Yakın Doğu Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi

Öz

Prophets, whom Allah has selected and charged as messengers, have conveyed the divine commands to people. Some of the activities of the prophets in this process of conveyance revealed their leadership and presidential aspects in addition to their divine prophethood duties and prophetic missions. Thus, prophethood (religious authority) and sovereignty (political authority) were combined, from time to time, in a single person, as in the prophets David and Solomon, and the term “ruler prophet” was formed in Islamic literature. The actions and political activities of the Prophet, who is the last of the prophets and who constituted the last link in the chain of the prophethood, in Madinah after the migration, likewise enabled the emergence of a state. Due to the political conjuncture, he served as prophet and head of state at the same time in Medina. Therefore, it is certain that the Prophet had political goals and some of his practices were directed towards these goals during the formation of first Islamic society and the process of becoming a state in Madinah. However, whether the Messenger of Allah had political goals simultaneously with his prophethood during the Meccan period is ambiguous, and there has not yet been a comprehensive distinct study on this subject. This article aims to reveal the Prophet’s political goals during the Meccan period of his prophethood, in addition to the invitation to Islam, and whether these goals were realized or not, in the light of classical sources and narrations, in relation to the pre-Islamic political environment. As a result of the research conducted, it is seen that the Prophet expressed his desire to establish an Islamic society and state based on religious, social, and moral principles since the first years of his prophethood, and although it was not his main goal and mission, he aimed to create a monotheism-centered structure covering all Arabs and encouraged his interlocutors in this regard. It is understood that his strategic goals, as well as religion and prophethood, were effective both in the obedience of the Arabs living in independent tribes to the Prophet and in the establishment of political and social unity in a large part of the Arabian Peninsula. It is seen that the Prophet, who grew up within the Quraysh tribe, which had political and commercial relations with states such as the Himyerids, Lahmids, Ghassanids, Sassanids and Byzantines, set a number of near and distant goals in line with the interests, demands and dreams of his interlocutors during the Meccan period. These goals, which can be listed as “taking over the administration/management of the Ka’bah and Mecca”, “establishing a strong central authority in the Arabian Peninsula”, “eliminating Byzantine and Sasanian pressures on the Arabs” and “inheriting the property of Kisra and Kaiser” are related to the absence of a strong central authority in the Arabian Peninsula in general and in the Hijaz region in particular. The Prophet’s immediate goals, which he set in order to raise the morale and spirituality of the Muslims in particular and the Quraysh and the Hijaz Arabs in general in the face of various difficulties and intense pressures, were realized during the Medina period of the prophethood, while his distant goals, such as “possessing the treasures of Kisra and Kaiser, seizing Byzantine and Sasanian lands”, occurred in the period of the Khulefā-yi Rāshidîn immediately after his death.