Although
the 6th-century client states were the largest Arab polities
of their day, it was not from them that a permanently
signifi cant Arab state arose. Rather, it emerged among
independent Arabs living in Mecca at the junction of
major north–south and west–east routes, in one of the less naturally favoured Arab settlements of the Hejaz (al-Hijaz). The
development of a trading town
into a city-state was not unusual, but, unlike many other western Arabian settlements, Mecca was
not centred on an oasis or located in the hinterland of any non-Arab power. Although it had enough well water and springwater to provide
for large numbers of camels, it
did not have enough for agriculture; its economy depended on long-distance as well as
shortdistance trade.
Mecca Under the
Quraysh Clans
Sometime after the year 400 CE Mecca had come under the control of a group of Arabs who
were in the process of becoming sedentary; they were known as Quraysh and were led by a man remembered as Qusayy ibn Kilab (called al-Mujammi‘, “the Unifier”).
During the generations before Muhammad’s birth in about 570, the several clans of the Quraysh fostered a development in Mecca that seems to have been occurring in
a few other Arab towns as well.
They used their trading connections and their relationships with their Bedouin cousins to make their town a regional centre whose
influence radiated in many directions. They designated Mecca as a quarterly haram, a safe haven from the intertribal warfare and raiding that was endemic among the Bedouin. Thus, Mecca became an attractive site for
large trade fairs that coincided
with pilgrimage (Arabic: hajj) to a local shrine, the Ka‘bah. The Ka‘bah housed
the deities of visitors as well
as the Meccans’ supra-tribal creator and covenant-guaranteeing deity, called Allah. Most Arabs probably viewed this deity as one
among many, possessing
powers not specific to a particular tribe; others may have identified this figure with the God of the Jews and Christians.
The building activities of the Quraysh threatened one non-Arab power enough to invite
direct interference: the Abyssinians are said to have invaded Mecca in the year of Muhammad’s birth. But the Byzantines
and Sasanians were distracted
by internal reorganization and renewed conflict; simultaneously the Yemeni kingdoms were declining. Furthermore, these shifts
in the international balance of power may have dislocated existing tribal connections enough to make Mecca an attractive
new focus for supra-tribal
organization, just as Mecca’s equidistance from the major powers protected its independence and neutrality.
The Meccan link between shrine and market has a broader significance in the history
of religion. It is reminiscent of changes that had taken place with the emergence of complex societies across the settled world several millennia earlier. Much of the
religious life of the tribal Arabs had the characteristics of small-group, or “primitive,” religion, including the sacralization
of group-specific natural objects and phenomena and the multifarious presence of spirit beings, known among the Arabs as jinn. Where more-complex settlement patterns had developed, however, widely shared deities had already
emerged, such as the “trinity” of
Allah’s “daughters” known as al-Lat, Manat, and al-‘Uzza. Such qualified simplification and
inclusivity, wherever they
have occurred in human history, seem to have been associated with other fundamental changes— increased settlement, extension and
intensification of trade, and the emergence of lingua francas and other cultural commonalties, all of which had been occurring in
central Arabia for
several centuries.
New Social Patterns Among the Meccans and Their Neighbours
The sedentarization of the Quraysh and their efforts
to create an
expanding network of cooperative Arabs generated social stresses that demanded new patterns of behaviour. The ability of the Quraysh
to solve their problems was affected by an ambiguous relationship between sedentary and migratory Arabs. Tribal Arabs could go
in and out of
sedentarization easily, and kinship ties often transcended lifestyles. The sedentarization of the
Quraysh did not involve
the destruction of their ties with the Bedouin or their idealization of Bedouin life. Thus,
for example, did
wealthy Meccans, thinking Mecca unhealthy, often send their infants to Bedouin foster mothers.
Yet the settling of
the Quraysh at Mecca was no ordinary instance of sedentarization. Their commercial success produced a society unlike that of the Bedouin and
unlike that of many
other sedentary Arabs. Whereas stratification was minimal among the Bedouin, a hierarchy based on wealth appeared among the Quraysh.
Although a Bedouin group
might include a small number of outsiders, such as prisoners of war, Meccan society was markedly diverse, including non-Arabs as well
as Arabs, slave as well as free. Among the Bedouin, lines of protection for in-group members were clearly drawn; in Mecca,
sedentarization and
socioeconomic stratification had begun to blur family responsibilities and foster the growth of an oligarchy whose economic objectives could
easily supersede other motivations and values. Whereas the Bedouin acted in
and
through groups and even regularized intergroup raiding and warfare as a way of life, Meccans needed to act in their own interest and to minimize
conflict by institutionalizing new, broader social alliances and interrelationships.
The market-shrine complex encouraged surrounding tribes to put aside their conflicts
periodically and to visit and worship the deities of the Ka‘bah; but such worship, as in most complex societies, could
not replace either the particularistic worship of small groups or the competing religious practices of other regional
centres, such as al-Ta’if.
Very little in the Arabian environment favoured the formation of stable large-scale
states. Therefore, Meccan efforts at centralization and unification might well have been transient, especially because
they were not reinforced by any stronger power and because they depended almost entirely on the prosperity of a trade route that had
been formerly
controlled at its southern terminus and could be controlled elsewhere in the future, or exclude Mecca entirely. The rise of the Meccan
system also coincided with the spread of the confessional religions, through immigration, missionization, conversion, and foreign
interference. Alongside
members of the confessional religions were unaffiliated monotheists, known as hanifs, who distanced themselves from the Meccan religious system by repudiating the old gods but
embracing neither Judaism nor Christianity. Eventually in Mecca and elsewhere a few individuals came to envision the
possibility of effecting supra-tribal association through a leadership role common to the confessional religions, that
is, prophethood or messengership. The only such individual who succeeded in effecting broad social changes was a member of the Hashim (Hashem) clan of Quraysh named
Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah
ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib. One of their own, he accomplished what the Quraysh had started, first by
working
against them, later by working with them. When he was born, around 570, the potential for pan-Arab
unification seemed nil, but
after he died, in 632, the first generation of his followers were able not only to maintain pan-Arab unification but also to
expand far beyond the peninsula.
Islamic history / edited by Laura S.
Etheredge. Britannica Educational Publishing
(a trademark
of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.): New
York.
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