Review: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam: Misconceptions and Flawed Polemics

Reviewed Work(s): Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam by Patricia Crone
Review by: R. B. Serjeant
Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 110, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1990), pp.
472-486
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/603188
Accessed: 26-03-2018 02:56 UTC

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 REVIEW ARTICLES

MECCAN TRADE AND THE RISE OF ISLAM:

MISCONCEPTIONS AND FLAWED POLEMICS1

R. B. SERJEANT

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Meccan Trade sets out to prove that the accepted history of the rise of Islam is largely
fabrication, that the security system established by Quraysh for caravan trade, if it existed at all,
was of a minor local sort, and that pre-Islamic Mecca was a quite unimportant sanctuary. Its
author starts, with deep-seated prejudices, to produce a confused, irrational and illogical polemic,
further complicated by her misunderstanding of Arabic texts, her lack of comprehension of the
social structure of Arabia, and twisting of the clear sense of other writing, ancient or modern, to
suit her contentions. The present article, basing itself on the Arabic sources, treats a limited
number of salient issues, mostly historical, and demonstrates the book's serious fallacies. It offers
logical interpretation of the data, including rectification of errors in translations from Arabic
passages cited in support of her arguments.

How DOES ONE DEAL WITH such a book as this,
calculated to attract publicity by shocking Islamists
through the strange theories it advances on pre-
Islamic Mecca, novel theories to be sure, but founded
upon misinterpretations, misunderstanding of sources,
even, at times, on incorrect translations of Arabic?
Add to this the author's arrogant style! Yet, being
nicely printed and with the imprimatur of Princeton
University Press, this diatribe might easily attract the
credulous attention of those not well informed on
Islam and its origins in the Arabian setting. The
simplest course open to the reviewer seems to be to
re-examine the sources cited by Dr. Crone to support
her contentious and often fallacious notions and
attempt to arrive at what they actually do say.
Of the nature of the source material for early
Islamic history Arabists and Islamists are, of course,
fully aware. Traditions range from legend to reports
of events by historians such as Ibn Ishaq (d. 150 H.)
and al-WaqidT (d. 207 H.). Inconsistencies there are;
nevertheless in the Traditions there is an undeniable
core of "fact," but the sources are selective and the
data they record so fragmentary that argument from
negative evidence has little value. To illustrate what
historical tradition has "left out" let me take two
distinguishing the element of factionalism in Tradi-
tion. of
' This is a review article of: Meccan Trade and the Rise Methodologically we cannot but start from the
Islam. By PATRICIA CRONE. Princeton: PRINCETON UNI- premise that a Tradition is a genuine report of "fact"
VERSITY PRESS, 1987. Pp. 300. $32.50.
examples on which I am directly informed. Trial by
ordeal, bishcah, found in the customary law of Jordan
and south Arabia in modern times, is known to me
only in early Arab history through a reference in
Kitdb al-Munammaq (p. 118), and the word in this
sense does not figure in the lexicons. Secondly, the
ritual hunt of the ibex, linked with certain pre-Islamic
gods and rain-making, is unknown to early Arabic
literature. Yet it figures in a group of pre-Islamic
inscriptions and has survived in Hadramawt to our
own day. It is negative evidence nevertheless that
forms a large part of Dr. Crone's argument. Data
collected from oral accounts will naturally contain
inconsistencies, sometimes suppressions or contradic-
tions, the amazing Arab memory for detail notwith-
standing. She eagerly seizes on these where they occur
but as often as not she throws all her ingredient
Traditions into the pot, stirs them together and uses
the resultant mess to fudge the question at issue-thus
she builds up to a reductio ad absurdum and a giggle!
"Islamic tradition on the rise of Islam," she says
(p. 91), "consists of little but stories," but then so do
the Gospels, and why not?
In Islam the existence of spurious Traditions was
early recognized and Western scholars go further in
until it is creditably shown to be false, or partially or

472

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 SERJEANT: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam 473
wholly invalidated by palpable bias. The slant, for
instance, given to historical tradition by sympathy for
the House of Hashim can, when it occurs, be readily
perceived, but this in itself need not invalidate a
Tradition.
In surveying the history of Mecca, its sanctuary, its
trade, its political significance in 6th-century Arabia,
common sense requires that the following inescapable
considerations should be kept in mind:
1. The valley is devoid of natural resources ade-
quate to support population.
2. Qusayy, ancestor of Quraysh, cannot but have
had a sound reason for taking it over and settling
people there.
3. As Mecca lacks natural resources the Meccans
must import footstuffs such as grain and dates.
4. To purchase foodstuffs the Meccans must have
had some source of income.
5. It is not unusual for a sanctuary to be located in
a relatively remote desert place like the vale of
Mecca.2
6. A shrine implies a pilgrimage to it, whether
casual or organized. It is inconceivable that an or-
ganized pilgrimage should not involve trading, even if
this be located a little removed from the actual shrine.
7. Apart from votive offerings (nudhiir) and possi-
bly income from waqfs external to it, Mecca's income
could hardly derive from anything but commerce
and/or crafts.
To the above I would add that if the Quraysh
system of agreements with tribes on commerce be
rejected as fabrication (a notion with which I totally
disagree), it becomes the more difficult to account for
the ascendancy established by Quraysh and inherited
by Muhammad.
Lammens and the followers of his theories exposed
in La Republique marchande de la Mecque3 are the
prime target of Dr. Crone's attack, and their assump-
tion that the commerce described by Pliny and the
Periplus was inherited by the Meccans attracts her
scorn! Learned as he was, Lammens often shows a
2 In south Arabia I know Daniyal b. HUd's tomb in Wadi
Hada and Mawla Matar in the district of the tribe Sayban.
Also reported is that of Salih in Jabal 'Asnab. Qabr HUd is
in an area deserted nowadays, but it may not always have
been so.
3 "La Republique marchande de la Mecque vers l'an 600 de
notre &re," Bulletin de l'Institut EJgyptien, 5th ser., IV (1910):centuries," in Marchands et hommes d'affaires asiatiques,
23-54. The very title begs the question of the form of social
and governmental organization at Mecca.
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lack of critical judgment, as in his BNtyles4 wherein he
misinterprets al-bayt wa- '1- 'adad, the (ruling/holy)
house (of a tribe) and the (greatest) number, a cate-
gory of relevance to this discussion. Crone also attacks
W. M. Watt's theory (p. 231), developed out of
Lammens' article, that "the QurashT transition to a
mercantile economy undermined the traditional order
in Mecca, generating a social and moral malaise to
which Muhammad's preaching was the response."
Reflecting the fashionable socialist views of the fifties
combined with an evangelist coloring, this theory of
pagan Mecca is simply without foundation. If, in
dealing with this period of Arabian history, one must
look for patterns, as Watt does, surely they should be
Arabian patterns? Indeed, given the nature of the
historical sources for the 6th-7th centuries, such
patterns should be applied as criteria, but judiciously,
where they may help to enlighten. In plain terms the
picture the sources for the period present is that of a
struggle within a holy house' between an able cadet
and the house's holders of office. A service Dr. Crone
has done here is to show up the extent to which
Quraysh commercial activity has been inflated by
Western writers with trade patterns of the classical age
in their minds, relying on these to fill out the sparse
data of the early Arabic sources; but this does not
negate the existence of Quraysh commerce.
Regarding Quraysh trading with southern Arabia,
the problem recently presented itself to me as follows.
"The famous summer and winter journeys of Quraysh,
to which the Qur'dn alludes, would have been timed
to coincide with the arrival of the India trade fleet in
the South-we do not know at which points, or even
whether the Quraysh caravan route ran along the
Tihamah coast or by the interior east of the moun-
tains. Goods travelling such distances overland would
surely be light in weight, high in value, to ensure a
profit: tribal insecurity or piracy at sea could affect
the commercial viability of land or sea routes."6
No mention is made of Quraysh merchants, or
indeed of merchants of any other Arab group, in the
4 "Le Culte des BMtyles et les processions religieuses chez
les Arabes preislamites," Bulletin de l'Institut Francais d'
Archeologie Orientale (Cairo), XVII (1919).
5 I employ this term faute de mieux and avoid such a term
as "sacerdotal."
6 "Yemeni merchants and trade in the Yemen, 13th-16th
ed. Denys Lombard and Jean Aubin (Paris: E-ditions de
1'EHESS, 1987 [written 1985]).
474 Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.3 (1990)

