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Chapter 13: The Expansive Realm of Islam
Eyewitness: Season of the Mecca Pilgrimage
Muslims are people who accept the Islamic faith, who have “submitted” to the
rule and will of Allah. In the last month of the Islamic lunar calendar each year, many
make the hajj, or holy pilgrimage to Mecca, which is the native city of Islam’s prophet,
Muhammad. This tradition had, by the eighth century C.E., become a significant annual
event as the dar al-Islam, or lands under Islamic rule, stood as one of the political and
economic anchors of the postclassical world.
THE PROPHET AND HIS WORLD
1. Islam reflected the social and cultural conditions of the desert-dominated land
where it first appeared – the Arabian peninsula, where nomadic Bedouins (herders of
sheep, goats and camels) relied heavily on the kinship networks of their extended families
for survival.
2. Arabia began playing, after the third century C.E., an increasingly important
role in linking trade from China and India in the east to Persia and Byzantium in the west
because as classical empires weakened, merchants started abandoning overland trade
routes across central Asia in favor of the sea lanes on either side of the Arabian
peninsula, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
Muhammad and His Message
 Muhammad’s Early Life
3. The prophet Muhammad was born around 570 C.E. to a family of merchants,
overcoming a difficult early life to find a degree of prominence by 25 after marrying a
wealthy widow named Khadija.
4. Muhammad was a merchant in Arabian society, where he interacted with large
communities of Jewish merchants and Christian Arabs, as well as the majority population
who were polytheists, believing in demons and nature spirits.
 Muhammad’s Spiritual Transformation
5. Muhammad experienced visions he took to be messages from the angel
Gabriel, who Jews and Christians recognized as a special messenger of God, telling him
to explain to others that Allah (“God”) disapproved of idolatry and the recognition of
other gods and would soon bring judgment on the world, thus launching by 620 a new
religion that shared common beliefs with Jews and Christians.
 The Quran
6. The definitive authority for Islamic doctrine and social organization is the
Quran, the religion’s holy book that was written in the 650s by Muhammad’s followers,
reflecting through magnificent poetry the prophet’s understanding of Allah and his
message to the world.
7. The hadith is the most important secondary source of religious and moral
guidance for Muslims, compiling (in several collections written between the 800s and
1000s) Muhammad’s sayings and actions, which Muslim scholars have used for guidance
in interpreting the Quran.
Muhammad’s Migration to Medina
 Conflict at Mecca
8. Mecca’s wealthy ruling elites felt threatened and insulted by Muhammad’s
teachings that polytheism was wrong and Allah would punish greed as morally wicked.
9. Mecca profited by its many shrines to deities, such as the cube-shaped Ka’ba,
which attracted merchants and pilgrims from far and wide, so the ruling elites began
persecuting Muhammad for his condemnation of the city’s promotion of idolatry.
 The Hijra
10. Muhammad fled this persecution in 622, moving to Medina (“the city of the
prophet”) in what is now referred to as the hijra (“migration”), the starting point of the
official Islamic calendar.
 The Umma
11. Muhammad organized his followers as the umma (“community of the
faithful”), guiding them in spiritual affairs as well as providing them with legal and social
codes (such as almsgiving, or providing aid to widows, orphans and the poor), and
leading them in battle against enemies or on raids against caravans from Mecca.
 The “Seal of the Prophets”
12. In Medina, Muhammad began consciously viewing himself as the “seal of the
prophets” – the final prophet, after Judaic and Christian prophets such as Abraham,
Moses and Jesus, entrusted with Allah’s complete revelation.
The Establishment of Islam in Arabia
 Muhammad’s Return to Mecca
13. Muhammad and his army of followers attacked Mecca in 630, forcing the
elites to convert to Islam and imposing a government dedicated to Allah, while
destroying all the city’s shrines (except for the Ka’ba) and replacing them with mosques,
where Muslims gathered for prayers.
14. Muhammad denied that the Ka’ba was the home of a deity and instead
viewed it as a symbol of Mecca’s greatness, leading the first Islamic pilgrimage (or hajj)
to it in 632, shortly before his death, by which time his followers had conquered most of
Arabia.
 The Five Pillars of Islam
15. The core values Muslims must follow are a set of obligations known as the
Five Pillars of Islam, which include 1) declaring faith in Allah as the only god and
Muhammad as his prophet, 2) praying to Allah daily while facing Mecca, 3) fasting from
sunup to sundown during the holy month of Ramadan, 4) giving alms to the poor, and 5)
making the hajj to Mecca once in life if physically and financially capable.
 Jihad
16. Some Muslims believe an additional obligation is jihad (“struggle”), which is
variously understood to mean a spiritual fight against vice and evil, or a fight against
ignorance and unbelief in the word of Islam, or a holy war against unbelievers who
threaten Islam.
 Islamic Law: The Sharia
17. The sharia, or Islamic holy law, was codified by jurists and legal scholars in
the centuries after Muhammad’s death, prescribing precise guidance on a diverse set of
matters (from crime and family issues like marriage and inheritance, to business practices
and political authority in the dar al-Islam), making Islam not just a religious doctrine but
a complete way of life.