Some studies on "dhimmitude" have been released, or reviewed, on academia.edu: Mirza's "Dhimma Agreements" and Sahner's Christian Martyrs (reviewed Shoemaker).
What these papers get us are sources independent of the Islamic tradition, on the Arab elite's relationship with subjects.
Mirza sketches out the treaty-literature. She credits Joseph Schacht that the treaties often hold dhimma as synonym for 'ahd and even for amân. These are, therefore, diplomatic terms and not religious. Mirza bolsters Schacht that the treaties precede Islamic apartheid. (We ignore the "Ashtinameh" so-called, here.)
Sahner meanwhile looks to the Christian tradition of martyrdom. The Arabs intermittently sought to pry important Christians away from their faith. They took more seriously fellow Arabs who abandoned the ruling ideology, or Christians who propagandised against it in public. It is here, Sahner says, that we look for apostasy and blasphemy hudûd - Islam has come to assign these offences to the laws of war.
I think Islam, as the Sunnis interpret it, came up with any of these ideas at early-'Abbâsî al-Madina. Ibn Ishaq compiled a biography of the Prophet to backdate such laws into the earliest possible time, and (where possible) to align them with Jewish Biblical law. His contemporary Malik bin Anas - despite some mutual animosity - did similar in his legal manual called Muwatta, although Malik was more careful to credit the intervening 'Umarids and Madinese consensus. Shaybani seized hold of the Muwatta's first draught and canonised the bulk of it for the Baghdad caliphate.
The Shi'ites, Ibadites, and various fringe movements didn't accept these texts but even these had to account for them.
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