covenants is the agreement attributed to the Prophet and the Monks of Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. According to long-standing monastic tradition, the monks safeguarded various copies for centuries, insisting on its authenticity and authority. The covenant obliges Muslims to safeguard Christian clergy, their religious sites, and their possessions, while explicitly forbidding coercion or interference in Christian religious life. Medieval Muslim jurists and administrators in the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk periods treated these terms as ethically binding. Even as the Crusades raged elsewhere, Saint Catherine’s remained protected and operational, reflecting this legacy of guardianship.
Another influential document is the Covenant with the Christians of Najran, arising from historical encounters between the Prophet and a Christian delegation from southern Arabia. This agreement is notable for granting Christian groups broad internal autonomy, permission to maintain churches and clergy, and freedom from forced conversion. The Najran covenant appears to have served as an important precedent in medieval interreligious governance, particularly as Muslim rulers sought to distinguish their policies from the often exclusionary practices that accompanied Crusader expansion.
The Covenant with the Christians of Persia represents yet another articulation of these principles. Although its transmission history has been debated, the content emphasizes solidarity between Muslims and Christians, presenting Christians as trustworthy partners rather than rivals. Such formulations resonated in regions like Iraq and Iran, where Christian communities continued to live under Islamic rule even as these territories became battlegrounds in the broader Crusader conflict.
Perhaps the most sweeping in scope is the so-called Covenant with the Christians of the World, which universalizes the themes present in other covenants. This document frames the protection of Christian lands, institutions, and worship as a religious duty of the Muslim community. Its tone is markedly inclusive, depicting Christians as fully entitled to security, justice, and respect within territories governed by Muslims.
In the 12th and 13th centuries, these covenants intersected with concrete political realities. After Saladin retook Jerusalem in 1187, his administration allowed native Christian groups to continue their religious practices and maintain their sacred spaces, decisions often interpreted as embodying the covenantal spirit. Across the broader region, churches, monasteries, and minority communities negotiated their status in ways that invoked early Islamic precedents of protected religious diversity.
Viewed together, the covenants represent a sustained vision of pluralism at odds with the antagonistic rhetoric of the Crusading age. They outline a framework in which Christians under Muslim rule retained rights, maintained communal institutions, and were entitled to state protection. As such, they offer an alternative lens through which to understand the complexities of Christian–Muslim relations in the medieval Holy Land.
This blog is based on the paper "Religious Pluralism and Civic Rights in a “Muslim Nation”: An Analysis of Prophet Muhammad’s Covenants with Christians" by Craig Considine, published on academia.edu. Other sources and further reading: Considine, C. 2016, “Religious Pluralism and Civic Rights in a ‘Muslim Nation’: A Study of Muhammad’s Agreements with Christian Communities.” Religions 7(2), 2016; Abulmajd, A. 2021, “An Examination of the Prophetic Covenant with Yūḥannah Ibn Ru’bah and the Christians of Aylah.” Religions 12(6), 2021; El-Wakil, A. 2016, “Assessing the Najrān Agreement: A Critical Inquiry into the Authenticity of Muhammad’s Covenants.” Journal of Islamic Studies 27(3), 2016; Rustow, M. “Dhimmi Status in Fatimid Cairo: Insights from Court and Bureaucratic Records.” In The Legal Status of Ḏimmī-s in the Islamic World (Brill). This list of scholarly, peer-reviewd works is an AI assisted product. All links were checked November 19, 2025, but not all textx were studied. The illustration shows a Christian and a Muslim playing chess, from the Book of Games of Alfonso X (c. 1285), source Wikipedia, Public Domain
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