Muhammad محمد

Three Jewish tribes lived at Medina—Qaynuqa, Nadir and Qurayza. The first two were expelled; the third, Qurayza, was destroyed after the siege of Medina in 627: the men were killed, the women and children sold. So reports Ibn Ishaq, the earliest biographer, writing a hundred and twenty years later; some modern scholars contest the number and the circumstances, but not the fact.

And another thing, as important: the legal category that arose after him—dhimmi, the protected unbeliever—gave the Jews under Islam a position that was humiliating but stable and predictable: the jizya poll tax, restrictions on dress, on building and on riding—and with them the right to their own courts, their own schools and their own faith. For many centuries this position proved safer than the Christian one: the Islamic world knew no expulsion of a whole country, no inquisition and no blood libel until modern times.

His birth year is "about 570": it is not documented. The day of his death is firm.