tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post5932724171130925178..comments2024-03-26T14:19:33.332-07:00Comments on Bench Grass: Camels, Salt, and the Rise of Islam: Some Small Reflections on a Minor Controversy on Someone Else's BlogErik Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-61315242761745367042020-01-16T01:30:23.773-08:002020-01-16T01:30:23.773-08:00A late, late comment (ah, the joys of vanity googl...A late, late comment (ah, the joys of vanity googling ...).<br />This is all fascinating stuff, made more fascinating by the paucity of reliable evidence which leaves us free to specualte wildly. But my own wild speculation about a salt trade passing through Mecca was salt taken from inland rock or brine to the coast, not the other direction. Trading ports needed lots of salt to preserve fish and meat for ocean voyages (plus of course the salted food was a trade good itself). That's why all that salt from Timbuktu was carted to Mediterranean ports, f'rinstance.derrida deriderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01188777386180390172noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-82071589758853666242019-07-07T00:11:17.478-07:002019-07-07T00:11:17.478-07:00From memory, Jeddah is also the best place for a w...From memory, Jeddah is also the best place for a way-port on the Red Sea. Winds in the northern Red Sea are contrary, and the place infested with reefs. So sailors favoured unloading at ports on the Egyptian side and trans-shipping to the Nile (at Myos Hormos in classical times) rather than going north. The African shore is treacherous. Small ships need fresh water every few days - so Jeddah, as market, safest anchorage, water supply served all purposes. Mecca, in this view, would be as Athens to Piraeus or Rome to Ostia - inland enough to be safe from raids, high enough to be out of the malaria zone.Peter Thttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13289172253358199028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-55194748008630182932019-07-02T08:46:42.729-07:002019-07-02T08:46:42.729-07:00Can't say you're wrong. The whole notion ...Can't say you're wrong. The whole notion strikes me as a bit of a conspiracy theory, kept going more by wishful thinking than by anything else.Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-59452857810819367132019-07-02T07:17:52.607-07:002019-07-02T07:17:52.607-07:00I guess the Mecca problem remains interesting to s...I guess the Mecca problem remains interesting to some, but after realising that Crone wrote an entire monograph about Mecca's trade without bothering to inform herself about, you know, Mecca's <i>trade</i>, I've decided not to waste any more time plumbing the Hagarene rabbit hole. Erik Lundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-64035234470034833682019-07-02T03:05:14.807-07:002019-07-02T03:05:14.807-07:00Interesting to revisit this from an agronomically ...Interesting to revisit this from an agronomically informed perspective - thanks!<br /><br />I'm more familiar with the linguistic/philological side of this, in which the evidence appears equally unfavorable to the Hagarene thesis. <a href="https://archive.org/details/SeeingIslamAsOthersSawItASurveyAndEvaluationOfChristianJewishAndZoroastrianWritingsOnEarlyIslam/page/n251" rel="nofollow"><i>Seeing Islam as Others Saw It</i></a> gives some of the surviving non-Arab early sources on the Islamic conquests, including what appears to be a contemporary reference to "the Arabs of Muhammad" fighting a battle east of Gaza in 634, and a mention of the "Hagarenes" praying south towards the Kaaba by 688. There's a nice recent article (open-access) confirming that the written text of the Qur'an can hardly be any later than the period of Uthman, as indicated by the traditional accounts: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bulletin-of-the-school-of-oriental-and-african-studies/article/grace-of-god-as-evidence-for-a-written-uthmanic-archetype-the-importance-of-shared-orthographic-idiosyncrasies/23C45AC7BC649A5228E0DA6F6BA15C06" rel="nofollow">“The Grace of God” as evidence for a written Uthmanic archetype: the importance of shared orthographic idiosyncrasies</a>. For the Mecca discussion, however, this confirmation is perhaps of limited relevance, as the town is mentioned by name <a href="http://corpus.quran.com/concept.jsp?id=makkah" rel="nofollow">only once</a> in the Qur'an. Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.com