Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam by Patricia Crone

Author:Patricia Crone
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781597409865
Publisher: ACLS Humanities E-Book
Published: 2013-12-15T07:00:00+00:00

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WHAT MECCAN TRADE MAY HAVE BEEN

[Page 149]

What can we say about the nature of Meccan trade in positive terms? Clearly, it was a local tradevioreover, it was an Arab trade, that is to say, a trade conducted overwhelmingly with Arabs and generated by Arab rather than by foreign needs. But its precise nature is hard to pin down because of an overriding problem: how could a trade of this kind be combined with a trading centre in Mecca?

Meccan trade was a local trade in the sense that the commodities sold were of Arabian origin and destined for consumption in Arabia itself or immediately outside it. Some sources present the transactions of the Meccans as an export trade in return for which bullion was carried back, whereas others on the contrary describe it as an import trade for which bullion was carried to Syria.1 But whatever the exact role of bullion in their transactions, most accounts envisage the Meccans as having sold commodities in Syria and elsewhere with a view to carrying others back. We do not know what they sold in Ethiopia, except perhaps skins,2 nor do we know what they sold in the Yemen, except for donkeys. But Ethiopia can perhaps be discounted for purposes of Meccan (as opposed to Qurashī) trade; and though more information about Qurashī transactions in the Yemen would have been welcome, we do at least know that in Syria they sold hides, skins, leather goods of other kinds, clothing, perhaps also animals and clarified butter on occasion, as well as perfume. The commodities specified are in agreement with the modern observation that insofar as Arabia produces anything in excess of its domestic consumption, it is almost entirely due to the nomads and [Page 150] mountaineers.3 And what the Meccans carried back was also goods of the kind one would expect. From Syria and Egypt, we are told, they imported fine cloth and clothing,4 arms,5 grain,6 perhaps also oil,7 fruit8 and perfume on occasion.9 From the Yemen they likewise obtained fine cloth and clothing,10 as well as slaves, ult imately from Ethiopia,11 “Indian swords,”12 possibly foodstuffs,13 and certainly the perfume that they would occasionally sell even abroad. What they bought in Ethiopia is unknown14 and will again have to be discounted from the point of view of Meccan trade. But such information as we have leaves no doubt that their imports were the necessities and petty luxuries that the inhabitants of Arabia have always had to procure from the fringes of the Fertile Crescent and elsewhere, not the luxury goods with which Lammens [Page 151] would have them equip themselves abroad.15 The Meccans, in short, are presented as having exchanged pastoralist products for those of the settled agriculturalists within their reach, an activity also engaged in by the inhabitants of nineteenth-century Hā’il. The settlers of Ibn Rashīd’s realm, according to Musil, would send at least four great caravans a year to Iraq. They would hire baggage camels from the Bedouin and load them with wool, goats’ hair, camels’ hair, clarified butter, camel fat, camel saddles, and so forth.

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