account given of the trade cycle by Ibn al-KalbT,7 of the Hawazin of al-Th'if, so musayyar which had an
which describes the movement of merchants in the admixture of qazz-silk was evidently known there,
pre-Islamic period, starting out from Duimat al-Jandal, while dimaqs is a word for silk known to a number of
proceeding via the Persian Gulf to Hadramawt, and pre-Islamic poets (Fraenkel, Fremdworter, 40). There
thence to Aden and San'a', terminating at the fair of is no reason to question today that al-Nu'man bought
'Ukaz. Ibn al-KalbT's trade pattern is to be accepted these three still well-attested types of Yemeni cloth,
as, broadly speaking, authentic. several of which were of silk, probably including the
We are on fairly sure ground in deducing that Aden cloth, or that they were high-quality luxury
Quraysh made regular journeys to points in northern goods that were imported to the Hijaz. In the first
Yemen. Ibn al-KalbT (infra) speaks of Tabalah, Jurash, centuries of Islam Yemeni textiles were almost pro-
and the sea-coast of the Yemen as supplying the verbial for their excellence -actual examples have
Meccans with the grain they needed in a year8 of been found and published. In a country so noted for
drought. Tabalah, eight days' distance from Mecca, its skills in the handicrafts it could well be that silk
and Bishah lie in the northern mikhldf of the Yemen. was not only woven in the Yemen before Islam but
that it could compete with that of other countries. Dr.
MERCHANT COMMODITIES Crone (p. 83) says "the claim that he [al-Nu'man]
bought silk* was already rejected as mistaken by
Chapter II discusses the "Classical Spice Trade," Fraenkel," but Fraenkel wrote over a century ago
drawing mostly on the standard authorities and, where when little was known about the high level of culture
incense is concerned, much on the two excellent in parts of Arabia and he has no grounds whatsoever
studies by Nigel Groom and Walter Muller. From this for this statement. So while we must not accept
not uninteresting chapter, though couched in polemi- exaggerated reconstructions of Quraysh trade in silk,
cal terms, Dr. Crone moves to "Meccan Spice Trade," there was clearly a trade in western Arabia in this
treating in detail of individual "Arabian spices." Her commodity in which Quraysh may have taken part.
argument produces the negative result that the sources She cannot however but concede with the sources
do not mention Quraysh as trading in any of them- that there was trading by the Meccans in "perfume,"
leather, clothing (sic, better understood as "cloth"),
which, given the limited data they provide, particularly
on economic matters, is hardly surprising. But the animals, raisins. Wines come from Syria and some
lack of literary evidence does not prove that Quraysh from al-Taif--one would have expected wine to
did not trade in them. So why this rodomontade when come from the Yemen also where it is made to this
a simple statement to this effect would have sufficed? day and by Muslims. I cannot recall any reference to
Dr. Crone rejects the statement in al-AghanT trade in it about this period.
([Biilaq, 1285 H.], XIX:75) that, as she puts it, al- Udm, rendered as "leather," has a range of mean-
Nu'man of al-Hyrah would send goods to 'Ukaz and ings-from hides and skins, coarse everyday utensils,
buy Yemeni products in return, in order to deny that to the red leather from Khawlan upon which the
silk could have been traded in western Arabia. The Prophet himself wrote that still comes from the north
text9 states that al-Nu'man bought silk (harlr) ... and of present-day Yemen. It occurs to me that skins
striped material (burud) of 'asb-cloth, washy-silk and might have been an acceptable export to Byzantium
striped cloth of Aden (musayyar AdanT). The poet for the manufacture of parchment.
'Amir b. al-Tufayl, approximately contemporary with Dr. Crone gives the misleading impression that at
Qabr HUd leather was sold to the itinerant merchants
al-Nu'man (al-Mufa4kialTydt, Lyall, 711), alludes to
al-dimaqs al-musayyar'l and the commentator notes of al-bahr wa- '-barr, land and sea, though in fact the
that musayyar was burud min al- Yaman yu'ti bi-ha, text states that these merchants sold leather12 and in
striped material brought from the Yemen. cAmir was exchange bought kundur-incense, myrrh (murr), aloes

7 In al-MarziiqT, al-Azminah wa-'l-amkinah (Qatar, 1968- 11 In the Umayyad period the Caliph Hisham appears to
69), 11:231 seq. have had Yemeni silkfirdsh.

8 Sanah, sanawfi, in old Arabic usage, means a year of
drought.
9 See my Islamic textiles (Beirut, 1972 [reprint from Ars
Islamica]), 123 seq., with evidence on Yemeni silks.
10 Musayyar is "striped cloth with an admixture of silk,
striped cloth with yellow stripes."
12 Leather sleeping mats made in the Dhofar/7afar region
are described in A. G. Miller, M. Morris and S. Stuart-
Smith, Plants of Dhofar (Edinburgh, 1988), 192, as "of no
little value." In local terms this means worth "one or two
goats." I came across elaborately tooled mats upon which
bodies of the dead had been laid, in a Sabaean bee-hive

