robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

are crucial for both Islamic history and theology. This was the context in which some of the most
important Islamic doctrines unfolded. Islamic tradition establishes that at root, the Quraysh opposed
Muhammad's prophetic message because it could end pilgrimages to Mecca and disrupt trade.
Just as Arab identity is central to Islam, the holiest city in Islam, Mecca, is central to Islam's Arab
identity. Yet for all its centrality to Islam, Mecca is mentioned by name only once in the Qur'an: “It is He
who restrained their hands from you, and your hands from them, in the hollow of Mecca, after that He
made you victors over them. God sees the things you do” (48:24).
What incident this refers to is—as is so often the case in the Qur'an—completely unclear. The medieval
Qur'an commentator Ibn Kathir explains the verse this way: “Imam Ahmad recorded that Anas bin Malik
said, ‘On the day of Hudaibiya, eighty armed men from Makkah went down the valley coming from Mount
At-Tan‘im to ambush the Messenger of Allah. The Messenger invoked Allah against them, and they were
taken prisoners.’ Affan added, ‘The Messenger pardoned them, and this Ayah [“sign,” or Qur’anic verse]
was later on revealed.’” 29 But the Qur'an itself says nothing about Hudaibiya in the verse in question.
What's more, as foundational as the Treaty of Hudaibiya became for the Islamic doctrine regarding
treaties and truces with non-Muslim forces, no record outside of the Islamic sources verifies that the
treaty was ever concluded at all.
As is true of so much about early Islamic history, the closer one looks at the relevant sources about
Mecca's importance in the Arabia of Muhammad's time, the less there is to see. If Watt were correct that
the Meccans controlled a pivotal trading empire that included the route from Europe to India, one would
reasonably expect some indication of it in the contemporary literature. As Crone puts it, “It is obvious that
if the Meccans had been middlemen in a long-distance trade of the kind described in the secondary
literature”—that is, works by Watt and other historians who take for granted the canonical Islamic account
—“there ought to have been some mention of them in the writings of their customers. Greek and Latin
authors had, after all, written extensively about the south Arabians who supplied them with aromatics in
the past, offering information about their cities, tribes, political organization, and caravan trade.” 30
But in all such sources, there is silence. No mention of Mecca. Nothing about its appearance, the nature
of the business conducted there, the demeanor of the Quraysh—the usual kind of details one finds in
chronicles of travelers and tradesmen from classical times into the Middle Ages. Instead, there is a
yawning gap. Muslim writers make much of the mathematician and astrologer Ptolemy's mention of a
place in Arabia called Macoraba, but even if this does refer to Mecca (which Crone disputes), Ptolemy
died in A.D. 168. 31 Just as no one would take the account of a traveler in Constantinople in 1400 as
evidence that the city was a thriving center of Christianity in the mid-nineteenth century, so would one be
ill advised to take Ptolemy's writing about Mecca as proof that it was a thriving center for trade nearly
five centuries after his death.
In contrast, Procopius of Caesarea (d. 565), the leading historian of the sixth century, does not mention
Mecca—which is strange indeed if it were really the center of trade in Arabia and between the West and
India during the time of Muhammad, who allegedly was born only five years after Procopius's death. 32
Centers of trade do not spring up instantaneously.
No non-Muslim historian mentions Mecca in any accounts of trade in the sixth and seventh centuries.