From sea to desert

Nomads, oases and towns

Social organisation and values

Mecca

The regional context

The Arabs refer to Arabia as an "island" (jazira), in the sense that it is a land which is cut off from others, an arid sub-continent separated from Africa and Asia by the sea and from the Mediterranean by the desert.

The Arabs turned this difficult terrain into a crossroads of international cultural and economic relations. They also made it a refuge, too dangerous for their adversaries - or their pursuers, after their armed raids - to penetrate.

All travel in and around the Arabian peninsula involves the risk of confronting the treacherous sand, stone or waves.

Three geographical sets lie side by side.

All along the Red Sea coast, the Hijaz forms a high barrier of mountains. To the south lies Arabia felix, the land of incense and perfume, which is watered by the monsoon. In the angle formed by these two axes lies the Najd, a plateau covered by sand dunes and stones.

In a land four times the size of France, water is rare. Such rivers as there are exist only fleetingly. Water holes and wells are precious and jealously guarded resources.

With the exception of the south, where the population has long been settled, Arabia is therefore more or less synonymous with desert, and it is the desert that shaped the way of life of the nomadic Bedouin (from badiya, or steppe). Their everyday life was characterised by frugality and sobriety, their diet was composed almost entirely of dairy products, a few raw vegetables, and occasionally meat. Above all, the Bedouin lifestyle meant travelling from one camp to another, and from pasture to meagre pasture, from oasis to oasis, in permanent motion dictated by a fragile equilibrium constantly threatened by drought.

The camel is a blessing for the nomad. It first appeared in Arabia in around the 14th century BC as a beast of burden, as a mount, in short a condition for survival. It provides wool, hides, meat, fuel (its dung), and in emergency conditions even drink (its blood and urine). Arabic literature sings the praises of this animal which is capable of covering 300 kilometres in a day and of carrying up to 300 kilogrammes.

On the edges of the desert and in the oases lived sedentarised communities whose relationships with the Bedouins was one of both obligation and consent. The former supplied the latter with dates, clothing and some manufactured objects, in exchange for livestock but above all for protection.

The nomads protected the oasis-dwellers against raids by other nomads, or rather defended the property of some while coveting the property of others. This contract also applied to caravans, unable to refuse either guides or escorts, which attracted the uncontrolled, poverty-stricken but proud nomadic tribes.

Out of necessity, the tribes carried out ghazws, or raids. In accordance with a code of honour, during such raids the Bedouin avoided wherever possible abducting women or children or killing, for which the right to vengeance was recognised. Raids were swift and precise, aimed at capturing livestock and portable goods - and at avoiding any drift towards all-out war.

Arab historiography has constantly pitted the faithfulness and good will of the sedentary communities against the opportunism of the Bedouin, their avidity, their lack of culture, or their reluctance to take risks when it comes to fighting.

The figure of the nomad, astride his camel or his horse, symbolised both total liberty and absolute poverty, and exaggerated pride in appearances and belonging. Aridity and aristocracy - twin factors which may clash but which can also act in unison in encouraging the values of honour and hospitality. At a later stage in history, the Koranic distinction between the people of the book (the zealous townspeople and villagers) and the people of the sword (the loot-hungry nomads) confirmed the difficulty of federating the nomads and silencing their tradition of dissidence and defiance.

Nonetheless, the sub-sets were materially and economically interdependent. If the settled communities were to disappear, the nomads - dependent on fixed installations, urban trade and a minimum of agricultural produce - would have disappeared with them. The Bedouin lorded it over the settled cultivators and merchants, but were unable to cow them entirely and still less to eliminate them.

In this society without police or written law, the fragile equilibrium between the different parties was governed by a system of values.

At this stage, individuals did not spontaneously consider themselves to be independent subjects ; community life was the basic condition for the existence of all. The mere word "tribe" can hardly encapsulate the subtlety of the various subdivisions and associations which existed in such a society.

The basic tribal group was made up of people claiming descent from a common ancestor. When they reached a certain size, such groups not infrequently subdivided on the basis of the same principle. The desert is not a favourable milieu for large groups ; on the other hand, it is necessary to be able to contract temporary alliances, as well as to keep track of disputes and affinities between the different groups. The (oral) record of genealogies, marriages and affiliations therefore became an instrument of strategy.

