Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time. Karen Armstrong

an oasis, as the tribe of Thaqif had done in Ta’if. The other alternative was to become an intermediary between two or more of the rich civilizations in the region. The tribe of Ghassan, for example, which wintered on the border of the Byzantine empire, had become clients of the Greeks, converted to Christianity, and formed a buffer state to defend Byzantium against Persia. But during the sixth century, a new opportunity arose as a result of a transport revolution. The Bedouin had invented a saddle that enabled camels to carry far heavier loads than before, and merchants from India, East Africa, Yemen, and Bahrain began to replace their donkey carts with camels, which could survive for days without water and were ideally suited to navigate the desert. So instead of avoiding Arabia, foreign merchants trading in luxury goods—incense, spices, ivory, cereals, pearls, wood, fabrics, and medicines—began to take their caravans by the more direct route to Byzantium and Syria through the steppes, and employed the Bedouin to guard their merchandise, drive the camels, and guide them from one well to another.

      Mecca became a station for these northbound caravans. It was conveniently located in the center of the Hijaz, and even though it was built on solid rock, which made agriculture impossible there, settlement was feasible because of an underground water source that the Arabs called Zamzam. The discovery of this seemingly miraculous spring in such an arid region had probably made the site holy to the Bedouin long before the development of a city in Mecca. It attracted pilgrims from all over Arabia, and the Kabah, a cube-shaped granite building of considerable antiquity, may originally have housed the sacred utensils of the Zamzam cult. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the spring and the sanctuary (haram) were controlled by a succession of different nomadic tribes: Jurham, Khuza’ah, and finally in the early sixth century by the Quraysh, Muhammad’s tribe, who drove out their predecessors and were the first to construct permanent buildings around the Kabah.

      The founding father of the Quraysh was Qusayy ibn Kilab, who had brought together a number of previously warring clans that were loosely related by blood and marriage and formed this new tribe, just as Mecca was becoming a popular center for long-distance trade. The name “Quraysh” may have been derived from taqarrush (“accumulation” or “gaining”).¹¹ Unlike the Jurham and Khuza’ah, who had not been able to abandon badawah, they acquired a capital surplus that made a settled lifestyle possible. First they managed to secure a monopoly of the north-south trade, so that they alone were allowed to service the foreign caravans. They were also able to control the mercantile activity within Arabia that had been stimulated by the influx of international commerce. During the first part of the sixth century, Bedouin tribes had begun to exchange goods with one another.¹² Merchants congregated in a series of regular markets that were held each year in different parts of Arabia, and were so arranged that traders circled the peninsula in a clockwise direction. The first market (suq) of the year was held in Bahrain, the most densely populated region; the next were held successively in Oman, Hadramat, and Yemen, and the cycle concluded with five consecutive suqs in and around Mecca. The last fair of the year was held in ‘Ukaz immediately before the month of the hajj, the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca and the Kabah.

      During the first half of the sixth century, the Quraysh had started to send their own caravans to Syria and Yemen, and gradually they established themselves as independent traders. But despite this success, they knew that they were vulnerable. Because agriculture was impossible in Mecca, they relied entirely on the exchange of commodities, so if the economy failed, they would starve to death. Everybody, therefore, was involved in commerce, as bankers, financiers, or merchants. In the agricultural settlements, the badawah spirit remained virtually intact because it was more compatible with farming, but the Quraysh were forced to cultivate a strictly commercial ethos that took them away from many of the traditional values of muruwah. They had, for example, to become men of peace, because the kind of warfare that was endemic in the steppes would make business impossible. Mecca had to be a place where merchants from any tribe could gather freely without fear of attack. So the Quraysh steadfastly refused on principle to engage in tribal warfare and maintained a position of aloof neutrality. Before their arrival, there had often been bloody battles around Zamzam and the Kabah, as rival tribes tried to gain control of these prestigious sites. Now, with consummate skill, the Quraysh established the Haram, a zone with a twenty-mile radius, with the Kabah at its center, where all violence was forbidden.¹³ They made special agreements with Bedouin tribes, who promised not to attack the caravans during the season of the trade fairs; in return these Bedouin confederates were compensated for the loss of income by being permitted to act as guides and protectors of the merchants.

      Trade and religion were thus inextricably combined in Mecca. The pilgrimage to Mecca was the climax of the suq cycle, and the Quraysh reconstructed the cult and architecture of the sanctuary so that it became a spiritual center for all the Arab tribes. Even though the Bedouin were not much interested in the gods, each tribe had its own presiding deity, usually represented by a stone effigy. The Quraysh collected the totems of the tribes that belonged to their confederacy and installed them in the Haram so that the tribesmen could only worship their patronal deities when they visited Mecca. The sanctity of the Kabah was thus essential to the success and survival of the Quraysh, and their competitors understood this. In order to attract pilgrims and business away from the Quraysh, the governor of Abyssinia and Yemen constructed a rival sanctuary in Sana’a. Then, in 547, he led an army to Mecca to prove that the city was not, after all, immune from warfare. But, it was said, his war elephant fell upon its knees when it reached the outskirts of Mecca, and refused to attack the Haram. Impressed by this miracle, the Abyssinians returned home. The Year of the Elephant became a symbol of Mecca’s sacred inviolability.¹⁴

      But the cult was not simply an empty, cynical exploitation of piety. The rituals of the hajj also gave the Arab pilgrims a profound experience. As they converged on Mecca at the end of the suq cycle, there was a sense of achievement and excitement. The caravans were checked by the Quraysh, their camels relieved of their burdens, and, after paying a modest fee, the merchants and their servants were free to pay their respects to the Haram. As they made their way through the narrow streets of the suburbs, they uttered ritual cries, announcing their presence to the gods who were awaiting their arrival. After their long trek around the peninsula, this reunion with the sacred symbols of their tribes felt like a homecoming. When they reached the Kabah, surrounded by the 360 tribal totems, they began to perform the traditional rites in Mecca and its environs, which may originally have been devised to bring on the winter rains. They jogged seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwah, to the east of the Kabah; ran in a body to the hollow of Muzdalifah, the home of the thunder god; made an all-night vigil on the plain beside Mount ‘Arafat, sixteen miles outside the city; hurled pebbles at three pillars in the valley of Mina; and finally, at the end of their pilgrimage, sacrificed their most valuable female camels, symbols of their wealth and—hence—of themselves.

      The most famous ritual of the hajj was the tawaf, seven circumambulations of the Kabah in a clockwise direction, a stylized reenactment of the circular trade route round Arabia, which gave the Arabs’ mercantile activities a spiritual dimension. The tawaf became a popular devotional exercise, and citizens and their guests would perform it all the year round. The structure of the Haram acquired an archetypal significance, which has been found in the shrines of other cities in the ancient world.¹⁵ The Kabah, with its four corners representing the four cardinal directions, symbolized the world. Embedded in its eastern wall was the Black Stone, a piece of basalt of meteoric origin, which had once fallen brilliantly from the sky, linking heaven and earth. As the pilgrims jogged around the huge granite cube, following the course of the sun around the earth, they put themselves in harmony with the fundamental order of the cosmos. The circle is a common symbol of totality, and the practice of circumambulation, where you constantly come back to your starting point, induces a sense of periodicity and regularity. By circling round and round the Kabah, pilgrims learned to find their true orientation and their interior center; the steady rhythm of the jog gradually emptied their minds of peripheral thoughts and helped them to enter a more meditative state.

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