Muhammad (3 page)

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 re-enactment 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.

The reformed rites made Mecca the center of Arabia. Where other pilgrims had to leave their homelands and journey to remote sites, the Arabs had no need to leave the peninsula, which remained a law unto itself. All this reinforced the centrality of Mecca as the focus of the Arab world.
¹⁶
The city was also isolated and this gave the Arabs a rare freedom. Neither Persia nor Byzantium, the great powers of the region, had any interest in the difficult terrain of Arabia, so the Quraysh could create a modern economy without imperial control. The world passed through Mecca, but did not stay long enough to interfere. Arabs were able to develop their own ideology and could interpret the knowledge and expertise of their more sophisticated neighbors as they chose. They were not pressured to convert to an alien religion or conform to official orthodoxy. The closed circle of both the trade cycle and the hajj rituals symbolized their proud self-sufficiency, which, as the years passed, would become a mark of their urban culture.

Their separation from the great powers meant that the Meccan economy was not damaged by their decline in fortune; indeed, the Quraysh were able to profit from it. By 570, the year of Muhammad’s birth, Persia and Byzantium were locked in a debilitating series of wars with one another that would fatally weaken both empires. Syria and Mesopotamia became a battleground, many of the trade routes were abandoned, and Mecca took control of all the intermediary trade between north and south.
¹⁷
The Quraysh had become even more powerful, yet some were beginning to feel that they were paying too high a price for their success. As the sixth century drew to a close, the city was in the grip of a spiritual and moral crisis.

The old communal spirit had been torn apart by the market economy, which depended upon ruthless competition, greed, and individual enterprise. Families now vied with one another for wealth and prestige. The less successful clans
^*
felt that they were being pushed to the wall. Instead of sharing their wealth generously, people were hoarding their money and building private fortunes. They not only ignored the plight of the poorer members of the tribe, but exploited the rights of orphans and widows, absorbing their inheritance into their own estates. The prosperous were naturally delighted with their new security; they believed that their wealth had saved them from the destitution and misery of badawah
.
But those who had fallen behind in the stampede for financial success felt lost and disoriented. The principles of muruwah seemed incompatible with market forces, and many felt thrust into a spiritual limbo. The old ideals had not been replaced by anything of equal value, and the ingrained communal ethos told them that this rampant individualism would damage the tribe, which could only survive if its members pooled all their resources.

Muhammad was born into the clan of Hashim, one of the most distinguished family groups in Mecca. His great-grandfather had been the first merchant to engage in independent trade with Syria and Yemen and the clan had the privilege of providing the pilgrims with water during the hajj, one of the most important offices in the city. But recently, Hashim had fallen on hard times. Muhammad’s father ‘Abdullah died before Muhammad was born and his mother Aminah was in such straitened circumstances that, it was said, the only Bedouin woman who was willing to be his wet nurse came from one of the poorest tribes in Arabia. He lived with her family until he was six years old, and would have experienced nomadic life at its harshest. Shortly after he was brought back to Mecca, his mother died. This double bereavement made a deep impression on Muhammad; as we shall see, he would always be concerned about the plight of orphans.

He was kindly treated by his surviving relatives. First he lived with his grandfather, ‘Abd al-Muttalib, who had been a highly successful merchant in his prime. The old man made quite a favorite of Muhammad. He liked to have his bed carried outside, where he could lie in the shade of the Kabah, surrounded by his sons. Muhammad used to sit beside him, while his grandfather affectionately stroked his back. When he died, however, Muhammad, now eight years old, inherited nothing. His more powerful relatives controlled the estate and Muhammad went to live with his uncle Abu Talib, who was now the
sayyid
(“chief ”) of Hashim and greatly respected in Mecca, even though his business was failing. Abu Talib was very fond of his nephew, and his brothers also helped with Muhammad’s education. Hamzah, the youngest, a man of prodigious strength, instructed Muhammad in the martial arts, making him a skilled archer and competent swordsman. His uncle ‘Abbas, a banker, was able to get Muhammad a job managing the caravans on the northern leg of the journey to Syria.

