26 • 2 The Middle East Before MuhammadMecca
Most of central and northern Arabia kept a precarious independence. In
times of peace the area was crossed by the camel caravans plying the over¬
land trade route from Syria to Yemen. Despite the falling demand for
frankincense, overland trade was gaining in importance as the shoals and
pirates of the Red Sea made sailing comparatively risky. The Byzantine-
Sasanid wars also tended to divert trade toward western Arabia. One of its
Arabian towns, formerly tied to the Sabaean kingdom as a religious shrine,
emerged in the sixth century as a major caravan station. This was Mecca,
set inland from the Red Sea among the mountains of the Hijaz. Hot and
dry, Mecca was useless for farming. It gained some of its wealth and power
from trade. But its primacy among Arab towns stemmed from three addi¬
tional assets: a yearly poets' fair at nearby Ukaz; Mount Arafat, already a
pilgrimage site; and its Ka'bah, a cube-shaped structure of unknown antiq¬
uity that housed idols (reportedly 360 of them) standing for the various
deities venerated by the tribal Arabs. Also nearby were lesser shrines honor¬
ing individual goddesses, notably al-Lat, al-Uzza, and al-Manat, who were
worshiped by the pagan Meccans themselves.
Later, some Muslims would portray pre-Islamic Mecca as a sinkhole of
wanton vice and corruption. Although they believed that Abraham and
Ishmael had earlier built the Ka'bah for the worship of the one true God,
the shrine had been corrupted in the intervening centuries. In reality,
Mecca must have been an amalgam of goodness and iniquity, a merchant's
haven. Its rulers belonged to a sedentarized Arab tribe called the Quraysh,
later to become both famous and infamous in the annals of Islamic his¬
tory. Every Muslim caliph for more than six centuries could trace his an¬
cestry back to this family of traders, shrinekeepers, and politicians. Under
their leadership, the centers of Middle Eastern power would shift from the
Mediterranean Sea and the Persian plateau to the Arabian desert and the
Fertile Crescent. In the conventional usage of historians, this change
marked the transition from the ancient to the medieval era. The prime
cause of this transition will soon become clear: Muhammad, the last and
the greatest of Islam's prophets, was a Meccan of the Quraysh.
CONCLUSIONIt is customary for historians of Southwest Asia to divide themselves ac¬
cording to their specialization into those of the ancient world, those of me¬
dieval Islam, and those of the modern Middle East. Although this practice