The place and role of the “farewell sermon” in the regulation of interethnic relations in the Islamic world

Abstract

This study addresses the reconstruction of the original religious and legal principles that facilitated the transformation of fragmented tribal society in seventh-century Arabia into a model of multi-ethnic integration. The relevance of the topic was determined by the need for reconstruction of original religious-legal norm to transform the Arab fragmentary tribalism into a model of multi-ethnic integration. The study aimed to determine what the normative core of the “Farewell Sermon” was and what role it played in the formation of mechanisms for supratribal social integration in the early Muslim community. The research was conducted through the contextual, comparative-historical, and textual analysis of three main source domains: homiletic (the “Farewell Sermon”), legal (the Constitution of Medina), and diplomatic (six letters of the Prophet), with a correlation with narrative and historiographic data on the social structure of early Islam. The results of the research revealed that in the Arabia of the 7th century there was a fragmented tribal, Jewish, and Christian society with no universal rules of interaction between groups. In this situation, the “Farewell Sermon” proclaimed several universal provisions: equality of people irrespective of their origin, individual responsibility instead of collective punishment, protection of vulnerable groups, rejection of ethnic superiority, and peaceful resolution of conflicts. Comparison with the Constitution of Medina led to the conclusion that these principles were transformed into legal norms for the unity of ummah, collective security, and contractual autonomy of religious communities. Analysis of the texts of diplomatic letters made it possible to identify similar normative orientations that transfer to the sphere of inter-civilizational communication with the rulers of Byzantium, Persia, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman, and Abyssinia. The research indicates that the “Farewell Sermon” may be interpreted as an important normative reference point for the early Islamic model of inter-ethnic integration, which retains conceptual relevance for contemporary intercultural and interreligious dialogue.