ABSTRACT
From the classic Muslim point of view the climax of world history was over with the death of the Prophet. The unbroken umma, usually designated jamā‘a since the last years of Muhammad, spread wider during the following decades and carried the partial realization of the order willed by God beyond the land of its inception, thus, in Muslim eyes, bestowing on the world an age of incomparable blessing. But the contradiction inherent in the message between theocracy and sovereignty, between the ideal of the ‘best’ community and the measures resulting from it, developed tensions which destroyed its spiritual as well as its political unity. After the middle of the century the joy in a turn of history which seemed to confirm the sense of election was attenuated by a sadness at the course of history and a suffering which is only too discernible even today in the Muslim’s image of himself. All the more deeply should the believer examine that time of origin when the break between norm and reality had not poisoned men’s hearts; all the more carefully should those born later filter out the directions for living provided by this short epoch. For while it may be an exaggeration to say that in those first days life was lived in every way as a model for ever, it is the life of that period which, together with the Koranic judgments and commandments, provides the outlines of correct existence and shows the categories by the help of which the problems of the successors are to be understood and solved.
