Roads of Arabia

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05 Arabie US p100-109_CM_BAT.qxd 23/06/10 21:23 Page 102 ROADS OF ARABIA The Origins of Islam Pilgrims in the sanctuary at Mecca, Anthology of Iskandar Sultan, Shiraz, 1410–11, British Library, London, Add. 27261, fol. 362v–363r 102 103
05 Arabie US p100-109_CM_BAT.qxd 23/06/10 21:23 Page 104 ROADS OF ARABIA The Origins of Islam Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is an Arabian settlement offering an outstanding characteristic; it is not an oasis, unlike the other cities of Arabia and notably Medina, the second city in Western Arabia where Islam was established. Located in an extremely arid environment, it owes its creation to the presence of a permanent and sufficiently abundant watering place in the lower part of the city, where several valleys converge draining rainwater runoffs. This well, called Zamzam and located near the east corner of the Ka‘ba, still exists. Today contemporary Muslim pilgrims still wish to bring back from it a bottle of water to which all kinds of virtues are attributed. The date of the city’s birth is not known, even if we can assume it was founded in the Nabataean period when caravans from the far south of Jordan travelled the tracks of the façade of Western Arabia parallel to the Red Sea, seeking incense and myrrh in eastern Yemen and Hadramawt. Ptolemy, in the 2nd century AD, knew the city under the name Macoraba. Muslim tradition, based on several passages of the Quran, ascribes to the city an Abrahamic origin. Abraham and his son Ishmael are said to have raised the Ka‘ba as the first “Holy House [bayt]” on Earth and sanctified the site so men could come there in pilgrimage, according to the Quran (2, 125, 127). Cordoba (711) Kairouan (670) 0 500 1000 km Constantinople BYZANTINE EMPIRE Damascus Kufa Jerusalem Basra Fustat Medina Mecca Samarkand (712) UMAYYAD EMPIRE Merv (670) Hélène David, 2010 Map of the Umayyad Empire, c. 750 The Quran was a word before becoming a discourse and even more, a book. This word is presented as revealed to a recipient named “Muhammad” four times in the text (for example, Quran, 3, 144) and once “Ahmad” (Quran, 61, 6), making him responsible for “faithfully transmitting” the word that reaches him in the form of a “remote sound” (wahi) audible to him alone. “Faithful transmission” is the meaning of the word “qur’an” in Arabic before it became a proper noun, the Quran we know. Revelation is very often described as a “fall”, tanzil, with several derivatives of the same root (nzl), like rain that “falls” on the arid earth to enrich it. The first addressee of the Quranic words was the Meccan tribe to which Muhammad belonged. His mission was to “warn” the tribe of what awaited it, “Judgement Day”, yawm al-din, and the eschatological punishment that would ensue if it did not want to hear the Revelation transmitted to it and which directly concerned it. Thus for a long time Muhammad was designated in the Quran as the “warner”, mundhir, of his tribe, before receiving the qualifier nabi, “prophet”, like those whom the Quran presents as Biblical “prophets”. Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon, etc. are in fact all designated in the Quran as prophets. The Quranic text presents their mission for their people as prefiguring and thereby ratifying Muhammad’s mission for his people. These Quranic “prophets” of Biblical origin equally received – collectively or individually – the qualification rasul which in the Quran and in ulterior Islam became the principal denomination designating Muhammad as rasul Allah, “messenger of God”. In this Quranic perspective which links Muhammad’s mission to that of predecessors, the rasul is a messenger insofar as he is the bearer of the (divine) message which he must transmit to his people, because the divinity elected this people to consign to it its “writing”, kitab, in other words to reveal to it its fate. Writing always retains its supernatural essence, whether it be the fate of peoples, transmitted by the prophets, or the record of the acts of men, laid before them on Judgement Day (record also called kitab). Human actions are duly recorded, without anything being omitted, by the divine “scribes” who are also presented as infallible memorizers. This representation of supernatural writing as “supreme memory” or “inscribed” fate refers to the context of oral character which prevailed in the society of early Islam. The stereotype of the maktub, “it is written”, which is sometimes attributed to Islam in a rather caricatured way, is its remote relic. The Quranic discourse, despite its sound demonstration and dramatic description of the eschatological consequences its rejection would produce, was denied by those to whom it was addressed. First Muhammad was described by his opponents – the clan chiefs, leaders of the tribe – as one possessed (by an evil djinn – or genie), majnun, a wrongly inspired soothsayer or a raving poet (Quran, 52, 29). He was even accused of repeating stories told him by a stranger to the tribe (Quran, 25, 5). These accusations feature in the Quranic text, which answers and refutes them as in a kind of polemical contest between the inspired one and his contradictors. Throughout this period Muhammad remained in his city of Mecca. After some twelve years he began to preach and in 622 according to traditional Muslim dating he was excluded from his own clan by his uncle Abu Lahab, who is cursed in the Quran (111), and was exiled. This is the Hegira, al-hijra, in other words “the flight” from his family and birthplace. The Meccans who followed Muhammad in this banishment would be called “the immigrants”, al-muhajirun. Subsequently, their speed in rallying became a claim to glory for them and their descendants. It was at this time that what is known as the “Medinese” part of Muslim preaching began. The rejected messenger sought refuge in the Medinese oasis, four hundred or so kilometres north of Mecca, with another tribe than his own but to which he was reportedly related by his paternal grandmother. The Revelation continued in this city. But its content changed in several ways. The tribal context was new. Muhammad, henceforth identified as the “prophet”, was confronted by two local pagan Arab tribes. Soon most of them rallied to his cause and belief, especially because he had become a leader of men conducting victorious actions (raids or “expeditions of the Prophet”, maghazi), both against his former tribe and hostile neighbouring cities and tribes. In the ambit of this culture human success was normally imputed to the effective protection of a supernatural instance. This inspired the belief that the union of a human group with a divine protector bringing it victory was the good “alliance”, wala’, in which one should enter. In the case of Islam it meant validating the mission and the word of the one who called to form an alliance with Allah. The god of the Quran was considered the true maker of Muhammad’s victories and therefore became the best “ally”, wali, of the tribes who sought his protection and entered into an alliance with him. 104 105
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E A S M E D I T E R R A N E A N Jer
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ROADS OF ARABIA The Pilgrimage Road
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ROADS OF ARABIA al-Aqra‘ and al-H
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Roads of Arabia

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