Meccan Trade And The Rise Of Islam Pdf Download

According to Ibrahim Meccan trade was not on a large scale but it was assured not only by its being a aram area and having a ka`ba (since there were others), but by institutions initiated by Him. Meccan merchants (if we accept they existed) were in constant danger of financial disaster. One response to such disaster was I`tifd, which according to the dictionaries, was an act of suicide practiced by the individual who had lost his money in a business venture. The individual would separate himself from the society and starve himself to death. Him adressed the Quray and asked them to share in their undertakings which enabled them to carry out enterprises on a large scale. It provided security for the small investor and encouraged mobilization of capital on an unprecedented scale. The ability to organize, equip, and finance huge caravans highlighted the increasigly important role of the Meccan merchants in Arabia and outside.

Sources and methodology

While Crone makes extensive use of Pliny and Periplus elsewhere, for example their botanical information, she does not accept their account of Meccan trade with the following excuse:

Although it is undoubtedly important to use early non-Muslim sources for our reconstruction of the rise of Islam, it does appear extreme to use those which were written half a millenium or so before the event.

Thus, if the sources mention anything contradictory to Crones hypothesis (the existence of Meccan trade) it is extreme to use them but if they mention contradictory reports about spices we must accept them!

Meccan Trade And The Rise Of Islam Pdf Download

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More than fifteen years have passed since Patricia Crone stunned the world of orientalism by positing dramatically new hypotheses regarding the role of Makkah in sixth to seventh-century A.D. trans-Arabian trade. Seeking to discern the economic dynamic of the early Islamic state, her thesis contended that both the composition and direction of Hijazi-Najdi trade in the era leading up to the rise of Islam were not as they have been commonly portrayed. Her presentation derived its strength from its sophisticated scientific analyses of the prevalence of specific commodities, particularly "spices," in contemporary trade flows. Its core analysis centered upon certain critical commonalities between sixth to seventh-century Makkan imports and exports, and in its effort to make trade patterns fit, even speculated that the Qurashis' primary base of commercial operation was not where modern Makkah stands today. The essence of this theme was compellingly argued in part 2 of her 1987 work, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, which she titled: "Arabia Without Spices."

That the results are similar should come as no surprise. Both arguments have failed to persuade because each confronts the complex challenge of seeking to reconstruct the structure of any economy, medieval or modern, based on evaluating a market-basket of commodities cited in export trade. The examples found are often too sporadic to have serious economic consequences. Despite the fact that some seventy-five percent of its governmental revenues are generated by oil production, for example, modern Saudi Arabic typically generates less than three percent of its gross domestic product formation from non-oil export earnings. In both modern and medieval contexts, then, using select trade data as barometers of economic dynamism does not invariably yield accurate results. In Crone's case, they have produced quite controversial results. Indeed, seldom have hypotheses predicated upon an absence of commercial evidence invoked such intense scholarly scrutiny. R. B. Serjeant, in a 1990 article, for instance, describes her contentions as:

Second, they are arguing from the shaky foundations of modern historiographic invention respecting sixth to seventh-century Hijazi transit trade. Crone and Serjeant, as well as F. E. Peters, properly take issue with the conventional notion that the longstanding commerce in spices and other luxury goods to the Mediterranean basin during the early Christian centuries had continued to the rise of Islam.[5] This was an interpretation pioneered by Lammens, popularized by Watt and Wolf, and promoted, to a certain degree, even by Donner. It has often been accompanied by a notion that the success of contemporary Makkah as a trade emporium was highly instrumental, morally, economically, and socially, in the rise of Islam. Watt asserts:

Though this traditional notion, as noted, has been rejected by Crone, Serjeant, and others - at times, even attributing the inherent misinterpretations to the ambiguity of the medieval Arabic sources themselves - such exegesis is no more than a "straw man" dialogue, as the sources never seriously claimed a trade in oriental luxury commodities coincident with the rise of Muhammad. Instead, they document a more voluminous trade in lower unit-value, indigenous West Arabian products - animals, leather, foodstuffs, cloth, perfumes, and similar consumer goods - a reality recognized by Sprenger, Kister, Simon, and Peters.[8] Some of the regional import-export ventures in such commodities were, in reality, quite large, with commercial caravans consisting of as many as 1,500, 2,000, and even 2,500 transport camels at the dawn of Islam, as cited in the sources.[9]

