18 DESTINY DISRUPTED
who lived in the desert, but others were town dwellers. Mohammed, the
prophet of Islam, was born and raised in the highly cosmopolitan town of
Mecca, near the Red Sea coast.
Meccans were wide-ranging merchants and traders, but their biggest,
most prestigious business was religion. Mecca had temples to at least a
hundred pagan deities with names like Hubal, Manat, Allat, al-Uzza, and
Fals. Pilgrims streamed in to visit the sites, perform the rites, and do a lit-
tle business on the side, so Mecca had a busy tourist industry with inns,
taverns, shops, and services catering to pilgrims.
Mohammed was born around the year 570. The exact date is unknown
because no one was paying much attention to him at the time. His father was
a poor man who died when Mohammed was still in the womb, leaving Mo-
hammed's mother virtually penniless. Then, when Mohammed was only six,
his mother died too. Although Mohammed was a member of the Quraysh,
the most powerful tribe in Mecca, he got no status out of it because he be-
longed to one of the tribe's poorer dans, the Banu ("dan" or "house of")
Hashim. One gets the feeling that this boy grew up feeling quite keenly his
uncertain status as an orphan. He was not abandoned, however; his dose rel-
atives took him in. He lived with his grandfather until the old man died and
then with his uncle Abu Talib, who raised him like a son-yet the fact re-
mained that he was a nobody in his culture, and outside his uncle's home he
probably tasted the disdain and disrespect that was an orphan's lot. His child-
hood planted in him a lifelong concern for the plight of widows and orphans.
When Mohammed was twenty-five, a wealthy widowed business-
woman named Khadija hired him to manage her caravans and conduct
business for her. Arab society was not kind to women as a rule, but
Khadija had inherited her husband's wealth, and the fact that she held on
to it suggests what a powerful and charismatic personality she must have
had. Mutual respect and affection between Mohammed and Khadija led
the two to marriage, a warm partnership that lasted until Khadija's death
twenty-five years later. And even though Arabia was a polygynous society
in which having only one wife must have been uncommon, Mohammed
married no one else as long as Khadija lived.
As an adult, then, the orphan built quite a successful personal and busi-
ness life. He acquired a reputation for his diplomatic skills, and quarreling
parties often called upon him to act as an arbiter. Still, as Mohammed ap-