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 SERJEANT: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam 475
and dukhn-incense. As they did so, it can only have
been for distribution further afield. There is no reason
why Quraysh merchants should not have bought
kundur or lubdn, so common in Hadramawt today
and to be seen in Yemen markets today as well, from
merchants at 'Ukaz or possibly Tabalah and other
Yemeni markets.
The account of Hashim's meeting with the Byzantine
emperor (perhaps actually a local official?), avers that
Hashim said that he had a tribe who are the traders of
the Arabs. Hashim then asked him for a writing
guaranteeing security to them and their merchandise
so that they could bring him "what is deemed
choice/rare of the leather and cloth (thiydb) of the
Hijaz so that they will be selling it in your country
(`inda-kum) and it will be cheaper for you." With a
not untypical disregard for the Arabic text, Dr. Crone
sees this last sentence as applying to "thick and coarse
clothes of the Hijaz," i.e., woolens, "and we are
assured that they were cheap." But the Arabic refers
to the new trading agreement proposed by Hashim,
not to the actual commodities, which it specifies as
choice/rare. She argues: would it be worthwhile taking
woolen goods (for which there is no evidence that the
cloth was wool) to Syria where they are already
abundant? But HijazT cloth could simply be cloth
imported to the Hijaz by land or sea and called HijazT
in the same way as lubdn is called lubdn ShihrT,
though it is not produced but only collected there,
and as we speak of Mocha coffee though Mokha is
only an assembly point for the bean, which grows in
the mountains.
Rhetorically Dr. Crone exclaims: "Yet the Meccans
claimed that bulky woollens carried by caravan from
the Hijaz to Syria at a distance of eight hundred miles
would be cheaper for the Syrians than what they
could buy at home. It makes no sense!" Certainly it
does not, but then the text does not say this! She
rejects the idea (p. 141) that the Meccans dominated
the exchange of goods between north Arabia and
southern Syria, but the Arabic sources upon which
she relies do not suggest that they did. Nor does the
argument that, because a commodity was plentiful in
Syria and Byzantium, these countries would be un-
interested in importing it from elsewhere, take any
account of the taste for foreign rarities, fluctuations of
prices, or scarcities arising from political action. Nor
does she consider such accidents as piracy, weather
conditions and the many other factors that affect
shaped tomb at Bir Fadl, close to Aden. Might these mats
have been imported from Dhofar?
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trading. In fact, her whole treatment of the subject is
strictly mechanical, not allowing for such eventualities.
Further evidence is provided on Quraysh trading
and industry by Hisham b. al-Kalbi (say about 100 H.)
on the authority of his friend Abii Salih, in Hisham's
al-Mathdlib."3 So ardent a Rafidi, i.e., ShTll, was
Hisham that al-Dhahabi, who considers him unreliable
as a transmitter of Tradition, would accord him no
more than the briefest mention in his Tadhkirat al-
huffaz~, with the remark that he was not a thiqah, a
reliable authority. Nevertheless this should not deter
us from taking into consideration what he has to say
about the professions of prominent Quraysh personali-
ties, though he and his father may have manipulated
the historical data to detract from the honor of
certain Quraysh nobles against whom they entertained
prejudices, so as to manufacture a scandal (mathlabah)
about them.
In Arabia the trades of butcher, blood-letter, barber,
circumciser and tanner14 are demeaning occupations;
the tailor and blacksmith have an ambiguous status,
seemingly quite respectable amongst townsfolk but,
like all craftsmen, despised by the tribesmen. Ibn al-
KalbT's Mathalib lists a number of Quraysh who he
alleges practiced one or other of the demeaning
occupations; when we look into these more closely
they turn out to be members of the 'Abd Shams
group of the holy house of 'Abd Manaf and their
supporters, opponents of the Prophet up to his occu-
pation of Mecca, and members of the Taym b.
Murrah clan, the least in social status in Mecca, the
clan to which Abl Bakr belonged.' Even Zubayr b.
al-'Awwam is stigmatized as a butcher-that he gained
a livelihood as such is improbable, though the head of
" Amjed Hasan, Kitdb Mathdlib al-'Arab of Abu '1-
Mundhir Hisham b. Muhammad al-Sd'ib al-KalbT, a critical
edition, awarded the Ph.D. in the University of Punjab,
Lahore (n.d.).
14 The demeaning crafts and trades are well documented
both in classical texts and my corpus of customary law texts.
There is, for example, the hajjdm, blood-letter, sa'igh,
gold/silver smith, and the qassdb, butcher. It is commented
that the smith is despised for his ghashsh, fraud, and the
other two for their najdsah, uncleanness. It cannot be
thought that Zubayr came into this category.
'5 Ya'qubi, Tdrikh, ed. Houtsma (Berlin, 1883), 140. Aba
Sufyan, at the time of the election of Ab5 Bakr, addresses
the Banui 'Abd Manaf and exhorts them not to let the people
be covetous of you, especially Murrah and 'Adiyy. It is not
meant that they are dacTf of course, but they do not rank as
high as 'Abd Manaf.
476 Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.3 (1990)
a house does slaughter the animals consumed by his
household. Abu Sufyan and AbU Lahab are stated to
have dealt in wine (which may have become a dis-
honorable occupation only after Islam) but AbU La-
hab is also said to have exercised the particularly low
craft of tanner-it cannot be credited that he followed
two such ignoble trades! A Makhztiml is described as
a cobbler (khasyaf), more dishonorable, if anything, they did not exist in Mecca.
than a tanner, and an obscure person probably of the
house of Umayyah is said to have been a circumciser.
The Yemeni AbU MUsa al-Ash'arT, says Ibn al-Kalbi,
was a barber but the Asha'irah of the ZabNd area are
honorable tribesmen to this day and it cannot be
credited that he followed so low a trade. This can
surely be only a trumped-up charge against the arbiter
of 'Ali's selection, who deposed him after Siffin. Ibn
al-KalbT's bias is patent and what he says of these
persons unacceptable.
Professions in which a Meccan of standing could
engage are attributed by Ibn al-Kalbi to the following
persons. The Caliphs AbU Bakr and 'Uthman sold
cloth. Al-Harith b. 'Abd al-Muttalib used to sell cloth
in al-Sha'm (Syria or the north) and buy slaves. AbU
Talib dealt in cloth and 'itr. Ibn al-KalbT's Mathalib
settles the problem Dr. Crone raises (p. 53) as to what
AbU Talib sold, reading bazz for the burr and laban
of other writers. Throughout Meccan Trade, 'itr is
translated as "perfume," but Lane's Lexicon defines it
as perfumes and drugs. The 'attar in Islamic manuals
of market law and regulations (hisbah) clearly deals in
both, and the SUq al-Mi'tarah in present day $an'c'
deals in a wide variety of drugs, dyes, spices, etc. (cf.
our San'cd, 185 an; below, n. 28). It is likely that 'itr
in the 6th-7th centuries covered a similar range of
commodities, including, perhaps, at least some of the
items which Dr. Crone shows are not actually noted
by the sources as being traded in by Quraysh.
'Abdullah b. Jud'an, the wealthy notable of Taym b.
Murrah, was one of the many 'attars.
'Umar b. al-Khattab had various merchandises
(tijarat). Perhaps Ibn al-KalbT is referring slightingly
to 'Uthman b. Talhah of the holy house of 'Abd al-
Dar in saying that he was a tailor (khayydt), but
perhaps not. For Sayyid Ahmad al-ShamT tells me
that in San'ad' notable Sayyid ulema would be black-
smiths and come with their books from the anvil to
study circles. He himself used to make the caps worn
by sayyids; this is recorded also of other ulema, but it
seems not to have been primarily for gain. Abu
Sufyan, says Ibn al-Kalbi, was a wheat chandler
(hannat). This seems unlikely to have been a de-
meaning occupation in Mecca of that time, but per-
haps Ibn al-Kalbi is sneering at the Umayyad caliphs
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by recalling the relatively humble background of the
rulers of so vast an empire.
The Mathdlib, at any rate, does show that there
were merchants in cloth and citr at Mecca, though the
author gives no indication of the extent of their
business. Apart from grain dealing, no other respect-
able trades are mentioned, but this does not mean
SOCIAL RANKING
At Mecca, Ibn Ishaq16 distinguishes three social
groups, the nobles, i.e., those with sharaf and man'ah
(the latter term indicating that they were capable of
defending themselves), the merchants (tdjir), and the
la'Tf class of subject status. The merchants were
unmistakably people of a certain standing, though not
nobility, as they are today in such cities as San'a',
Shibam, Mukalla, and Jeddah, distinct from the
mudakkins who trade from small booths. Dr. Crone
poses the rhetorical question (p. 186) as to who were
the 1ducafd' of Quraysh? If she consults my "The da'Tf
and mustad'af and the status accorded them in the
Qur'an"17 she will find the names of five of them.
They were emphatically not "weaklings. . . who owe
their freedom from tribal molestation to the prestige
of the presiding saint." She confuses the 1da'Tf with
pariahs, and there are groups in Arabia who might be
dubbed pariahs. A pariah is da'Tf but a 1da'Tf is not a
pariah. In 1940 our tribal soldiers would eat with a
.1a'Tf but not with a sweeper. If we accept what
Jahizi18 says, that-traders in pre-Islamic Arabia were
despised for their inability to defend themselves, this
most likely applies to mudakkins who are usually
.1a'Tf (or, in Tarim city, masdkTn). AbU Sufyan ob-
viously had the sharaf and mancah of the Meccan
nobles yet, if Ibn al-Kalbi is to be credited, he dealt in
grain. Commerce on a large scale seems not to have
been incompatible with nobility. On a lower scale,
when I questioned a tribesman about 'asdkir al-
sultdn, tribesmen who took to petty trading in the
little towns of the former Aden Protectorate when
16 Sirah, ed. Saqqa et alii (Cairo, 1375/1955), 1:320;
Guillaume, 145; Wustenfeld, 207.
17 Hamdard Islamicus (Karachi, 1987), X, or Tydskrif vir
Islamkunde (Johannesburg, 1987).
18 "Fakhr al-sudan 'ala 'l-biddn" in Rasd'il al-Jahiz, ed.
'Abd al-Salam Muhammad Harun (Cairo, 1964), 1:188.
Dr. Crone speaks of "the odd suggestion of both holy men
and social outcasts in Jahiz's discussion of them," but the
odd suggestion is hers, not that of Jahiz!
 SERJEANT: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam 477
acting as a sort of bodyguard to a sultan, he replied
that they had lost their honor while engaging in trade,
but if they left it off they would recover their honor!
This suggests a possibility of how tribesmen may have
felt in 6th-century Arabia. But tribes and townspeople
differ radically on social status-Hayqutdn's taunt
(infra) that commerce is despised may have meant
little in itself to Meccan merchants.
Not only does Dr. Crone signally fail to comprehend
the social structure of Arabia yesterday and today,
but she distorts what I have to say about Quraysh.
Nowhere do I suggest that they were "holy dispensers
of justice" (p. 181), though I do point out that cAbd
al-Muttalib, ancestor of the Prophet, and others of
the House of Hashim were arbiters (hukkdm), as Ibn
Habib states in both al-Muhabbar and al-Munammaq,
mentioning also other Quraysh arbiter houses and
other families of hukkdm in Arabia. Quraysh arbiters
dealt in the first place with their immediate tribal
group but this would not preclude them from acting
in cases external to that group. In hadarT areas where
the hawtah institution is mostly if not exclusively
found, the mansab provides a venue and presides, but
his role, whatever it may contribute towards settling
disputes, is certainly not "dispensing justice," holy or
otherwise. Tribesmen normally settle their disputes at
meetings of their chiefs and notables. The situation is
exactly mirrored in the opening clauses of the "Eight
Documents" (the so-called "Constitution of Media"),
no. A and final clause B, where Allah and Muhammad
are designated the ultimate appeal when the judges (?)
take a case on which they have failed to agree."9
I do not suggest that "saints" do not fight (p. 183).
The Mansab of Thibi in Wadi Hadramawt whom I
knew personally, fought for several years with the
Kathlri sultans and, of course, the Yemeni Zaydis, the
Imams, are very warlike indeed.
Nor can I agree that Quraysh were regarded as
"holy traders." It was a member of the 'Abd Manaf
Bayt, a holy house, Hashim, who concluded the pacts
for safe-conduct with the tribes and Byzantium, and I
have further suggested that a member of the Bayt, for
example Muhammad himself, might escort caravans.
If other Qurashis acted as escorts as distinct from
traders, it would presumably be through delegation by
the Bayt, the holy house. I further maintain that it
would be because of the sanctity of the Bayt to which
he belonged that Hashim was in the position to
negotiate the original agreements. This has nothing
directly to do with the inviolability of the Haram.
19 Cf. Qur'an, IV, 59: Fa-in tandzactum fT shay'-in fa-
ruddui-hu ila 'lidhi wa- 'l-rasili.
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It completely distorts my meaning (in a way all too
typical of the book as a whole) to aver that I say the
guardians of the sacred enclaves in Hadramawt re-
solved disputes for the tribes around them "by way of
reward for their recognition of its [a sacred enclave's]
inviolability." In the first place, the guardian(s) of the
enclave are the tribes themselves. Arbitration of their
disputes is a secondary consideration to all concerned.
The process may be compared with the Prophet's
action over Qurayzah-he nominated their tribal pro-
tector, a naqTb, or chief, to judge their case.
Nor yet do I, as Dr. Crone asserts, "read every
saiyid and sharif in pre-Islamic Arabia as a holy
man." I cite certain specific cases where the term
"sayyid" is "associated with functions exercised by
those endowed with spiritual power." To say that the
status of a "holy man" (a sayyid?) and trading are not
compatible is to misunderstand the realities of the
situation. I have known quite a number of sayyids in
Tarim who engaged in commerce to some extent
which per se did not seem to detract from their status
in the city. Dr. Crone asks what functions the
"guardian" of a shrine (in the 6th to 7th centuries)
would perform, arriving at the conclusion that "[t]hey
did not divine, they did not cure, they did not
adjudicate, they simply kept the Ka'bah in repair and
supplied food and drink for the pilgrims." I have
known many mansabs, lords of shrines, not "guard-
ians," in south Arabia, staying on occasion with the
mansab. The mansab would not, I think, feel obliged
to perform cures or divine, though mansabs often
have that gift known as kashf.20 They certainly have
an important socio-political role in the community.
Mansabs play a leading part in the annual ziydrahs,
as doubtless did the Bayt of Quraysh at the pre-
Islamic hajj. The mansab leads the ritual Islamic
prayer but we know nothing of pagan prayers. We
cannot expect the constant acts of devotion practiced
by Christians. I have attended an 'Attds hadrah, a
sort of liturgy accompanied by music, and mawlids-
perhaps something of the kind was practiced at the
Ka'bah. The pilgrim talbiyah in chanted rajaz verse
would surely have called for a reply in kind by the
lord of the sanctuary? In fact, we know next to
nothing about its 'Abd al-Dar servitors, Tradition
being silent on so much of pagan worship. Can we not
nevertheless credit them with the function of interpret-
ing the divine will and acting as an intermediary with
Allah? We should surely not be very far wrong in
supposing they had much the same functions as those
20 L.e., knowing what happens at another time and/or
place.
478 Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.3 (1990)

