30 • 3 THE PROPHET OF MECCArevelations to Muhammad) tells us a little about his formative years. Early
Muslims, amassing all they could learn about the man they called "the seal
of the Prophets," added more data. We know far more about Muhammad
than about Jesus. Yet we wonder how heredity and environment com¬
bined to form this deeply religious man who was also a brilliant political
leader. What truths lurk behind the legends, recorded by early biogra¬
phers, that angels opened five-year-old Muhammad's chest to cleanse his
heart, or that a Christian hermit later pointed out a mark of prophethood
between the lad's shoulders?
We do know that Muhammad, despite the handicaps of being orphaned
and without property in a materialistic society, grew up to be a capable and
honest merchant. When he was a young man, a merchant widow named
Khadija entrusted him with the care of her caravan. When he acquitted
himself well, she broke with Arab custom and proposed marriage to him.
Although she was said to be forty, fifteen years older than Muhammad, the
marriage proved to be happy. She bore six children, and Muhammad took
no other wives during her lifetime. The business (hence his reputation) did
well. In the normal course of events, Muhammad should have become
one of Mecca's leading citizens, even though the Umayyads, the strongest
clan in the Quraysh tribe, looked down on the Hashimite family to which
he belonged.
Confrontation with Pagan Arab Values
Muhammad was not wholly content. The muruwwa code of ideal Arab be¬
havior, which parents still taught to their children, was no longer being
upheld by Mecca's leaders, whose moneymaking activities as merchants
or shrinekeepers had made them acquisitive and self-centered. Bravery
in battle and generosity to the poor were noble ideals for nomads (what,
Meccans asked, did they have to give away?), but these sedentarized Arabs
admired skillful bargaining in the marketplace.
What, then, did the Meccans believe? The Arabs' polytheistic animism
and ancestor worship were no longer a living faith, even though pilgrim¬
ages to the Ka'ba and other shrines continued and were indeed a major
source of Meccan income. The nomads believed in their gods only so long
as they did what the nomads wanted. They were more apt to fear the jinns
(or génies), invisible creatures who could do both nice and nasty things to
people. There were some Christians in Mecca, and whole tribes and cities
elsewhere in Arabia had converted to Judaism or to some sect of Christian¬
ity. There were other pious folk, neither Christian nor Jewish but leaning