Arabia in the beginning

The Arab language and Islam as we know it today both began in the Arabian Peninsula. So what did the Greeks know about this area before both spread far from it? Herodotus and Pliny knew of what was called Arabia Felix in Latin (beautiful or fertile/productive Arabia) - a place now occupied by the southern Arabian states of Yemen and Oman. This southern Arabian area experienced high rainfall (it still does) and significant civilisation, using a language and script related to the Arabic used further north, well before the time of Muhammad (indeed well before the Common Era there were significant civilisations there). Frankincense and Myrrh were grown there. Dates and coffee were endemic there and/or nearby. Pearls were also dived for off the southern and eastern seaboards of Arabia (up to around Bahrain in the East) from early times. Arabia was also situated on major sea routes (and land routes) linking great trading civilisations from China, South East Asia and India to Africa, Babylon, Persia and the Mediterranean.

Arabia was thought of as being something of an island bordered by the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Jordan River, the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the Arabian (or Persian) Gulf, hence the news network Al Jazeera (the island).

Arabs well knew how to navigate about this island (pictured above) and beyond. They had occupied the Sinai and Eastern desert regions of Egypt as well as northern Iraq (also called by them al-Jazeera) and Syria and southern Turkey since before the time of Muhammad.

The Bab al-Mandab strait that separates Yemen from Djibouti has a width of about 30 kilometres and it is also dissected by islands thus permitting communion between Arabian and African flora and fauna (including humans) for millennia.

Arabia figures significantly in the culture of the region. There are traditions that both the Apostles (albeit briefly on the day of Pentecost as they spoke in many ‘tongues’) and Cleopatra spoke Arabic.

All in all, Arabia was well placed, once sea routes and land routes (after the Arabs domesticated the camel) became relatively easy, to participate centrally (certainly geographically) in the major Old world trading system and the traders also brought their ideas (and religious beliefs) to Arabia.

Makkah (Mecca), at-Taif, Yathrib (which became Medina) all in the Hijaz (and the Hijaz generally) were the most immediate settings of early Islam so here's a brief overview of this specific part of the Arabian Peninsula:

The Western seaboard of the Arabian Peninsula was watered by rivers, springs and rain which permitted a degree of fertility and trade routes naturally therefore passed through it, of all possibilities in the otherwise somewhat desiccated central part of Arabia, given the position of Arabia on the larger trade routes mentioned above. The name al-Hijaz (the barrier) refers also to the mountain range in western Arabia that somewhat separates the Hijaz region from the rest of Arabia (and prevents rain-laden clouds penetrating to the interior of the Peninsula).

Petra is in this mountain range further north and it also extends south to Yemen where it becomes a more formidable barrier certainly in terms of height. It includes Dedan (north of Medina) - an early major town of the region mentioned in Ezekiel 38:13, Sheba to the south in modern day Yemen and Tarshish (believed to be Tarsus in southern Asia Minor to the north).

The Arabian Peninsula contained settled areas but also the shifting homes of the domesticators of the camel vital for the caravan trade that passed through the Hijaz, the Bedouin tribes.

Mecca, where Muhammad spent much of his youth, was not a typical oasis town of the west of Arabia as it was in a mountainous setting but it possessed a powerful spring with a tradition of being miraculous and traditionally associated with the family of Abraham. By Muhammad’s (the alleged final Prophet of Islam’s) time it was therefore a thriving commercial town, pilgrimage centre and caravan hub under the protection of and in compliant awe of its Gods. I will write more about its religions in later posts.