But overall, the urban centers of the erstwhile Roman empire, whose requirements for oriental luxury goods had for centuries been the lifeblood of trans-Arabian commerce, were now in economic chaos; and in the Hijaz itself, the demand for widespread importation of silk that had prevailed in earlier centuries has been explicitly explained by the compiler of historical traditions, al-Bukhari. With the rise of Islam, Muhammad banned Muslim men from wearing silk.[12] Hence, the striking silence of the sources on a more general sixth to seventh-century trans-Hijazi trade in spices and other oriental goods likely signaled exactly what was meant. That trade had died.[13] Accordingly, Crone most probably is correct when she asserts that: "Meccan trade was thus a trade generated by Arab needs, not by the commercial appetites of the surrounding empires," yet she errs when she continues: "and it is as traders operating in Arabia rather than beyond its borders that the Meccans should be seen."[14] For, as will be demonstrated, it is not what early Makkan trade was not, but what it was, that merits further scrutiny. Yet comprehending its composition also requires an understanding of the economic base from which it was derived. For what the sources do describe, as indicated, is a substantial, economically consequential, trade in fundamental staples: consumer and industrial goods that the contemporary Hijaz unquestionably did produce.

Though damning, however, the sheer frankness of such concessions nonetheless simultaneously suggests that perhaps a somewhat different perspective and a different set of analytic tools are required to define more precisely the trade and industrial structures of the Hijaz at the rise of Islam. To these ends, seeking to reconcile the conflicting views, the analysis that follows augments the ongoing sixth to seventh-century Makkan "commercial structures dialogue," by synthesizing source documentation with extant physical evidence. We then view the findings through the prism, and using the tools, of the modern business economist - in so doing, drawing analogies with the operational dynamics of contemporary commerce that display similar characteristics. This can be a productive analytic approach. For, given the horizontally integrated free market economy that then prevailed in West Arabia, "modified upstream development regression analysis" - i.e., tracing the commodities of trade back to their basic production processes, and in turn, further back to their original resource inputs - can, in this instance, yield illuminating insights.[17]

Questions of both the chronology and character of pre-Islamic commerce have recently received considerable attention from other, equally distinguished medieval Near East historians. Robert Simon, Mahmood Ibrahim, and F. E. Peters, for instance, are likely quite correct in their concurrence that the sixth century witnessed dramatic geopolitical developments that precipitated the culmination of the gradual transformation of the Makkan economy from a transit trade in luxury goods to the regional distribution of more basic, indigenously produced consumer goods. Simon states that "the rise of Makkan trade and the beginning of North Arabian history were not bolts from the blue, but were in close causal relationship with the history of the neighboring powers, i.e., Mecca's history was part of contemporary world history."[50]

(ii) Blacksmithing. With iron ore and copper available in commercial quantities on the Arabian peninsula, blacksmithing was another craft practiced in many of the towns and villages of the sixth and seventh-century Hijaz. Production included weapons, tools, utensils, and sundry other iron goods, as well as local copper kitchenware and piping. Pre-Islamic poetry extols the virtues of professional iron-working.[84] When the first/seventh-century Arab conquests dramatically increased the contemporary demand for weaponry such as swords, shields, arrowheads, and other instruments of war, additional iron ore was imported from India and Persia via al-Basrah for use in armaments production. Hijazi craftsmen thus made metal-working a significant cottage industry at the rise of Islam. Indeed, the sources indicate that there were at least thirty prominent blacksmiths plying their trade during the Prophet's era in Khaybar. They further relate that at the siege of al-Ta'if, after the battle of Hunayn in 8/630, a Roman slave skilled in smithing, who took the name al-Azraq b. `Uqbah al-Thaqafi after defecting to the Muslim camp and embracing Islam, became renowned for his work. Al-Azdi reports the presence of wholesale iron dealers operating in al-Madinah at this time as well.[85] ff782bc1db