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Saudi Arabia
THE EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD, 622-700
The Saudis, and many other Arabs and Muslims as well, trace much
of their heritage to the birth of the Prophet Muhammad in 570
A.D. The time before Islam is generally referred to as "the time
of ignorance"; this probably reflects the fact that God had not
yet sent the Arabs a prophet.
Muhammad was born in Mecca at a time when the city was establishing
itself as a trading center. For the residents of Mecca, tribal
connections were still the most important part of the social structure.
Muhammad was born into the Quraysh, which had become the leading
tribe in the city because of its involvement with water rights
for the pilgrimage. By the time of Muhammad, the Quraysh had become
active traders as well, having established alliances with tribes
all over the peninsula. These alliances permitted the Quraysh
to send their caravans to Yemen and Syria. Accordingly, the Quraysh
represented in many ways the facilitators and power brokers for
the new status quo in Arabian society.
Tribes consisted of clans that had various branches and families,
and Muhammad came from a respectable clan, the sons of Hashim,
but from a weak family situation. Muhammad's father Abd Allah
had died before his son was born, leaving the Prophet without
a close protector. The Prophet was fortunate, however, that his
uncle Abu Talib was one of the leaders of the Hashimite clan.
This gave Muhammad a certain amount of protection when he began
to preach in 610 against the Meccan leadership.
Everything we know about Muhammad's life comes from Muslim historiography.
The Prophet worked for Abu Talib in the caravan business, giving
him the opportunity to travel beyond Arabia. Travel gave the Prophet
contact with some of the Christian and Jewish communities that
existed in Arabia; in this way he became familiar with the notion
of scripture and the belief in one god. Despite this contact,
tradition specifies that Muhammad never learned to read or write.
As a child, however, he was sent to the desert for five years
to learn the beduin ways that were slowly being forgotten in Mecca.
Muhammad married a rich widow when he was twenty-five years old;
although he managed her affairs, he would occasionally go off
by himself into the mountains that surrounded Mecca. On one of
these occasions, Muslim belief holds that the angel Gabriel appeared
to Muhammad and told him to recite aloud. When Muhammad asked
what he should say, the angel recited for him verses that would
later constitute part of the Quran, which means literally "the
recitation." Muslims believe that Muhammad continued to receive
revelations from God throughout his life, sometimes through the
angel Gabriel and at other times in dreams and visions directly
from God.
For a while, Muhammad told only his wife about his experiences,
but in 613 he acknowledged them openly and began to promote a
new social and spiritual order that would be based on them. Muhammad's
message was disturbing to many of the Quraysh for several reasons.
The Prophet attacked traditional Arab customs that permitted lax
marriage arrangements and the killing of unwanted offspring. More
significant, however, was the Prophet's claim that there was only
one God, because in condemning the worship of idols he threatened
the pilgrimage traffic from which the Quraysh profited.
By 618 Muhammad had gained enough followers to worry the city's
leaders. The Quraysh hesitated to harm the Prophet because he
was protected by his uncle, but they attacked those of his followers
who did not have powerful family connections. To protect these
supporters, Muhammad sent them to Ethiopia, where they were taken
in by the Christian king who saw a connection between the Prophet's
ideas and those of his own religion. Following his uncle's death
in 619, however, Muhammad felt obliged to leave Mecca. In 622
he secretly left the city and traveled about 320 kilometers north
to the town of Yathrib. In leaving Mecca, Muhammad chose to abandon
the city where he had grown up to pursue his mission in another
place; thus, the event often has been used to illustrate a genuine
commitment to duty and sacrifice. This emigration or hijra marks
the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Muslims use a lunar calendar,
which means that their twelve-month year is shorter than a solar
one.
The Quraysh were unwilling to leave Muhammad in Yathrib, and
various skirmishes and battles occurred, with each side trying
to enlist the tribes of the peninsula in its campaigns. Muhammad
eventually prevailed and in 630 he returned to Mecca, where he
was accepted without resistance. Subsequently he moved south to
strongholds in At Taif and Khaybar, which surrendered to him after
lengthy sieges.
By his death in 632, Muhammad enjoyed the loyalty of almost all
of Arabia. The peninsula's tribes had tied themselves to the Prophet
with various treaties but had not necessarily become Muslim. The
Prophet expected others, particularly pagans, to submit but allowed
Christians and Jews to keep their faith provided they paid a special
tax as penalty for not submitting to Islam.
After the Prophet's death, most Muslims acknowledged the authority
of Abu Bakr (died in 634), an early convert and respected elder
in the community. Abu Bakr maintained the loyalty of the Arab
tribes by force, and in the battles that followed the Prophet's
death--which came to be known as the apostasy wars--it became
essentially impossible for an Arab tribesman to retain traditional
religious practices. Arabs who had previously converted to Judaism
or Christianity were allowed to keep their faith, but those who
followed the old polytheistic practices were forced to become
Muslims. In this way Islam became the religion of most Arabs.
The Prophet had no spiritual successor inasmuch as God's revelation
(the Quran) was given only to Muhammad. There were, however, successors
to the Prophet's temporal authority, and these were called caliphs
(successors or vice regents). Caliphs ruled the Islamic world
until 1258 when the last caliph and all his heirs were killed
by the Mongols. For the first thirty years, caliphs managed the
growing Islamic empire from Yathrib, which had been renamed Madinat
an Nabi ("the city of the Prophet") or Al Madinah al Munawwarah
("the illuminated city"). This is usually shortened simply to
Medina--"the city."
Within a short time, the caliphs had conquered a large empire.
With the conclusion of the apostasy wars, the Arab tribes united
behind Islam and channeled their energies against the Roman and
Persian empires. Arab-led armies pushed quickly through both of
these empires and established Arab control from what is now Spain
to Pakistan.
The achievements of Islam were great and various, but after 656
these achievements ceased to be controlled from Arabia. After
the third caliph, Uthman, was assassinated in 656, the Muslim
world was split, and the fourth caliph, Ali (murdered in 660)
spent much of his time in Iraq. After Ali, the Umayyads established
a hereditary line of caliphs in Damascus. The Umayyads were overthrown
in 750 by the Abbasids, who ruled from Baghdad. By the latter
part of the seventh century the political importance of Arabia
in the Islamic world had declined.
Data as of December 1992
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