Well that is interesting. I can't fully understand it because my knowledge of Arabic is very basic. The idea of Islam being a movement with it's heartland in the Eastern Levant region instead of the Hejaz has always been to me the most fascinating and plausible part of the new alternative theories on Formative Islam. I was never "convinced" of this of course, I just felt that it was a plausible speculation. But I am actually less convinced now than I was in the past. I had an interesting discussion about it in the comments section of the Amazon review to Patricia Crone's "Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam":
Here is the relevant part of my review of Crone's book:
Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam is an incredibly detailed study of what pre-Islamic trade 'might' have been like. Crone explains that there are too many uncertainties and far too little written or archaeological data to draw any definite conclusions, but what we do know is that the traditional narrative about a prosperous trading city in the middle of the desert simply do not add up. Not only was Mecca located in a barren valley devoid of agriculture, but also not on any plausible ancient trade route. Trade with India and Africa was indeed conducted by sea, not land, so Mecca should really have been located on the coast. Furthermore Crone explains that there are no written records that mention a city called Mecca at all prior to the Rise of Islam. Crone explains that in the Islamic Era, the city of Mecca was only able to feed so many Muslim pilgrims because regular grain imports from Egypt were established, and these imports were brought in by boat via the Red Sea, not by land.
To which someone called "Timothy" replied:
The prevailing wind over the northern half of the Red Sea was always out of the north.
I have a degree in Economic Geography. I also did my area studies in the Middle East. I love history. I teach comparative law, including a component on Islamic law. That's my background.
That background lead me to the same question: why didn't the trade run up the Red Sea instead of along the land route?
There is, in deed, a reason why commerce did not follow the Red Sea route.
The clue came to me from reading about Egypt, perhaps it was Caesar's tour of Egypt or maybe it was a study of ancient Egypt's economic geography about 5 years or more years ago. I'm not sure. But in Egypt, the prevailing wind consistently comes out of the north. This might be an extended "micro-climate" effect. (Somethiing similar occurs on coastal Southern California). The air over the Mediterranean is cool and so relatively heavy. The Air over the Sahara is heating up, so rising, so as it rises, it draws in the cooler, heavier air from the north. The effect of this, was to provide Egypt with communications up river: sails could push boats up river, and the current push them down.
In the last two years I had been studying and brushing up on the history of Islam to supplement my teaching of Islamic law. Once again, I began wondering why commerce wasn't water bound up the Red Sea running parallel to the land trade route. Looking at the map, I remembered that the prevailing wind in Egypt comes out of the north. Would that wind pattern be confined to Egypt or would it extend out over the Red Sea as well?
At the other end, everyone who studies the Geography of the Middle East, and Asia in general learns about the monsoonal effects of the giant Asian continent: in winter a gigantic high pressure from the cold forms over an area roughly around Irkutsk, pushing dry air out of Asia, and in summer a gigantic low pressure cell forms near the border of Afghanistan and China that reverses the air flow in a counter clockwise fashion. Part of that pattern sends moist Indian Ocean Air circling over Ethiopia where much of it gets dropped there do to high elevations, but some moves on to Yemen where it provides the only agriculture in the Arabian peninsula. So in the Summer time, a wind out of the south could be blowing at the entrence to the Red Sea near Yemen.
I then found a web site that was the product of a naval person that brought things together. Over the Red Sea, the prevailing winds come out of the north, year around north of 22 degrees, roughly the tropic of Cancer. For half the year (winter) the wind out of the north prevails over the entire length of the Red Sea. But in the Summer time, thanks to the Monsoon a prevailing wind comes out of the South, but only up to around 22 degrees.
At about that latitude, on the Arabian peninsula we find the port of Jeddah. A trade route then extends from Jeddah upto the inland trade route running north and south up the peninsula. It is upon this route, near the junction with the North South route, that Mecca sits.
So we can presume that trade did use the Red Sea in summer months, but only up to Jeddah, where it then had to be move ashore, and then that trade made its way up to the inland route, passing through Mecca. Mecca would have been important as a place of relatively high altitude, therefor cooler, with a water well. In the winter months, we can assume that trade did not enter the Red Sea at all, but instead used the land route. Either way all trade would either pass through Mecca or come very close.
