Middle East Primer 2: Early Islam

The place to begin this story is about 570 CE, with the birth of Muhammad, in Mecca.

At the time Mecca was a site of ritual pilgrimage for people from all over Arabia, largely nomadic tribes. The people of Mecca were involved in trade, especially the long-distance caravan trade to the north, Syria and the Mediterranean. Some histories have argued that Mecca was key in the spice trade, an entrepot between the far east and the Mediterranean world. But others argue that the Meccans mainly traded goods of settled society–metal or manufactured goods for leather and animal products from nomads, for example.

The predominant religion was a kind of polytheistic animism, in which local peoples worshipped a variety of mostly local deities. In fact Al Lah (“The God,” in Arabic) was one amongst many. Representations of these deities were placed in the Ka’aba, a structure which tradition says was built by Abraham, centered around a large black rock, possibly of meteoric origin, which is now enshrined at the center of the Ka’aba.

Monotheism was not unknown; there were Nestorian Christians in the neighborhood, and there were Jews, especially a little to the north in Medina.

In about 610 Muhammad, working as a merchant for the woman who was to become his first wife (Khadijah), began to visit a cave outside the city as a kind…