Islam. 7This social concern had always been an essential part of
the visions of the great world religions, which had developed
during what historians have called the Axial Age (c. 700 B.C.E.
to 200 B.C.E.), when civilization, as we know it, developed, to-
gether with the confessional faiths which have continued to
nourish humanity: Taoism and Confucianism in China; Hin-
duism and Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent; monothe-
ism in the Middle East; and rationalism in Europe. These
faiths all reformed the old paganism, which was no longer ad-
equate in the larger and more complex societies that evolved
once people had created a mercantile economy capable of
supporting this cultural effort. In the larger states, people ac-
quired broader horizons, and the old local cults ceased to be
appropriate; increasingly, the Axial Age faiths focused on a
single deity or supreme symbol of transcendence. Each was
concerned about the fundamental injustice of their society.
All pre-modern civilizations were based economically upon a
surplus of agricultural produce; they therefore depended
upon the labour of peasants who could not enjoy their high
culture, which was only for an elite. To counter this, the new
faiths stressed the importance of compassion. Arabia had re-
mained outside the civilized world. Its intractable climate
meant that the Arabs lived on the brink of starvation; there
seemed no way that they could acquire an agrarian surplus
that would put them on a footing with Sassanid Persia or
Byzantium. But when the Quraysh began to develop a market
economy their perspective began to change. Many were still
happy with the old paganism, but there was a growing ten-
dency to worship only one God; and there was, as we have
seen, a growing unease about the inequity of the new civiliza-
tion that was developing in Mecca. The Arabs were now
ready for an Axial Age faith of their own.
But that did not mean a wholesale rejection of tradition.
The Axial Age prophets and reformers all built on the old