Another reason why trade might have been Mecca centered was because Mecca was still Pagan. That means it was neither Zoroastrian (Persian) or Christian (Roman), which made Mecca the perfect neutral party to function as a go between Yemen which was controlled by Persia, and Palestine controlled by Rome/Byzantium. A similarly, a tribe citing North of the Black sea handling silk road traffic adopted Judiaism, and we can presume for similar reasons, to be fully neutral in an age where religion had political implications.
Another question might be, why didn't traders land on the African coast and then transfer to the Nile and use the current to move trade up to the Mediterranean basin? The reason is the river bends far to the west at this point annd would involve a prolonged over land drive through the eastern Saharan dessert.
Back to the issue of the prevailing winds. A look at where the traditional southern boundary of Egypt lies, and we will note that it lies near the 22 degree latitude - about where Jeddah is. This would seem to confirm that for most Egyptian rulers, communications was fairly reliable and easy up to that point, thanks to the prevailing wind out of the north, and not worth the trouble beyond it as the wind was not always out of the north beyond that point.
It appears to me that there was an economic reason for the existence of Mecca as a trading center of some sort in the 6th and 7th centuries.
Furthermore, historians trying to take Mecca out of the early Islamic stories has to contend with the historical fact that the Ummayads and the Abbasids trace their lineage back to Mecca. The descendants of Meccan's had important roles all over the early Islamic empire. while I can't be sure, I think that is a historical fact and so if one sets aside the received history of early Islam, then one's new narrative still has to take into account how Meccans came to have so many and so much important positions in the early Islamic empire.
The other historical fact is that something unified the Arabs in the 7th century. If the receive history is incorrect, then the revised history needs to account for these other things.
While I am open to the thesis proposed here, I need a counter narrative to explain all the rest of history that we do know about. For instance the Reddic wars that was presumed to have taken place immediately after Mohammed's death.
My own hunch is that, Islam's explosion out of the Arabian peninsula was a result of the peace that followed the end of the Roman-Sassanian wars. The trade that had been moving through Arabia was there because a hot border existed between the Roman's and the Sassanians. Roman's didn't want to trade with Zoroastrian traders, and Persians didn't want to trade with Christian traders, this gave the pagan Meccans the opportunity to take control of the trade, they could buy from one and sell to the other. A neutral 3rd party was needed to facilitate the trade and the pagan Meccans fit the bill. But at the very time Mohammed was unifying the Arabs, the war between Rome and Persia was ending. At that point the more direct trade routes up the Persian Gulf, through fertile Cresent would have been resumed. That meant that the suddenly unified Arabs were now on the precipice of financial ruin. Just as the Mohammed raided the caravans passing to the west of Medina then in 620s, they raided the trade routes that passed to the north in the Fertile crescent, only instead of just raiding, they got political control. This allowed the trade to continue to stay to the north, rendering Mecca into backwater status once again especially when the Arab government moved to the North itself.
To which I responded:
That is actually a very interesting take. Thanks for the info. So where would the winds / current blow north of 22 degrees? During antiquity there was a port on the Egyptian Red Sea coast called Berenice Troglodytica, it was located at 24 degrees latitude and was the main port of entry for trade between India and the Roman Empire. But if it was possible to carry out trade up to 24 degrees in antiquity what changed to prevent it later on? Berenice Troglodytica was abandoned in the 6th century AD. So why was it abandoned? Did the Monsoon winds change around this time making sailing to it impossible? Or maybe it was simply abandoned as part of the general decline of the Roman Empire due to plagues, invasions, etc. It is possible that the abandonment of this port for whatever reason was what led to the ascendance of Mecca....
Ps do you have any references for your information?
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3FI9FT4HO4Y01/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1593331029&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books#wasThisHelpfulI did not hear back after that. But what is interesting is that Mecca appears to have become an important trading city (following the traditional narrative) at around the time that the Egyptian port of Berenice was abandoned on the other side of the Red Sea. Almost as if it was able to assume the role in trade that Berenice had earlier played. Which would explain why it was never mentioned before that time, and why it suddenly became so important....
Topic: Findings of Critical Scholarship vis-a-vis the Traditional Islamic Understanding