The young Muhammad was well-liked in Mecca. He was handsome, with a compact, solid body of average height. His hair and beard were thick and curly, and he had a strikingly luminous expression and a smile of enormous charm, which is mentioned in all the sources. He was decisive and wholehearted in everything he did, so intent on the task at hand that he never looked over his shoulder, even if his cloak got caught in a thorny bush. When he did turn to speak to somebody, he used to swing his entire body around and address him full face. When he shook hands, he was never the first to withdraw his own. He inspired such confidence that he was known as al-Amin, the Reliable One. But his orphaned status constantly held him back. He had wanted to marry his cousin Fakhitah, but Abu Talib had to refuse his request for her hand, gently pointing out that Muhammad could not afford to support a wife, and made a more advantageous match for her.

But when Muhammad was about twenty-five years old, his luck suddenly changed. Khadijah bint al-Khuwaylid, a distant relative, asked him to take a caravan into Syria for her. She came from the clan of Asad, which was now far more influential than Hashim, and since her husband had died, she had become a successful merchant. Urban life often gives elite women the opportunity to flourish in business, though women of the lower classes had no status at all in Mecca. Muhammad conducted the expedition so competently that Khadijah was impressed and proposed marriage to him. She needed a new husband and her talented kinsman was a suitable choice: “I like you because of our relationship,” she told him, “and your high reputation among your people, your trustworthiness, good character, and truthfulness.”
¹⁸
Some of Muhammad’s critics have sneered at this timely match with the wealthy widow, but this was no marriage of convenience. Muhammad loved Khadijah dearly, and even though polygamy was the norm in Arabia, he never took another, younger wife while she was alive. Khadijah was a remarkable woman, “deter-mined, noble, and intelligent,” says Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad’s first biographer.
¹⁹
She was the first to recognize her husband’s genius, and—perhaps because he had lost his mother at such a young age—he depended upon her emotionally and relied on her advice and support. After her death, he used to infuriate some of his later wives by endlessly singing her praises.

Khadijah was probably in her late thirties when she married Muhammad, and bore him at least six children. Their two sons—Al-Qasim and ‘Abdullah—died in infancy, but Muhammad adored his daughters Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum and Fatimah. It was a happy household, even though Muhammad insisted on giving a high proportion of their income to the poor. He also brought two needy boys into the family. On their wedding day, Khadijah had presented him with a young slave called Zayd ibn al-Harith from one of the northern tribes. He became so attached to his new master that when his family came to Mecca with the money to ransom him, Zayd begged to be allowed to remain with Muhammad, who adopted him and gave him his freedom. A few years later, Abu Talib was in such financial trouble that Muhammad took his five-year-old son ‘Ali into his household to ease his burden. He was devoted to both boys and treated them as his own sons.

We know very little about these early years. But from his later career it is clear that he had accurately diagnosed the malaise that was particularly rife among the younger generation, who felt ill at ease in this aggressive market economy. The Quraysh had introduced class distinctions that were quite alien to the muruwah ideal. Almost as soon as they had seized control of Mecca, the wealthier Quraysh had lived beside the Kabah, while the less prosperous inhabited the suburbs and the mountainous region outside the city. They had abandoned the badawah virtue of generosity and become niggardly, except that they called this shrewd business sense. Some no longer succumbed to the old fatalism, because they knew that they had succeeded in turning their fortunes around. They even believed that their wealth could give them some kind of immortality.
²⁰
Others took refuge in a life of hedonism, making a religion out of pleasure.
²¹
Increasingly, it seemed to Muhammad that the Quraysh had jettisoned the best and retained only the worst aspects of muruwah: the recklessness, arrogance, and egotism that were morally destructive and could bring the city to ruin. He was convinced that social reform must be based on a new spiritual solution, or it would remain superficial. He probably realized, at some deep level, that he had exceptional talent, but what could he do? Nobody would take him seriously, because, despite his marriage to Khadijah, he had no real status in the city.