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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
Ancient Nabatean tomb, Madain Salih
Courtesy Saudi Arabian Information Office
The Saudis, and many other Arabs and Muslims as well, trace
much of their heritage to the birth of the Prophet Muhammad in
570 A.D. The time before Islam is generally referred to as "the
time of ignorance"; this probably reflects the fact that God had
not yet sent the Arabs a prophet.
Muhammad was born in Mecca at a time when the city was
establishing itself as a trading center. For the residents of
Mecca, tribal connections were still the most important part of
the social structure. Muhammad was born into the Quraysh, which
had become the leading tribe in the city because of its
involvement with water rights for the pilgrimage. By the time of
Muhammad, the Quraysh had become active traders as well, having
established alliances with tribes all over the peninsula. These
alliances permitted the Quraysh to send their caravans to Yemen
and Syria. Accordingly, the Quraysh represented in many ways the
facilitators and power brokers for the new status quo in Arabian
society.
Tribes consisted of clans that had various branches and
families, and Muhammad came from a respectable clan, the sons of
Hashim, but from a weak family situation. Muhammad's father Abd
Allah had died before his son was born, leaving the Prophet
without a close protector. The Prophet was fortunate, however,
that his uncle Abu Talib was one of the leaders of the Hashimite
clan. This gave Muhammad a certain amount of protection when he
began to preach in 610 against the Meccan leadership.
Everything we know about Muhammad's life comes from Muslim
historiography. The Prophet worked for Abu Talib in the caravan
business, giving him the opportunity to travel beyond Arabia.
Travel gave the Prophet contact with some of the Christian and
Jewish communities that existed in Arabia; in this way he became
familiar with the notion of scripture and the belief in one god.
Despite this contact, tradition specifies that Muhammad never
learned to read or write. As a child, however, he was sent to the
desert for five years to learn the beduin ways that were slowly
being forgotten in Mecca.
Muhammad married a rich widow when he was twenty-five years
old; although he managed her affairs, he would occasionally go
off by himself into the mountains that surrounded Mecca. On one
of these occasions, Muslim belief holds that the angel Gabriel
appeared to Muhammad and told him to recite aloud. When Muhammad
asked what he should say, the angel recited for him verses that
would later constitute part of the Quran, which means literally
"the recitation." Muslims believe that Muhammad continued to
receive revelations from God throughout his life, sometimes
through the angel Gabriel and at other times in dreams and
visions directly from God.
For a while, Muhammad told only his wife about his
experiences, but in 613 he acknowledged them openly and began to
promote a new social and spiritual order that would be based on
them. Muhammad's message was disturbing to many of the Quraysh
for several reasons. The Prophet attacked traditional Arab
customs that permitted lax marriage arrangements and the killing
of unwanted offspring. More significant, however, was the
Prophet's claim that there was only one God, because in
condemning the worship of idols he threatened the pilgrimage
traffic from which the Quraysh profited.
By 618 Muhammad had gained enough followers to worry the
city's leaders. The Quraysh hesitated to harm the Prophet because
he was protected by his uncle, but they attacked those of his
followers who did not have powerful family connections. To
protect these supporters, Muhammad sent them to Ethiopia, where
they were taken in by the Christian king who saw a connection
between the Prophet's ideas and those of his own religion.
Following his uncle's death in 619, however, Muhammad felt
obliged to leave Mecca. In 622 he secretly left the city and
traveled about 320 kilometers north to the town of Yathrib. In
leaving Mecca, Muhammad chose to abandon the city where he had
grown up to pursue his mission in another place; thus, the event
often has been used to illustrate a genuine commitment to duty
and sacrifice. This emigration or hijra marks the beginning of
the Islamic calendar. Muslims use a lunar calendar, which means
that their twelve-month year is shorter than a solar one.
The Quraysh were unwilling to leave Muhammad in Yathrib, and
various skirmishes and battles occurred, with each side trying to
enlist the tribes of the peninsula in its campaigns. Muhammad
eventually prevailed and in 630 he returned to Mecca, where he
was accepted without resistance. Subsequently he moved south to
strongholds in At Taif and Khaybar, which surrendered to him
after lengthy sieges.
By his death in 632, Muhammad enjoyed the loyalty of almost
all of Arabia. The peninsula's tribes had tied themselves to the
Prophet with various treaties but had not necessarily become
Muslim. The Prophet expected others, particularly pagans, to
submit but allowed Christians and Jews to keep their faith
provided they paid a special tax as penalty for not submitting to
Islam.
After the Prophet's death, most Muslims acknowledged the
authority of Abu Bakr (died in 634), an early convert and
respected elder in the community. Abu Bakr maintained the loyalty
of the Arab tribes by force, and in the battles that followed the
Prophet's death--which came to be known as the apostasy wars--it
became essentially impossible for an Arab tribesman to retain
traditional religious practices. Arabs who had previously
converted to Judaism or Christianity were allowed to keep their
faith, but those who followed the old polytheistic practices were
forced to become Muslims. In this way Islam became the religion
of most Arabs.
The Prophet had no spiritual successor inasmuch as God's
revelation (the Quran) was given only to Muhammad. There were,
however, successors to the Prophet's temporal authority, and
these were called caliphs (successors or vice regents). Caliphs
ruled the Islamic world until 1258 when the last caliph and all
his heirs were killed by the Mongols. For the first thirty years,
caliphs managed the growing Islamic empire from Yathrib, which
had been renamed Madinat an Nabi ("the city of the Prophet") or
Al Madinah al Munawwarah ("the illuminated city"). This is
usually shortened simply to Medina--"the city."
Within a short time, the caliphs had conquered a large
empire. With the conclusion of the apostasy wars, the Arab tribes
united behind Islam and channeled their energies against the
Roman and Persian empires. Arab-led armies pushed quickly through
both of these empires and established Arab control from what is
now Spain to Pakistan.
The achievements of Islam were great and various, but after
656 these achievements ceased to be controlled from Arabia. After
the third caliph, Uthman, was assassinated in 656, the Muslim
world was split, and the fourth caliph, Ali (murdered in 660)
spent much of his time in Iraq. After Ali, the Umayyads
established a hereditary line of caliphs in Damascus. The
Umayyads were overthrown in 750 by the Abbasids, who ruled from
Baghdad. By the latter part of the seventh century the political
importance of Arabia in the Islamic world had declined.
Data as of December 1992
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