The text survives embedded in the biography of the Prophet transmitted by Ibn Ishaq and edited by Ibn Hisham, and it reads like what it is, a treaty between parties who do not yet trust one another. It opens by declaring the emigrants of Quraysh and the people of Yathrib, and whoever follows them and fights alongside them, to be one community to the exclusion of other people.
Most of the clauses are practical. Each clan continues to pay blood money and to ransom its own captives according to the custom it already follows. A believer may not make an alliance with the client of another believer without his consent. The believers as a body stand against anyone among them who acts oppressively, even if he is a son. No party may make a separate peace while war is being waged. Whatever the parties dispute is referred to God and to Muhammad.
The clauses concerning the Jewish groups are the ones most often quoted. Named clans allied to particular Arab tribes are said to form one community with the believers, with a formula repeated for each: the Jews have their religion and the Muslims theirs, both their clients and themselves. Each side bears its own expenses in war, each must help the other against an attacker of the confederacy, and each owes the other sincere counsel and good faith rather than treachery.
The valley of Yathrib is declared a sanctuary for the people of this document.