I am not sure whether I should respond or not. Sometimes it better to not engage. One does not always need to justify ones beliefs.
It seems improbable (when we know Late Antiquity) that this story was not known elsewhere. As nobody knew it, it seems that this story has never existed.
For the very simple reason that Islam was not born in Petra.
Petra or
elsewhere anyhow is the
same. Since elsewhere is heavily populated by Christians and some Jews this story would have been known. So it is not Petra in itself the issue, it is the story unknown to all the Orient.
I have to take issue with your description of Crone's solution as an attempts to "save" something. Her argument is based primarily on the Quran.
As she could not think that Muhammad did not exist. As she could not think that the core story recounted by Ibn Ishaq was not true (a prophet speaking to God, etc) because she was nor sceptic nor revisionist she was saved by the Quran which
of course does not describe the place of Mecca, simply because there is no "Mecca":
The Quran is quite rich in information on the livelihoods of both mushrikun and believers, but the result is puzzling. The book describes the two as living together in a community overwhelmingly based on agriculture while also depicting the believers as forming a community of their own in which trade was a prominent occupation. More crudely put, it describes the mushrikun as agriculturalists and the believers as traders : the situation is the reverse of what one expects. It should not be too difficult to reconcile the picture of the believers' community given in the Quran with that of the Prophet's Medina presented in other sources, but its description of the community shared by mushrikun and believers can hardly be said to be suggestive of Mecca as we know it from the tradition. Where do we go from there ? I do not wish to burden this paper with conjecture, so I simply leave the reader with the question.
Crone : « How Did the Quranic Pagans Make a Living ? », in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 68, No. 3 (2005), pp. 387-399, p.399.
Saved in displacing Quraysh : she states then that the gathering of Quraysh should take place further North. But she did not make the second part of this reasoning that I raise and that Marc raise as well : further North (or East or South) means heavily populated by Christians and Jews which meaning that this core story of Ibn Ishaq (20 years of speaking to God) would not have been known this time by Christians and Jews in an heavily scribal civilization. Seems very improbable for all amateur of Late Antiquity. There is no allusions nowhere.
Why Crone did not ask to herself this second part reasoning? It is yet necessarily the
logical consequence of what she did, displacing Quraysh further North the core story of Ibn Ishaq. Simply because Quraysh is the core story of Ibn Ishaq Because she was totally convinced that the core story of Ibn Ishaq was true. She was not sceptic at all! Displacing further North did not change any of her convictions
whereas it should have done it : no second part. And the rest of her production proves that displacing further North did not change anything in her mind. She was a great believer as she always stated it.
Yes, you are right. Gallez thinks that 95% of the narrative is completely fabricated. Even though he thinks Muhammad existed, he does not give an important role at all, if anything. He only thinks he was there at one point. That is it.
That is an issue : he set aside Muhammad but he says it existed. Doing this, it allows people to outline this point. He should have said that it did not existed at all, as his thesis does not need him (at all). He didn't understand, that precisely what was going to happen will be that people will always hang to "even the great revisionist Gallez says it has existed". "Even him!"
It is possible that he hesitated to suppress him, viewing that he does not give an important role to this figure. And (for me...) it should have done it because his thesis simply does not need him and thus would not allow people to say : "Gallez says he existed!"
I personally find the "further north" model intriguing. Don't you also think the Quran (not the narrative) came from somewhere in the north?
Crone has pointed above the issue that what the Quran describes cannot be the environment of the barren Western peninsula. She was right.There is no "Mecca" of today.
As I already said, the composition of the core text (and further interpolations) could have been taken place anywhere in Orient, but it's emergence (for me...) has taken place in Iraq, not Palestine.
Topic: Qur'anic studies today