Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam

Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam

Cover
Author Patricia Crone
Language English
Subject Islam
Published 1987 (Gorgias Press)
Media type Print
ISBN 1-59333-102-9
OCLC 57718221

Meccan Trade And The Rise Of Islam is a book written by scholar and historiographer of early Islam Patricia Crone. The book argues that Islam did not originate in Mecca, located in western Saudi Arabia, but in northern Arabia.

Content

If it is obvious that if the Meccans had been middlemen in a long-distance trade of the kind described in traditional Islamic literature, there ought to have been some mention of it in the writings of their customers who wrote extensively about the south Arabians who supplied them with aromatics. Despite the considerable attention paid to Arabian affairs there is no mention at all of Quraysh (the tribe of Mohammed) and their trading center Mecca, be it in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic, or other literature composed outside Arabia.[1]

An examination of all available evidence and sources leads Crone to conclude that Mohammed's career took place not in Mecca and Medina or in southwest Arabia at all, but in northwest Arabia.

Reception

Robert Bertram Serjeant, reviewing the book in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, described it as a "confused, irrational and illogical polemic, further complicated by her misunderstanding of Arabic texts, her lack of comprehension of the social structure of Arabia, and twisting of the clear sense of other writings, ancient and modern, to suit her contentions."[2] However, critics such as Abdullah al-Andalusi of the Muslim Debate Initiative state that "If there was a proto-Islamic sect pre-dating Meccan Islam existing at Abdad or elsewhere in Nabatean borderland between Arabia and the Roman Empire, an advanced and literate society with extensive trade links with the rest of the Roman world, it is surely utterly implausible that no sect, nor text of a sect, nor witness to the sect would have survived."[3] Fred M. Donner, on the other hand, states that "[the] assumption that Mecca was the linchpin of international luxury trade [has] been decisively challenged in recent years – notably in Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam."[4]

References

  1. ↑ Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton, U.S.A: Princeton University Press, 1987), p.134
  2. ↑ R.B. Serjeant, "Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam: Misconceptions and Flawed Polemics", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1990, p.472.
  3. ↑ Al Andalusi, Abdullah. "Tom Holland’s Obsession with Islam’s Origins: A Critical response". Muslim Debate Initiative. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
  4. ↑ Donner, Fred M. (2010). Muhammad and the Believers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p. 241. ISBN 978-0-674-05097-6.
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