of mansabs, sadah and the mashayikh2" classes

In a separate of
Tradition, this time in explanation of
present day south Arabia. suirah CVI, Al-Kalbi follows with reference to the
iylif/lillif of Quraysh which provides them with
THE WINTER AND SUMMER JOURNEYS food against hunger and makes them secure against
(RIHLATAL-SHITAT WA-'L-SA YF) khawf. Khawf then, as now, however Qur'an exegesis
may embroider on it, means simply physical insecurity
Great play is made by Dr. Crone of the two from armed attack. Famine years (sanawdt) ran away
accounts of the winter and summer journeys of Qu- with Quraysh money/property and, even though it is
raysh in the Kitdb al-Munammaq (pp. 31, 262) by Ibn not mentioned, this should include the weakening or
al-KalbT and his father, respectively. Al-KalbT flour- death of transport animals. So Hashim went to al-
ished from 66-146 H./685-763 A.D. His information Sha'm and brought back woolen sacks of bread
goes back to the first century of Islam. His report (khubz) on camels to Mecca. There is no indication
reads as follows: that Quraysh discontinued their journeys north or
south to purchase grain. The initiative of the Yemenis,
Quraysh was accustomed [to make] two journeys, in themselves transporting grain to Mecca, has the
one of them in winter to the Yemen and the other in appearance of being a single, isolated incident. But al-
summer to al-Sha'm. And they remain so [doing] KalbT's account in the first story is important in
until stress (jahd, to be understood as "drought") showing a link between Mecca and the Yemen by both
became acute for them, but Tabalah, Jurash and the the seacoast and inland routes-this is most likely to
people of the sea-coast of the Yemen had plentiful have been the regular route followed by Quraysh in
crops. So the people of the coast transported by sea their journeys southwards and a point at which they
and the people of the land on camels and the people could contact merchants from Aden by land or sea, if
of the coast put in to harbour at Jeddah and the indeed they did not go further south.
people [travelling by] land put in to al-Muhassab. Ibn al-KalbT seems to differ from his father in
And the people of Mecca procured the grain they asserting that Quraysh trading did not go beyond
wanted, and Allah supplied them [with what they Mecca, but the Persians used to bring goods to the
would get] from the two journeys they used to Meccans which they purchased to sell among them-
undertake to the Yemen and al-Sha'm. selves and to the Arabs around them, that is, until
22
Hashim's visit to al-Sha'm. Of course the arrival of
Al-Sha'm means either Syria or the north; Persians (A'ajim) from the Yemen by land or sea is
Tabalah and Jurash are in Wadi Bishah of 'Aslr, not in itself unlikely.
which latter was part of the Yemen with its ports of It was with the visit of Hashim to al-Sha'm, Ibn
Qunfidhah and HalT. Al-Muhassab is a little over a al-KalbT maintains, his dispensing of tharld and his
mile and a half north of Mecca and a convenient contact with the Byzantine emperor that a security
place for caravans to stop. Dr. Crone (p. 213) trans- pact was made with the Byzantines and the route to
lates kafd-hum mu'nat al-asfdr as "saved them the Syria for caravans established. I have always felt that
trouble . . . ," deriving this sense from Wehr, but this Hashim's role has been inflated and that any contact
is not classical Arabic. Kafd-hu ma'unata-hu in the made in the north is more likely to have been made
lexicons means "he supplied him with his provision." with a Byzantine official. His inflated account of the
This is no mere linguistic quibble, for she utilizes her iyldf is patently crude fabrication, intended to build
mistranslation to back a theory (loc. cit.). up the reputation of the House of Hashim.
At this point let me suggest an alternative interpre-
tation for the rihiat al-shita' wa-'l-sayf. From the
21 I have given a description of the south Arabian Meccan point of view the prime purpose of the
Mashayikh class in Commoners, climbers and notables: A journeys was to obtain a supply of grain. Ibn al-
sampler of studies on social ranking in the Middle East, ed. KalbT, for instance, speaks of a TamlmlT haljf (ally or
C. A. 0. van Nieuwenhuijzen (Leiden, 1977), 256. Were she client) of Banii 'Abd al-Dar as saying: "I went forth
to read this it might help Dr. Crone to a better understanding with a number of Quraysh, making for al-Sha'm for
of the social structure of Arabian society past and present. grain provision for us (mTrah la-nd)." Their purpose,
22 In western Arabia an Aden Western-Protectorate tribes- as al-Bayqaaw- succinctly defines it, was to buy grain
man would speak of going to al-Sha'm when he meant and to trade (yamtdruin wa-yattajiruin). The terms
Imamic Yemen. The principle is that Shalm and Yaman are mTrah sayfiyyah and mTrah ribciyyah are cited by
north and south of wherever you happen to be standing. Lane as meaning, respectively, the spring and be-

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 SERJEANT: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam 479

