The Hijra
Year Zero
622 CEI
N THE LATE sixth century of the Christian age, a number of cities flour-
ished along the Arabian coast as hotbeds of commerce. The Arabians re-
ceived goods at Red Sea ports and took camel caravans across the desert to
Syria and Palestine, transporting spice and cloth and other trade goods.
They went north, south, east, and west; so they knew all about the Chris-
tian world and its ideas, but also about Zoroaster and his ideas. A number
of Jewish tribes lived among the Arabs; they had come here after the Ro-
mans had driven them out of Palestine. Both the Arabs and the Jews were
Semitic and traced their descent to Abraham (and through him to Adam).
The Arabs saw themselves as the line descended from Abraham's son Ish-
mael and his second wife, Hagar. The stories commonly associated with
the Old Testament-Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and his ark,
Joseph and Egypt, Moses and the pharaoh, and the rest of them-were
part of Arab tradition too. Although most of the Arabs were pagan poly-
theists at this point and the Jews had remained resolutely monotheistic,
the two groups were otherwise more or less indistinguishable in terms of
culture and lifestyle: the Jews of this area spoke Arabic, and their tribal
structure resembled that of the Arabs. Some Arabs were nomadic Bedouins
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