Mecca was never on any Trade Route - Surprised?

In the 20th century Muslims scholars, along with Western Orientalists had a problem explaining how Mecca got its wealth, since it is in such an arid place, and off the 'beaten tract' from everywhere important. How could such a backward city become important and then be the basis for the subsequent Islamic Empires of the Umayyads and the Abbasids?

This dilemma was supposedly solved by Dr Montgomery Watt, a Christian Clergyman, who was also a well known Orientalist Scholar.

He suggested that due to the wars between the Sassanian (Persian) and the Byzantine (Christian) empires in the 5th - 7th centuries, the trade route which normally went through the Persian Gulf was shut down, and had to be redirected south, across the Arabian Sea, to the city of Aden (in what is today Yemen), where the goods were taken off the ships and were transported overland by camels 1250 miles up via the Western Plateau of Arabia to Gaza in the north.

This was a real coup for Watt who was feted with finally solving the problem of Mecca's importance, since he suggested that Mecca controlled that trade, and that is where the city made its wealth, and thus could be the basis for the subsequent Muslim empires.

At then end of the last century, Dr Patricia Crone, a leading scholar on the Middle East, looked at a map and immediately saw problems with this theory, which no one seemed to have noticed before.

To begin with, Mecca, she said, was not situated correctly to be on a trade route which followed the Western plateau, because it sits to the west of the plateau, and in fact over 1,000 meters below the plateau. In order for the camel caravans to pass through Mecca, they would have to leave the plateau at Taif, and head down 1,000 meters to Mecca, which was barren, with very little water, and thus could not have accommodated caravans of large herds of camels.

What's more they would then have to go back up over 1,000 meters to get up to Yathrib, which was also on the plateau. Why would caravans come down off the plateau to a city which could not have accommodated their camels, knowing that they would then have to climb back up the 1,000 meters to get to Yathrib?

But more troubling was the suggestion by Watt that having already crossed the Arabian Sea on boat, they would then take off all their goods at Aden, and then head up the Arabian peninsula, to Gaza, which was over 1250 miles away.

Why, Crone asked, didn't they just continue to keep the goods on the ships and float freely up the Red Sea? She found that taking a ton of goods only 50 miles by land would cost the same amount as taking that same ton of goods 1250 miles by Sea! It would have been prohibitively expensive to take their goods by land.

So, she decided to check out her theory. She could read and write 15 archaic languages, and so was able to go to the original documents from that era, and from those countries; and she found that all of the trade, from the 2nd century onward was all maritime (by Sea); that none of it went by land, and that there were no Arabs who controlled the sea trade. It was the Adalusians, from Eritrea, in Africa whose names were on the trading documents, and no Arab names, proving that the trade had more to do with Africa than Arabia.

In one fell swoop, she had debunked Dr Watt's trade Route theory, proving that Mecca had nothing to do with the trade at all.

So, then how did Mecca become famous and important and rich? Well, it never was, at least not in the 7th century or before. Mecca only became powerful and important once Islam was taken over by the Abbasids, who made it the center for their sanctuary, thus, after 749 AD, but that is over 100 years after Muhammad supposedly lived there, proving once again that Mecca was never in existence during Muhammad's lifetime, nor during the century in which he lived.

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2021
(45,560) Music: 'happy child', by Aleksound, from Filmmusic-io

[seasonedapologist]

Always a privilege to have you on Dr. Jay. 🙂

[trinitymatrix]

Once u start to question and scrutinize islam, it completely falls apart like cardboard boxes

[unipod]

The trouble with the truth is it interferes with the narrative.

[fatboyslim]

Keep them coming and we'll be watching!

[Vankatraman]

It is true that Mecca was not on trade route. Bagdad or mesopotemia were connected by trade route. It is common knowledge that traders are shrewed people . They would always choose smart route . Hence you are correct .