ginning-of-winter grain provision. Now in Hadramawt,
for example, the crop called shita' is sown in July and
ripens six months later in January. Sayf is a term
widely used for the other of the two annual grain
crops.23 In Iraq today the terms shitaw! and sayf T are
used for the two crops. Shitd' and rib'! are really two
terms for the same cropping season. I have happened
on the information24 that during the Umayyad period
the Amlr of Iraq used to give the Arab soldiery two
'atd's, that of al-shitd' and that of al-sayf, grain
allowances and stipends. It is natural that the timing
of the payment of allowances should be related to the
harvests. So Quraysh journeys are likely to have been
so arranged as to coincide with the appearance of the
season's grain crop in the markets. In south Arabia
this would also be the season when the Persian,
Indian and Far Eastern merchandise was arriving at
the coastal ports.
It is asserted by Dr. Crone (p. 212) that the
proposition that Quraysh had agreements known as
iyldf can be rejected, and she alleges that sarah CVI
engendered the story about Hashim's iyldf agreements
covering the two annual journeys. This notion emerges
from her fixation, not to say obsession, with Qur'an
tafsrr or exegesis, but her twisted statement that
Qur'an tafsrr generated masses of spurious informa-
tion is not a discerning appreciation of such works as
Tabari's Jdmi', either. There are some philological
problems over the forms of the word iyldf, but the
definition of it is given by Ibn Hablb (Muhabbar,
162): al-iyldf 'uhad, means "iyldf is pacts," i.e., each
iyldf was a series of pacts.25 Her assertion that Ibn
Hablb takes iyldf as a plural is incorrect; moreover, it
has no lexical support. In point of fact the iyldf
system of security pacts accords with well known
Arabian patterns. For instance, as long ago as 1962, I
pointed out that the Yemeni caravan travelling to
Mecca in the mediaeval period could be protected by
the presence of even a small boy belonging to the
family of the Yemeni saint Ibn 'Ujayl. So also Hashim
used to escort caravans to al-Sha'm. Kharaja Hdshim
yujawwizu-hum26 wa-yuf7-him iylafa-hum alladhT
23 See my "The cultivation of cereals in mediaeval Yemen," of Hashim as initiating either journey. Ibn Ishaq27
Arabian Studies (London-Cambridge), 1 (1974): 25-74.
shim, as they aver (yaz'amuna), was the first who
24 A. A. Bevan, The Naki'id of Jarir and al-Farazdak
(Leiden, 1905-12), 11:1090.
25 The quotation a few lines below shows unequivocally previously noted that Hashim was in charge of the
that Ibn Habib understood iyldf as a singular noun since he
follows it with a masculine alladhT, had it been a plural a
feminine pronoun would have been used.
26 Yujawwizu-hum, lit., making them to pass. Instead of(Hashim) "instituted" the two journeys, but Ibn HabTb, al-
akhadha, a passive, ukhidha, might be read.
akhadha la-hum min al-'Arab, Hashim went forth
escorting them and fully exercising for them the iyldf-
pacts he had received on their behalf from the Arabs
(al-Munammaq, 33). The escorted were Quraysh mer-
chants, but no doubt others, also from the tribal
districts through which the caravan passed, attached
themselves to it.
Hashim's organization of the journey to al-Sha'm
is almost mirrored by the experiment of the cAlawi
sayyids from Tarfm (n. 30 infra) who set out almost a
century and a quarter ago to establish a land haij-
route from the Wadi Hadramawt towns to Mecca.
They sent ahead to the Naq-b of the Yam tribe in the
Najran area, Ahmad b. Ismac'l al-MakramT, asking
for a bond/pact (mfthdq) and guarantee of security
and protection (dhimmat amdn wa-jiwdr) for the
'Alawi pilgrims, inhabitants of Hadramawt, and those
travelling in their company. They also sent to the
Amir of 'Asir, Muhammad b. 'Ayid, for an 'ahd wa-
mrthdq wa-sakk dhimmah. Such pacts were known as
qd'idah mujawwirah. It should be remarked that al-
MakramT was an Ismac'lT, Muhammad b. cAyid a
well known WahhabT and the cAlawi sayyids, of
course, Shaficls.
In brief, on the evidence of the Arabic texts at our
disposal, linked also with the existence of parallel
institutions in Arabia-to say nothing of mere proba-
bility-there is no valid reason to doubt that Quraysh
did make journeys twice a year to purchase supplies
of grain and for commerce in general. To achieve
their purpose they had to have security guarantees
from the tribes through whose country they passed. A
commodity which would meet the requirements I have
detailed on p. 473, light in weight, high in value, and
also small in bulk, would be silk-it is mentioned
three times in the Qur'an as clothing of haut luxe
worn by the Believers in Paradise.
ShIc' sympathizer as he was-like his son-al-
Kalbl, in the passage quoted above (p. 478), does not
directly allude to Hashim's role in establishing the
iyldf system, which he simply calls a Quraysh practice
(da'b), though he does describe how Hashim relieved
Mecca from a famine. Significantly he does not speak
clearly has doubts about his part, for he says: "Ha-
instituted the two journeys of Quraysh." He had
27 Srrah, op. cit., 1:136. Ibn Ishaq used the term sanna, i.e.,
Munammaq, does not commit himself.

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480 Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.3 (1990)

rifddah and siqdyah, feeding and watering the pil- country intervening, with its warrior tribes.30 While
grims. To this he adds that "this was that 'Abd Shams al-KalbT defines the journeys as being to al-Sha'm
[his brother] was a man perpetually travelling (rajul and the Yemen, this does not exclude Quraysh from
saffdr), rarely staying in Mecca, and he was poor with going on occasion to Ethiopia, which is not far from
many children." the Yemeni coast, or even from continuous contact
What emerges from these statements is that each with more distant Iraq. The differing explanations of
brother of the house of 'Abd Manaf managed offices the two journeys Dr. Crone cites (p. 205 seq.) are not
it held. While Hdshim attended to functions hereditarily in reality as inconsistent as she says, but she has
linked with the shrine, 'Abd Shams, the elder and fudged up the quite reasonable account of them,
leader, accompanied the caravans. The term saffdr, methodologically not a sound or correct way to treat
used in describing him, in contemporary Bahrain for the sources.
instance, denotes a deep-sea voyager. Hashim's ap- She suggests further that the transhumance of
parently out-of-turn venture into what we might callQuraysh to al-Ta'if (p. 210) may have been invented.
"famine relief," was, says al-Kalbi, the cause of This is easily disposed of when we consider the
jealousy in Umayyah, son of 'Abd Shams, that led to Prophet's agreement with Thaqlf of al-Ta'if, a clause
an honor case of the mundfarah kind; it was won by of which stipulates that "the grapes of Quraysh which
Hashim. The fact that Abui Sufyan b. Harb b. Thaqlf irrigates, half of them belong to those who
Umayyah was leader of the Quraysh caravan to Syria irrigate them." The season of the grape harvest must
in the Prophet's day suggests that conduct of the surely have seen the Quraysh owners at al-Ta'if. If
caravans was hereditary in the house of 'Abd Shams. Dr. Crone accepts Jahiz's explanation of the poet
Chronologically, before al-Kalb-i's reports, one HIayqutan's lampoon cited by her in another context,
should first consider the ballad style verses of Wahb b.why not accept that Hayqutan is alluding to the fact
'Abd b. Qusayy and Matriid b. Ka'b al-Khuzac', the that Quraysh, the affluent among them at least, spend
latter like the Yemani madddh28 in character, who their summer holiday in al-Ta'if and their winter
declaims laudatory elegies at the funeral of a person break in Jeddah?
of note. More likely genuine than not, these verses
may well have been preserved by the house of 'Abd MARKETS AND THE MECCAN HARAM

Manaf and are quite independent of Qur'an exegesis.

He speaks of 'Abd Manaf as "those who make the In her valiant effort to prove the Meccan pilgrimage
iyldf caravan set forth (al-rdhilan bi-rihlat al-iyldf), did not even exist before Islam, Dr. Crone makes
who, each winter, contend with the wind until the sun some play with the fact that Muhammad's early
disappears in the sea (rajjdf)" (al-Munammaq, 38). If negotiations with the Yathrib tribes took place at the
we accept the editor's understanding of rajjdf as al- pilgrim stations like Mina, but not at Mecca. This is
bahr, the verse would indicate that the caravan or to ignore the natural understanding of Muhammad's
convoy made at least some of its journey by sea; thiswish not to negotiate with outsiders on his home
should be compared with al-KalbT's account of the ground.
Yemenis of the Tihamah (p. 478) who travel by sea to It does not follow that, because fairs took place in
Jeddah. It is one of Matriid's verses cited by Ibn certain places outside Mecca classified as harams and
Ishaq29 that directly credits Hashim with instituting formed part of the hajj routine, seasonal trading in
the two journeys. grain, cloth and 'itr was not also carried on in the city
Lengthy as land routes from Mecca to al-Sha'm itself. In the first place were these harams sacred
are, they might be compared to the caravan which enclaves or, simply, protected saqs, the latter a com-
comes to the Mansab of 'Inat of Hadramawt, carrying
coffee, ghee and grain from the Mansab's awqaf in 30 Starting out from Tarim of Wadd Hadramawt in Febru-
Jabal Yafi', a distance of some 500-600 miles as the ary 1866, a party of 'Alawi Sayyids travelled to Mecca via
crow flies, but much more in the large mountain Najran, Hall b. Ya'quib and al-Qunfudhah in thirty stages of
nine hours each. I have myself at various times travelled
28 Matrud is described in al-Munammaq, 36-37, as under along sections of the entire route from Najran to Bir 'All
the protection (Jf kanaf) of Banu 'Abd Manaf. R. B. and Husn al-Ghurab (Qana'), passing by Shabwah, and can
Serjeant and Ronald Lewcock, SancJ9: An Arabian Islamic confirm that there are no great physical obstacles for cara-
city (London, 1983), 169a. vans. Though there is no evidence that they did use this
29 STrah, op. cit., 136. He uses the term sunnat (ilay-hi al- route, Quraysh could have done so by organizing a series of
rihlatdni). Cf. n. 26. security pacts over the route.