The tribe melded together the extended families which constituted its smallest units, uniting under the authority of one member the male descendents of the common ancestor and their families. The organisation of the extended family can be reduced to two principles : the patrilineal transmission of identity and the transmission of authority by male primogeniture. By custom, a paternal uncle had precedence over his brother within the family, while maternal uncles also had a special role in so far as they represent the male line on the mother's side.

Alliances rested on the most primordial of bonds, that of blood, and therefore on primogeniture and, by extension, marriage.

Germaine Tillion (The Republic of Cousins : women's oppression in Mediterranean society, London : Al Saqi Books, 1983) records that a wise old Moroccan man once told her that "men like to marry their paternal uncle's daughters, just as they prefer to eat meat from their own herds." These days, eating meat is quite unremarkable, but in this case the context was quite different : to give someone food was not simply to feed them, but to share sustenance, thereby proving that one could provide for one's family and others, in short it constituted proof of one's affluence and one's ability to entertain guests.

Hence, gravitating towards what is already known (one's roots, one's place of origin, one's relations) was a means of avoiding the dispersal of patrimony, a way of guaranteeing both safety and domestic pleasures.

The authority and prestige of each tribal chief was based on the principle of equality, so social cohesion had to be renewed constantly by means of largesse, affability or force. Some chiefs were wealthier than others, and were able to impose themselves as arbiters on their neighbours, their allies or their clients. However, a drought or a revolt was all it took to bring back the equality of poverty, and when this happened all alliances and allegiances were broken off. Tribal values, which tend to minimise violence, permit the redrawing of alliances.

When a tribe's power failed to match up to its pretentions, custom (sunna) would reassert itself. The sheikh (venerable one) and his council would be obliged not only to use all their cunning but to appeal to a sense of conformism towards the original codes : the most sensitive decisions were preferably taken on the basis of the broadest possible consensus (ijma') and of respect for the ancestors.

In his Mohammed (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), Maxime Rodinson demonstrates that the members of these various scattered tribes sought to conform to their own moral ideal, in which religion played no role at all.

The model man was doted with a high degree of muruwwa (or humanism, as Hichem Djaït defines the word). This was a quality taking in courage, endurance, fidelity to the group and to social obligations, generosity and hospitality. The sentiment which pushed the invidual to conform to this ideal was that of honour ('ird).

The logical conclusion to be drawn from such ideals, which served to organise social and personal life, was that the supreme value for Man was Man himself.

The clan was a matter of sensibility, of pride - pride in material well-being and pride in the ability to render wise and timely judgements. Violence was never far below the surface, and the only form of protection which remained when it broke through was blood law (a life for a life), vendetta or, to use the Arabic word, tha'r : any life which is taken must be avenged by the clan, which would otherwise be indelibly tainted with collective shame. The sense of honour and the sense of liberty are by no means unique to Arab society, but they do underlie the manner in which it works.

In this uneven social landscape, one particular tribe, which was more powerful than the others, controled Mecca by a combination of ruse and force. It exacted a tribute for guaranteeing safety for travellers and "peace" for neighbouring tribes. That tribe, which enjoyed many privileges, was called the Quraysh. One of its members (via a humble paternal lineage) was a certain Muhammad, who was to become the Prophet of Islam.

Originally, the city of Mecca was no more than a sedentarised tribe surrounded by its clients.

In a desert of some 300,000 km² where people were few and the living conditions perilous, it was well situated, lying around 80 km from the sea in a gorge running through a rocky mountain chain.

Because of its history as well as its geographical position, it had already made a name for itself as a centre of trade and as a sanctuary.

Having developed as a transit point for goods and a warehousing centre, Mecca had begun to organise its own caravans as of the end of the 6th century AD. These caravans crossed through the lands of a multitude of different tribes along the entire length of the old incense route - almost 2,000 km. This development seems to have been the underlying cause of a process of rapid social and economic change which some sections of the tribe were able to cope with, while others, having been more or less excluded from the caravan trade, were marginalised.

Urbanisation had already begun to change social customs. Property was more easily divided up, for example, while women became more isolated and enjoyed less freedom of movement.