[BasedYeeter]

The standard narrative does indeed have holes in it. This is making me think and rethink everything I knew about it

[josephrobi]

Thanks for educating us about that mad man and twisted teaching of Islam

[Zebred]

From at least the second millenium B.C. the Egyptians did trade down the Red Sea to Punt and points south. No mention of any place called Mecca.

[rroyr]

Great stuff Jay, thanks again for the refresher!!! God Bless you Jay Smith and your ministry! The Evangelical.

[rockcrusade]

Sir this is awesome. You are the teacher. Please keep explaining like this with presentations. God blesse you.

[_John_P]

Deconstructing Islam one jab at a time.

[lindaclark]

Mecca- if you build it, they will come. The Sauds have cashed in on building Mecca.

[wildernessofzinn]

The good ones like Patricia Crone always leave us too early. We sure have Soros and Pelosi though. They're immortal.

[Piccodon]

There should be a neat line of caravan serais every 40 miles or so, as camels cannot go very far without food, water and rest.
The only thing I could think of stopping ships going up the red sea would be pirates.

[dadsonworldwide]

You all are and have done such great work i thank you for enlightening those that inquire truth and for how it pressures the hard heads in the west and around the world to fairly and rigorously critique history. If it just forces western acedemia to start teaching truth rather than to hate our ancestry

Arabs sailed to what is now Kerala, one of the world's oldest mosques is in Kerala, features in Gibson's work too.

[MAX-twqz]

All this knowledge and yet the greatest lie ever told remains as potent, venomous and toxic as ever.
Inexcusable human ignorance, utterly inexcusable.

[lahleholivia]

What they dont appear to understand is these conclusions are made from islamic writings.

[kaneinkansas]

Jay, what your ten year old son doesn’t realize is that the prevailing winds over the Red Sea come out of the north 12 months of the year from just above Jeddah to the Mediterranean Sea. For 6 months of the year (summer time) they come out of the South but only as far a Jeddah. So trade would go by water as far as Jedda then it would have to move inland. Mecca lies on the route from Jeddah up to the north-south route that travels along the high ridge and it had a well for water. During the winter the prevailing wind comes out of the north for the entire length of the Red Sea making it difficult to take the water route north at all, so then trade would go by land (facilitated by cooler te pastures, no doubt).

Also your son wouldn’t realize that the Red Sea, then as now, was subject to piracy. The reason for traveling overland is the territories are controlled by Bedouin tribes. For trade to take place, the organizer of the trade has to make deals with all of these tribes in order to get permission to pass thru those lands and use their wells along that route. Mecca got control of the North South trade because they were able to work out a kind of ersatz contractual relationship with these tribes to allow their caravans to pass through unmolested. The Kabah which was built into a real structure only in Mohammed’s youth, housed (was custodian) of each of these bedouin tribe’s idols (or tribal deities). The housing of those deities in the Kabah was then, in a pre-literate age, a symbol of a contract that existed with all between all of these different Bedouin tribes and the Meccans (or what functioned as the Mecca Chamber of Commerce). Further, by being pagan, the Meccans were neutral to both the Sassanians who controlled Yemen (conquered it from the Ethiopians) at the time of Mohammed, and neutral to the Byzantines who were Christian.

Mohammed’s preaching against paganism to visiting bedouins thus brought out hostility upon him by the Meccans who saw this as undermining the established arrangements necessary to control this lucrative trade. Now, it may very well be that Mecca was really Petra, but these other facts still hold. The Red Sea to this day has prevailing winds out of the North. Yemen was controled by Zoroastrian Persians and Palestine by Byzantine Christians. Interestingly, the Latine sail was invented in Arabia about the time of Mohammed, which would have permitted sailing against the prevailing wind up the Red Sea to the gulf of Aqaba.

[bmwcsi]

👉🐍It is narrated on the authority of Ibn 'Umar ('Abdullah b. 'Umar) that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) observed:
Verily Islam ☪️ started as something strange and it would again revert (to its old position) of being strange just as it started, and it would recede between the two mosques just as the serpent crawls back into its hole.🕌🐍🕌 Reference : Sahih Muslim 146