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 SERJEANT: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam 481
monplace in Islamic Yemen? Such places are suitable
as animal markets and for the bivouacing of numbers
of tiibesfolk-as for instance, 'Ukaz where skins
(adTm) were sold. As we have seen, the grain caravans
came to al-Muhassab, close to Mecca but well re-
moved from it. Mecca would be an unsuitable place
to keep any number of camels. Camels have to be
grazed as regularly as possible and, travelling in the
WahidT sultanate in 1947, this was the main concern
of our camel-man. Quraysh merchants going around
the seasonal fairs attended by tribesfolk may be
compared with the Hudaydah merchants who go
round the Tihamah saqs held on different week days.
The obvious reason (p. 173) for slaughtering sacrificial
animals at Mina on Yawm 'Arafah ('Id al-Adha)
would be on account of the unpleasantness of much
rotting offal-there is no need to think that the visits
to Mecca were added to an independent ritual at
Mina. Individual sacrifices appear to have been made
in Mecca. If they did not buy and sell at Mina on this
day the obvious reason is that they would be fully
occupied with slaughtering, cutting up, and cooking-
a process which, in my personal experience, can take
some three hours or more!
Despite Dr. Crone's theorizing to the contrary, it is
quite consistent for Mecca of the pre-Islamic age to
have been the main sanctuary and pilgrimage centre
of the Hijaz province, yet to have minor sanctuary-
markets associated with it. The 'Arafah visitation is
comparable to the annual excursions so common in
the little south Arabian towns, to a place outside of
which usually some sanctity attaches. I attended one
such excursion just outside Dhamar, and at San a',
the Musalla al-'Idayn lay outside the city until en-
gulfed by modern building. Archaeologists have dis-
covered in Hadramawt, on the mountain sides above
the little towns, pre-Islamic temples, though the towns
themselves have temples too; I think they must have
served as places of visitation extra muros on such
occasions as 'Tds. Qabr HUd and the tomb of the
ancestor of the Hadraml Sayyids, 'Isa al-Muhajir, are
both located at sites on the mountain sides.
SECURITY AND INVIOLABILITY
According to Dr. Crone (p. 182): "Jahiz explains
that traders in pre-Islamic Arabia, including Quraysh,
were despised for their inability to defend themselves."
However, she quite correctly notes that Quraysh did
fight for one cause or another.
She bases her statement on the well-known essay,
"The Vaunting of the Blacks over the Whites," in
which Jahiz, probably tongue in cheek, argues for
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Black superiority! He reproduces verses by a black
poet, Hayqutan, of not earlier than the first decade of
the 2nd century of the hijrah, lampooning Quraysh,
though nowhere actually referring to them by name.
"Not by you," the poet says, "is the Veiled Sanctuary
(al-Hardm al-Musattar) guarded. No wintering or
summering place, no pasture, . . . is there in Mecca,
but only trading, and commerce is despised (tuhqar)."
Jahiz explains Hayqutan's meaning, but this does not
imply that he endorses his sentiments: "He means by
this, all of it, Quraysh. He says: 'They are merchants,
having had recourse for protection to the Temple
(i'tasamui bi- '-Bayt). And when they go out they
hang dawm-palm fruit and bark (liha') of trees [under-
stand, of the Haram] upon themselves so that they
may be recognized and no one will kill them'." Jahiz
adds that Hayqutan means that the Meccans are .daclf
to the last degree (_f hadd al-duf) in people's eyes
and a people without the capacity to defend them-
selves (imtind'). The lampoon of course seeks to
humiliate the Meccans by manipulating the facts and
to that extent it is inadmissible as evidence. These
circumstances are not revealed by Dr. Crone who
allows herself to "conjure up pariahs" as the explana-
tion of Quraysh status. But it is precisely in identifying
Quraysh nobles with classes like the Jewish packmen
of Iraq mentioned by Jalal al-HanafT, or of San'ad'
before 1950, that the satire of the lampoon bites, the
la'Tf class without imtind'.
Dr. Crone works herself into a thorough muddle
over Jahiz' explanation of Hayqutan's satirical verses,
and about imtind',31 which she mistranslates as "in-
violability"-a sense not reported in classical or
modern lexicons. "Jdhiz," she says, "contrives to find
a reference to this inviolability [of Quraysh] in a pre-
Islamic poem, though this time in a contemptuous
vein." This is in reference to the passage, supra, on
Quraysh taking protection in the Temple. But Jahiz is
not referring to the three pre-Islamic verses that
immediately precede the passage (which could not
possibly refer to Quraysh "inviolability") but to
Ilayqutan's lampoon as a whole. After further wrang-
ling she proposes the conclusion, quite unwarranted
by the sources, that these latter "confuse temporary
inviolability during the holy months with permanent
inviolability arising from association with a sanctuary"
(p. 183). They do not. It is only Dr. Crone who is
confused!
31 The Tdj al-'arfis defines mancah as quwwah tamna' man
yurTdu-hu bi-sa' and one who yamna' al-jdr, protects him
from being wronged, yahuitu-hu min an yuddm, and imtana'a
means ihtamd.
482 Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.3 (1990)

The Prophet possessed mancah and sharaf, the destroyed.33 A holy house, Dr. Crone avers, cannot at
ability to protect oneself, and honor; in fact he the same time be guardians of shrines as well as
belonged to the nobility of Mecca as defined by Ibn traders. In this she fails to appreciate the actuality of
Ishdq. Nor will this status be denied 'Abd Manaf and the situation. Firstly, the guardians of the shrine are,
'Abd al-Dar. The honor that is theirs by virtue of as we have seen, not Quraysh, but the tribes. Quraysh
birth is the greater through their hereditary tenure ofwere the servitors of the temple, but obviously service
office at the sanctuary. of the sanctuary would furnish a living for a quite
Yet the small number of Quraysh and their followerslimited number of persons-the rest must find some
at Mecca would be utterly inadequate to maintain the other occupation. It could be that the two 'Abd
inviolability of the Haram against aggression by large Manaf brothers, Hashim and 'Abd Shams, were in
tribes. The SIrah itself reveals how few Quraysh were effect sharing the same office 'Abd Shams ensured
engaged in actions against Muhammad. In the case of that supplies came to Mecca and Hashim saw to their
a hawtah, a sacred enclave, the tribes in its vicinity distribution. There is however no reason to assume
guarantee its security. If one of these tribes commits that 'Abd Shams was losing sharaf through this.
such an outrage as to infringe the inviolability of the
hawtah, its lord would call for support on the other THE PRE-ISLAMIC TRADING CYCLE

tribes who would make common cause against the

offender. It is only to be expected that the Haram's Protection of merchants is a matter of interest to
inviolability was protected on parallel lines. Looking Ibn al-Kalbi in his description of the seasonal pattern
for which tribes did act in this capacity, we might of the movement of commerce from the Gulf to the
consider the Ahabish, Ghatafan,32 Kinanah and people Yemen and the Hijaz.
of the Tihamah who supported Quraysh at al- Merchants of the sea, he says, proceeding from al-
Khandaq, several of which had hilf alliances with Shihr, with whom any goods remained or who had
Quraysh. These tribes were present also at SUq al- not been to markets on the way before it, would meet
'Ukaz. Ibn al-Habib, in fact, positively affirms that the people at Aden. Here obviously they could sell the
when Qusayy and Quraysh had taken Mecca, Quda'ah kundur-incense and myrrh they had bought in Hadra-
and Asad, who had supported them to do so, separated mawt. The merchants of the sea would take al-tab al-
from them; then Quraysh, diminished in number and ma'mul, manufactured perfume, to Sind and Hind
fearing Bakr, made an overture to the Ahabish who and the merchants of the land (tujjdr al-barr) would
responded and made an alliance with them. Further take it to Fars and al-Rum. (In 20th-century Aden
alliance pacts into which Quraysh entered include one al-barr always meant "the hinterland.") So, if Quraysh
with Thaqif (al-Munammaq, 280) involving free pas- merchants did come as far as Aden, they could pur-
sage in the Haram and Wadd Wajj/Wijj for both chase incense.
parties. There appears to be good evidence for the Cotton, saffron and dyes were taken to San'c' and
construction of a whole edifice of treaties around thethe merchants bought cloth (bazz) and iron. This
Haram, but this is not a subject to pursue here. Let looks accurate since GhuthaymT locks manufactured
me say, however, that this would resolve one point at Sa'dah are found all over western Arabia and cloth
that puzzles Dr. Crone-that Quraysh could go to is well attested. It is noteworthy that Ibn al-KalbT
war but retreat into the Haram into which their foes records that selling takes place by al-jass bi- '-yad
could not follow them. Quraysh might use these allied there, as it still does today, being termed al-hakT bi-'1-
tribes to fight their battles or even against one yad (our Sand'a, 269) "talking with the hand."
another-but a tribe at war with Quraysh, having The merchants then went on to 'Ukaz, where there
undertaken to respect the boundaries of the Haram, were no tithes ('ushar) or escort (khafarah); it is
would, in infringing on them, bring the Haram's other probable that khafdrah was usually granted in return
protectors down upon themselves. for a fee. The tribes who attended the CUkaz fair were
It is the tribes who protect a haram that render it Hawazin, Ghatafan, Khuza'ah, the Ahablsh, al-Harith
inviolate, not the haram that gives protection to those
domiciled in it. The haram of Buss, when its pro-
tectors, Ghatafan, were defeated, was desecrated and
33 Cf. M. J. Kister, "Mecca and the tribes of Arabia...,
in Studies in Islamic history and civilisation in honour of
32 Though Ghatafan were persuaded by the Band NadTr Professor
to David Ayalon, ed. M. Sharon (Jerusalem, 1986),
join with Meccan Quraysh on this occasion. 42 seq.

