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Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam

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Meccan Trade And The Rise Of Islam is a 1987 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. Her views are hugely different from those of historians and orientalist scholars like W. Montgomery Watt and Fred Donner, who have publications detailing trade activities and the struggles between competing Meccan tribes for control over trade routes.[1][page needed][2][page needed][3][page needed][4][page needed][5][page needed]

Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam
Cover
AuthorPatricia Crone
LanguageEnglish
SubjectIslam
Published1987 (Gorgias Press)
Media typePrint
ISBN1-59333-102-9
OCLC57718221

Content

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Crone found no evidence of Mecca being an important trading center in late antiquity of 6th and 7th century CE:

  • Mecca was not on the overland trade route from Southern Arabia to Syria[6]
  • Even if it had been, the overland trade route from Southern Arabia to Syria was not very important compared to the maritime trade route[6]
  • by the end of the second century AD at latest, the route was no longer in use.[7]
  • A close examination of the Muslim sources themselves show that, except for Yemeni perfume, the Meccans traded mainly in cheap leather goods and clothing, and occasionally, in basic foodstuffs (clarified butter and cheese)[8]
  • These goods were not exported to Syria, which already had plenty of them, but were supplied almost exclusively to inhabitants of the Peninsula.[9]

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.[10]

She concludes that "Meccans did not trade outside of Mecca on the eve of Islam".[11] That there was no continuous transmission of historical fact through the three generations or so that separated the early first/seventh century from the mid-second/eight century" and that the lines of transmission of the accounts were "pure fabrications".[12]

Crone also found Islamic "traditions" to be unreliable, conflicting "with each other so often and so regularly `that one could were one so inclined, rewrite most of Montgomery Watt's biography of Muhammad in the reverse.'"[13]

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

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Robert Bertram Serjeant described the book 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."[14]

Abdullah al-Andalusi of the Muslim Debate Initiative contended Crone's placing Islamic events not in Mecca, but closer to the Mediterranean Sea, stating: "If there was a proto-Islamic sect pre-dating Meccan Islam existing at Abdat 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."[15]

Fred Donner, on the other hand, stated 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.",[16] although Patricia Crone's theory has been challenged by Robert Bertram Serjeant who favored the Meccan trade theory.[17]

References

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  1. ^ Watt, W. Montgomery (William Montgomery) (1990). Early Islam : collected articles. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-7345-3. OCLC 1145654394.
  2. ^ Watt, W. Montgomery. (1993). Muhammad at Mecca (2. impr ed.). Karachi: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-19-577278-4. OCLC 258364402.
  3. ^ Watt, W. Montgomery (William Montgomery) (1965). A history of Islamic Spain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-85224-332-4. OCLC 391773.
  4. ^ Watt, William Montgomery (1999). Islam : a short history. Oxford, England: Oneworld. ISBN 1-85168-205-8. OCLC 43697146.
  5. ^ Donner, Fred McGraw, 1945- (1998). Narratives of Islamic origins : the beginnings of Islamic historical writing. Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press. ISBN 0-87850-127-4. OCLC 37594489.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  6. ^ a b Neva & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.431
  7. ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). "2". Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press.
  8. ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). "4". Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press.
  9. ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). "5". Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press.
  10. ^ Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton, U.S.A: Princeton University Press, 1987), p.134
  11. ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press. p. 114. ISBN 9780691054803.
  12. ^ Neva & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.432
  13. ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press. p. 111. ISBN 9780691054803.
  14. ^ Serjeant, R. B.; Crone, Patricia (1990). "Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam: Misconceptions and Flawed Polemics". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 110 (3): 472. doi:10.2307/603188. JSTOR 603188.
  15. ^ Al Andalusi, Abdullah (20 October 2012). "Tom Holland's Obsession with Islam's Origins: A Critical response". Muslim Debate Initiative.
  16. ^ 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.
  17. ^ D. Bukharin, Mikhail (January 2009). Mecca On The Caravan Routes In Pre-Islamic Antiquity. Brill. ISBN 9789047430322. Retrieved 20 February 2020.

Bibliography

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  • Amaal Muhammad al-Roubi, A Response to Patricia Crone's Book (Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam)
  • Crone, Patricia (1987). Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (PDF). Princeton University Press.
  • Nevo, Yehuda D.; Koren, Judith (2000). "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. New York: Prometheus Books. pp. 420–443.
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