"A Pact of Chivalry"

This is from pg. 31-32 of Muhammad: His life based on the earliest sources by Martin Lings

The war helped to fan the growing discontent that every sedentary community tends to feel with the law of the desert. Most of the leading men of Quraysh had travelled to Syria and had seen for themselves the relative justice that prevailed in the Roman Empire. It was also possible in Abyssinia to have justice without recourse to fighting. But in Arabia there was no comparable system of law by which a victim of crime, or his family, might obtain redress; and it was natural that the sacrilegious war, like other conflicts before it, should have set many minds thinking of ways and means to prevent the same thing from happening again. But this time the result was more than mere thoughts and words: as far as Quraysh were concerned, there was now a widespread readiness to take action; and their sense of justice was put to the test by a scandalous incident that took place in Mecca in the first few weeks after the end of the fighting.

A merchant from the Yemeni port of Zabid had sold some valuable goods to a notable of the clain of Sahm. Having taking possession of these, the Sahmite refused to pay the promised price. The wrong merchant, as his wronger well knew, was a stranger to Mecca, and had no confederate or patron in all the city to whom he might go for help. But he was not to overawed by the other man's insolent self-assurance; and, taking his stand on the slope of Abu Qubays, he appealed to Quraysh as a whole, with loud and vehement eloquence, to see that justice was done. An immediate response came from most of those clans that had no traditional alliance with Sahm. Quraysh were bent above all on being united, regardless of clan; but within that union there was still an acute consciousness of the rift that divided them, over the legacy of Qusayy, into two groups, the Scented Ones and the Confederates, and Sahm were of the Confederates. One of the leaders of the other group, and one of the wealthiest men in Mecca at this time, was the chief of Taym, 'Abd Allah ibn Jud'an, and he now offered his large house as a meeting-place for all lovers of justice. From amongst the Scented Ones, only the clans of 'Abdu Shams and Nawfal were absent. Hashim, Mutallib, Zuhrah, Asad and Taym were all well represented, and they were joined by 'Ad, which had been one of the Confederates. Having decided, after an earnest discussion, that it was imperative to found an order of chivalry for the furtherance of justice and the protection of the weak, they went in a body to the Ka'bah where they poured water over the Black Stone, letting it flow into a receptacle. Then each man drank of the thus hallowed water; and with their right hands raised over their heads they vowed that henceforth, at every act of oppression in Mecca, they would stand together as one man on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor until justice was done, whether the oppressed were a man of Quraysh or one who had come from abroad. The Sahmite was thereupon compelled to pay his debt, nor did any of those clans which had abstained from the pact offer him their assistance.

Together with the chief of Taym, Zubayr of Hashim was one of the founders of this order, and he brought with him his nephew Muhammad, who took part in the oath and who said in after-years: 'I was present in the house of 'Abd Allah ibn Jud'an at so excellent a pact that I would not exchange my part in it for a herd of red camels; and if now, in Islam, I were summoned unto it, I would gladly respond.' [Ibn Ishaq, 86]

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