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 SERJEANT: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam 483
b. 'Abd Manat (of Kinanah b. Khuzaymah) ,4 cAdal
(of Khuzaymah, this last a batn of Quraysh) and
Mustaliq (of Khuza'ah). These tribes seem to have
been linked to Quraysh by kinship or treaty and, since
no taxes were imposed at cUkaz, they may have
guaranteed the security of the fair.
To clear up some of Dr. Crone's obfuscations,
deliberate or not, it is best to translate what Ibn
al-Kalbi says about the safe-conduct given to pilgrims
(Al-MarziiqT, al-Azminah, 11:236).
A man, when he went out of his house on pilgri-
mage, or as a ddjj, the ddjj being one who trades
during the sacred month, would take a sacrificial
beast and don the pilgrim garb (ahrama), then he
would garland himself and make himself known [per-
haps by shouting, "I am X, son of Y, of the tribe of
Z"]. So this would be a safe-conduct/security (aman)
for him with the muhilluin, those who do not recog-
nize the sacredness of the sacred month.
Traders accompanied the pilgrims, primarily intent on
buying and selling to them, but no doubt to take
advantage, in modern terms, of the barakah accruing
to the trader though combining the hajy with his
commerce.
If a trader-pilgrim (ddjj), being by himself, was
apprehensive about his safety, yet could find no
sacrificial beast, he would garland35 himself with a
necklace of goat or camel hair and make himself
known by a woolen thread (I read bi-suifat-in for bi-
suifi-hi) and through it be safe/secure. When he came
forth from Mecca he would garland himself with bark
(lihb') of the trees of the Haram. The ddjj, and others know that they had gone into a state of ihram and
as well, if he took himself to the Temple with no
[distinguishing] sign ('alam) of that and without the
muhrim-garb, the muhillin would take whatever he
had with him.
The text does not suggest that the Haram was
regarded as conferring inviolability upon the pilgrim.
Nor does the animal-hair badge or tree bark mean in
itself that the wearer is muhrim. One mark simply
means the wearer is going to Mecca and the other that
34 Kinanah b. Khuzaymah, of which Quraysh is a house, is
near Mecca.
35 Qallada, probably a better translation would be "hung
round his neck." "Garland" conveys the impression of cere-
monial or festivity that I think is hardly appropriate to the
context.
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he is leaving it. It is true that Tabari36 cites Qatadah
as saying the Quraysh were secure/safe among the
Arabs (aminTn fi I-5Arab), but this is in connection
with the "winter and summer journey" on which
Quraysh had entered into security pacts with the
tribes.
The woolen thread has a simple and often entirely
secular purpose. In 1940 the 'AwdhalT sultan demon-
strated to the political officer and me how he would
take a thread (of cotton) from his indigo-dyed waist-
wrapper to send to a tribesman to summon him to
appear before him. A mansab, I have been told,
would send a black-wool thread to a man to invite
him to visit the sanctuary-this he would wind round
his dagger hilt or scabbard. As the incomparable
Landberg37 has noted: "Le cheykh ou le seyyid donne
une frange de son radT a celui qui cherche sa protec-
tion." It is, he says, "un talisman pour la route." The
Prophet himself sent the black turban (cimdmah) with
which he entered Mecca as a gage of security (amdn)
to Safwan b. Umayyah. Similarly in Medina we find
the tribal naqzb 'Ubadah b. al-Sdmit's people were
known as al-Qawaqil because "when a man took
protection (istajdra) with them they gave him an
arrow and said: Qawqil38 bi- Yathrib haythu shi'ta,
'Move about in Yathrib where you wish'." In south
Arabia today a tribesman would give his jdr a bullet
to show he is under his protection.
Following up the employment of the dawm-palm
fruit and the bark of trees as a sort of badge of safe-
conduct, Dr. Crone (p. 183) tells us: "The inhabitants
of Yathrib would similarly decorate their turrets with
ropes and stalks of palm leaves when they wished to
make the 'umra and pilgrimage: everyone would
they would thus be granted free passage." On minor
details of language, kirndf, rendered as "stalks," are
the stumps or butts of the palm frond (Hadram1
karbah) remaining on the palm trunk when the saf
foliage has been removed, and utms are just the
ordinary Arab tower-house, not "turrets." One is to
understand that the palm butts were tied to the ropes
to act as a weight. But what the text actually does say
36 Jdmic (Cairo, 1954), XXX:309. The hirmr and his prop-
erty were not touched because of the security (amn) Allah
gave them.
3 Etudes sur les dialectes de l'Arabie meridionale, I: Hadra-
moiut (Leiden, 1901), 579, and III: DatLinah, 1787.
38 Sfrah, op. cit., 1:432; Guillaume, 727. In Zabid about
three years ago, I heard my driver use this unusual word
qawqal when asking another driver to move his vehicle.
484 Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.3 (1990)
is that Banii CAbd al-Ashhal of Aws went on pil-
grimage (ahramat) and 'Abdullah b. MacrUr of the
Banii Salimah of Khazraj would take their property
under his protection (ajafra la-hum amwdla-hum) after
tradition), the least of persons belonging to a tribe can
they had gone forth from Yathrib. He took this action
because his mother was of 'Abd al-Ashhal (al-
Munammaq, 327-28). There is not the slightest sug-
gestion that this had anything to do with a free
passage-it is simply that a tribesman took it upon
himself to look after their property in their absence.
Ibn al-HabTb (al-Muhabbar, 264) states that "every
merchant coming from the Yemen and the Hijaz used
to ask protection (yatakhaffara) from Quraysh while is for this reason that the applicant for protection is
they stayed in the land of Mudar because Mudar did
not molest merchants of Mudar nor did an ally (Qalif)
him as under the protection of the Lords of the
of Mudar trouble a Mudari." Dr. Crone does not
really grasp the situation when she proposes that this
was on grounds of kinship rather than because of the
special status of Quraysh. It is not to be imagined that
theoretical kinship in Mudar would eliminate its
constant feuding. Quraysh would have to have posi-
tive security agreements with the Mudar tribes to
ensure the passage unmolested of caravans-as of
course, the sources tell us, were made by Hashim, and
not only by him but by other members of the house of
Qusayy. Ibn Habib's merchants would have to apply
to Quraysh to join in, perhaps even to buy themselves
into the system.
What Ibn al-Kalbi has to say (supra, p. 483) of the
Muhilliun abstaining from attack upon a man dis-
playing the appropriate badge to indicate that he was
going on pilgrimage to the Meccan Haram, which
they did not consider inviolable, is highly significant.
It suggests to me that the Arabian tribes may have
observed a customary law or convention not to molest
bona fide pilgrims en route or returning from a
visitation to a site sacred to a deity. Whether the deity
was one's tribal god or not, it would be injudicious to
show lack of respect for the god.
Yet another of Dr. Crone's misconceptions (p. 196)
that turns a quite intelligible situation upside down is
that "settlers in Mecca owed their safety to alliances
with members of Quraysh, not to the supposed sanctity
of Meccan territory." Individuals or groups sought
protection of Quraysh as "Lords of the House" (Wullit
al-Bayt). Wulat she translates wrongly as "guardians"
which, quite rightly, she declares they were not!
Naturally the protection would be sought of an indi-
vidual possessed of sharaf, very likely somebody with
whom they had already established contact-not, of
course, from a committee! The Lords of the House (a
fairly wide term) had the authority to grant entry into
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the protection within the sacred enclave, the Haram,
of which they were in charge. Now, in Islamic law and
in tribal law (which belongs to the older pre-Islamic
grant protection on its behalf, be the granter even a
woman or a slave. The principle is embodied in the
Islamic formula: al-mu'minuin yad wa-hid 'ald man
siwa-hum, yu]Tr 'alay-him adna-hum. So, if one allies
himself with an individual of Quraysh for security, the
obligation to protect that person is binding on them
all. So an ally can automatically enjoy the safety of
the Haram against internal or external aggression. It
given an arrow to display to other Quraysh to identify
Haram. The Sunnah Jdmicah, documents F and H,
lays down the regulations for the Haram of Yathrib/
Madinah. These state that "[h]e who goes out (of the
Medinan Haram) is secure and he who stays is secure
in Madinah.""
Quraysh's special standing stems from the fact that
they were the Bayt of Kinanah. This is expressed in
the clich6,fT-him al-bayt wa- 'l-adad, in them lies the
House and the [greatest] number [of tribesmen or
supporters]. One speaks in south Arabia of bayt al-
'aqdlah, the house in which the hereditary chieftain-
ship lies. Ibn Hazm equates al-bayt with al-sharaf. As
Ibn Ishaq says, Qusayy acquired the entire sharaf of
Mecca, i.e., all the offices connected with the shrine;
thus he would have added to the prestige of Quraysh.
Ibn Hazm traces the tenure of the Bayt back to Fihr,
ancestor of Quraysh, and though there may be reserva-
tions about this, 'Abd Manaf and 'Abd al-Dar were
clearly of the Bayt of Quraysh.
* * * *
How an incorrect reading of the Arabic can trick
Dr. Crone into rash assertions is illustrated by her
statement (p. 165) that "it is by no means obvious that
Mecca did surrender [to Muhammad] peacefully." To
support this allegation she cites, from the STrah,
verses by 'Abbas b. Mirdas, the usual bombastic
stock-in-trade of the professional poetaster, not to be
taken strictly literally, which she renders: "We trampled
upon Mecca by force with our swords." The text
actually says: "Allah gave him [the Prophet] the power
over it, and the judgement of the swords and vic-
torious fortune humiliated it." But Ibn Mirdas's line
alludes not to Mecca but to the fHijdz, the "Hijaz" of
the previous line being indicated by the masculine
pronominal suffix. The academic debate of the lawyers
 SERJEANT: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam 485
at a later date on whether Mecca was taken by force
or sulh, truce, is irrelevant, not admissible as evidence.
Hassan b. Thabit's insulting invective against CAbd al-
Dar is of the same genre as Ibn Mirdas' verses and
contrasts with the granting by the Prophet to them of
the retention of the keys of the Ka'bah, which their
descendants hold to this day, and his policy of
"composing the hearts" of his erstwhile opponents of
the noble Quraysh houses.
Turning to the negotiations with Muhammad by
the tribal chiefs, the naqTbs, before the hijrah, Dr.
Crone (p. 217) alleges that Guillaume39 has mistrans-
lated the important statement that they made. It
should read: "We left our tribe (qawm), there being no
(other) tribe among whom there is such enmity and
war (sharr)40 as there is between them-and perhaps
Allah may unite them through you." Here we have the
situation where the Yathrib tribes invite a third party
to come in and settle their dispute, which a member of
the Quraysh Bayt, whose ancestor was known as the
"Uniter," was likely to be well qualified to do. But Dr.
Crone continues: "Ibn Ishlaq . .. first tells us that
Muhammad stepped into a political vacuum in Yathrib
and next that he snatched away authority from a well-
established ruler in Yathrib. Never had Yathrib been
so disunited, or else it had never been so united. The
contradiction is beyond harmonization." How can a
historian make such nonsense out of a straight-
forward situation? The story is quite clear, though Ibn
Ishaq marshals his information in a manner a little
disjointed.
Following the contest at Bucath, the- Aws and
Khazraj tribes wished to compose their differences
and arrive at a peaceful settlement. Ibn Ubayy of
Khazraj, about whose honor (sharaf) (not "authority"
as it is rendered by Guillaume and followed by Dr.
Crone), and therefore his eligibility, there was no
question, was rallied around by Aws and Khazraj.
With Ibn Ubayy was a shardf man of Aws. Ibn
Ubayy's tribe had strung some beads on a fillet4' to
39 Guillaume, 198; STrah, op. cit., 1:429.
40 Noeldeke, Delectus (Berlin, 1890), 87, for this sense of
sharr.
41 This form of investiture was customary in Arabia by the
time of the Namdrah inscription of the 4th century A.D.,
where Imru'u '1-Qays is dhii -'asr al-taj, and as recent at least
as the investiture of the cAwdhalT sultan Sdlih. b. Husayn42 Op. cit., 43. Similarly (p. 46) Guillaume speaks of Mecca
with the fatTlah of the Arab match-lock gun. Irfan Shahid,
as "a town blessed with water and trees" (balad-an dhd md'-
"Philological observations on the Namara inscription," Jour-
nal of Semitic Studies XXIV (1979): 33-34.
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wind round his head as a form of investiture, intend-
ing then to make him king, when the Prophet arrived,
and his tribe abandoned him for Islam. Ibn Ubayy is
called the sayyid of the people of Yathrib, i.e., their
chief; there must be reservations about the term
"king," which may possibly have meant something in
the nature of a paramount chief. Ibn Ubayy was
evidently not a "well-established ruler" as Dr. Crone
avers, but since he had held aloof from participating
in the Bu'ath fighting, he may have been regarded as
the most suitable chief available to try and establish
peace, and he certainly was a man of standing.
In the meantime, the naqrbs, of lesser rank than a
sayyid, had been secretly negotiating with Muhammad
in what was patently a conspiracy against Ibn Ubayy,
whom they took care not to inform of what they were
doing. Nine of the naqibs were of Khazraj and three
of Aws. Whether they were motivated by jealousies or
rivalry or not, they had a superior candidate for
office, not likely to be party to either tribe in their
quarrels, and, as well, having the over-riding prestige
of being a member of a holy house; so Ibn Ubayy had
to acquiesce. The only contradiction is that manu-
factured by Dr. Crone herself!
Astonished to find Mecca (p. 198) described in texts
quoted as evidence as having "lush vegetation"
(characterized as muctalij al-bathd', rendered as "a
plain with luxuriant herbage"), I consulted the Arabic.
Dr. Crone's references are to Wfistenfeld, but her
translations are taken from Guillaume42 who does
speak of the "verdant plain of al-Batha'." I have
warned (JRAS [1982]: 181) that though we use his
very readable translation, no reliance is to be placed
on it for serious work, because of the manifold errors
in his rendering. A batha' is "the bottom of a water-
course or a channel of a torrent producing plants and
herbage." Muctalij is strong, tall, tangled of herbage-
it can mean luxuriant in the sense of abundant. But
Jurhum, looking for pasture after a drought, found
i1dah, i.e., tangled thorny trees-the salam, samar
(gum acacia) and plants for pasture. In other words
the Mecca valley was a stony flood-bed with tangled
thorn trees/bushes growing along the line of it, a
common physical feature in Arabia in areas otherwise
barren. Mecca certainly did not have "an unusually
fertile environment." As for making sense that a
in wa-shajar-in) but a more accurate rendering would be "a
region having water and vegetation."
486 Journal of the American Oriental Society 110.3 (1990)

