Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam

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Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam
MeccanTradeAndTheRiseOfIslam.jpg
Cover
Author Patricia Crone
LanguageEnglish
Subject Islam
Published1987 (Gorgias Press)
Media typePrint
ISBN 1-59333-102-9
OCLC 57718221

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 ]

Contents

Content

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

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

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]

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.", [15] although Patricia Crone's theory has been challenged by Robert Bertram Serjeant who favored the Meccan trade theory. [16]

References

  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. 1 2 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. 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.
  16. D. Bukharin, Mikhail (January 2009). Mecca On The Caravan Routes In Pre-Islamic Antiquity. Brill. ISBN   9789047430322 . Retrieved 20 February 2020.

Bibliography