Mecca was not only a well-protected and unavoidable stopping-off point for the caravan trade, it also offered a welcome respite for the weary traveller. Lying on the roads between Yemen and Palestine and between Ethiopia and the Persian Gulf, the city witnessed the passage of caravans loaded with such precious goods as spices, incense, silken cloth, precious wood, weapons, pearls, ivory and slaves. Such were the treasures on which Mecca speculated, arriving from as far afield as China, Sudan or India and dispatched on to the Mediterranean, where an avid market was to be found.

Imagine the feverish activity, the fortunes made and lost, and the networks of contacts and trading partners generated by such commerce.

However intense its commercial activity, Mecca was at the same time the site of equally fervent prayer.

Pre-Islamic Mecca was already a major religious centre and a sanctuary, where Jews rubbed shoulders with Christians, polytheists with Zoroastrians. To describe it as religiously pluralistic is almost an understatement. At that time, neither Christianity nor Judaism spoke with one voice : both monotheistic religions contained a host of sects, which measured themseves against each other, sometimes fighting, sometimes borrowing ideas here and there. The polytheists were just as active, and numerous cases of syncretism occured. Religious D-I-Y was the order of the day.

Hence, the varied religious and ethnic panorama and the generalised quest for the meaning of life incited the inhabitants of Mecca to compare and contrast the host of different answers on offer - and, if not entirely convinced by one particular answer, to adopt several of them.

A traveller who wished to make an offering could choose between more idols than there were days in the year - up to 400. Some idols bore a strange resemblence to the gods of ancient Greece and others to Persian divinities, but one particular goddess was known as Allat and another deity as Allah (literally God). At this stage, however, Allah did not enjoy any preeminent status, and was not even held to have any offspring.

Many of the rituals later codified in the Muslim pilgrimage belong to this period. The Kaaba, a square building of grey Meccan stone with the famous Black Stone (probably a meteorite) lodged in one corner, was already held to be a holy place, and then as now believers walked around it seven times, anti-clockwise.

Pre-Islamic Mecca was therefore a vast market place where both wordly goods and esoteric doctrines were exchanged. It was also a haven of peace where, once a year, a truce made material gain and religious debate of every conceivable type possible.

The only confrontations were between orators and poets, whose only weapon was their eloquence. Oratorical contests were an occasion for refining tribal propaganda : a poet would sing the praises of his clansmen in a rhyme chosen by his adversary, who would in turn seek to outdo him with a response combining lofty sentiments with even greater eloquence.

At the dawn of the of the 7th century AD, the Arabs were still just one small part of a shared universe. In their peninsula of steppe and sand, a variety of languages and customs co-existed. Beyond, change was gathering pace.

Within the sub-continent, tribal chiefs had their power-bases in oasis towns. Bedouin and sedentary communities were joined by unstable alliances. Christian, Jewish and pagan groups lived side by side and traded with one another. To the south-west, the ancient kingdom of Yemen lived off the memory of its lost power.

History was being made elsewhere, in the confrontation between the Byzantines and the Sassanids.

To the west, Byzantium had replaced Rome. The barbarian kings had divided Europe between them, from the British isles to northern Italy. The Eastern Empire held on to North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Anatolia and southern Italy. Although pagan beliefs persisted, Byzantium was, like its Emperor, Christian.

To the east, the Sassanids held sway over the lands which are today known as Iran and Iraq, together with part of central Asia. Their origins could be traced back to southern Iran, but their capital had moved to Ctesiphon in central Iraq. The subjects of the Sassanid Empire were made up of Nestorian Christians, Jews, Pagans, Manichaeans (named after the prophet Mani, who had sought to combine in one religion the teachings of all previous prophets). To bolster their power, the Sassanids attempted to revive the ancient Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism (also known as Mazdaism), which had both a formal doctrine and a clergy. According to the Zoroastrian world-view, the Earth was the scene of a battle between the forces of good and evil, watched over by a supreme God.

The great event came with the clash of these two civilisations. The fertile crescent (mainly Syria) was both the prize and the theatre of operations in a war which lasted, on and off, between 540 and 629 AD. The Sassanid armies even managed to seize Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria before they were repulsed in around 620.

In order to give a complete picture, two other politically organised societies should be mentioned.

Firstly, Ethiopia, where the dominant religion was Coptic Christianity. Secondly Yemen - as mentioned above, a civilisation in decline - where an eclectic mix of pagan beliefs had gradually given way to Jewish and Christian influences which had been brought to the kingdom by the caravan trade.