sanctuary town should be located in a fertile environ-
ment, this does not apply to Mecca.
* * * *
The final chapter, the "Rise of Islam," can only be
described as "maunderings"; what is new is untrue (or
irrelevant!) and what is true is not new.
Part 2 of the book leaves the general impression of
the author's confused reasoning, arising largely from
her methodology-if such chaos can be called method-
ology! Her technique, as said, is to throw together a
mass of data in order to produce seeming contradic-
tions (and of course there sometimes are contradic-
tions). But criticism of historical sources should aim
at eliciting from themr what is possible to accept as
evidence, not at manufacturing a case for destroying
them in toto. Dr. Crone makes little if any genuine
(might one say, sincere?) attempt at a critical assess-
ment of the relative historicity of the sources of which
she disposes. Citation of a multitude of references
should not blind one to her lack of a constructive
critical approach. She sets out to prove that the
commerce and sanctity of pre-Islamic Mecca are a
myth, thereby to outsmart those scholars who accept
that, given the known limitations of the sources, there
is a basis of "fact" to early Islamic historical tradition.
My own feeling is one of surprise at how often one
finds, when least expecting it, how consistent it is.
On the central theme of iyldf, Marsden Jones'"Al-
STra al-Nabawiyya"43 is overwhelming in the positive
evidence it provides for the existence of the iyldf
system, based upon a well-analyzed and critical survey
of the historical texts. In the face of such evidence as
this, it is simply perverse and absurd to attempt to
argue the Meccan sanctuary out of any significance
prior to the advent of Islam. The negation of these are
but two of the many unconvincing contentions in the
book.
The impression of the author left by reading Dr.
Crone's work is that of a clever undergraduate at a
student debate, intent to win on the points at issue,
but neither over-careful in interpreting the historical
sources, nor with any scruples at twisting what has
already been said, to make it fit her argument. Her
book may gain her the publicity it is clearly designed
to do, but it will in no way advance our understanding
of early Islamic origins.
43' "Al-S ra al-Nabawiyya as a source for the economic
history of Western Arabia at the time of the rise of Islam," in
Studies in the history of Arabia, Proceedings of the First
International Symposium on Studies in the History of
Arabia, 23rd-28th April, 1977, Department of History,
Faculty of Arts, University of Riyadh (Riyadh, 1399/1979),
15-23.

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