"Arabia without Spices": An Alternate Hypothesis Author(s): Gene W.

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"ArabiaWithout Spices": An Alternate Hypothesis

GENEW. HECK
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA

THE ISSUE OF "MAKKAN TRADE AND THE RISE OF ISLAM"

I. The Historiographic Challenge

1. The Methodological Confrontation More than fifteen years have passed since PatriciaCrone stunned the world of orientalism by positing dramaticallynew hypotheses regardingthe role of Makkahin sixth to seventh-century A.D. trans-Arabiantrade. Seeking to discern the economic dynamic of the early Islamic state, her thesis contended that both the composition and direction of HijaziNajdi tradein the era leading up to the rise of Islam were not as they have been commonly portrayed.Her presentationderived its strengthfrom its sophisticated scientific analyses of the prevalence of specific commodities, particularly"spices,"in contemporarytrade flows. Its core analysis centeredupon certaincritical commonalities between sixth to seventh-century Makkan imports and exports, and in its effort to make trade patternsfit, even speculated that the Qurashis' primary base of commercial operation was not where moder Makkahstands today. The essence of this theme was compellingly argued in part 2 of her
1987 work, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, which she titled: "Arabia Without Spices."

Crone's work has been aggressively attackedby various scholars in recent years-an assault that has focused, in particular,upon her employment of what is termed "negativeevidence argumentation": wit, the absence of source references to trade implies the actual to absence of trade.Such analytic techniques, of course, are not uncommon in medieval historiography,nor are they unique to Islamic scholarship.Six decades earlier,it will be recalled, it was a decline in referencesto eighth-centurytrans-Mediterranean commerce, documented in Westernecclesiastical sources, that producedthe Pirennethesis positing that an primarily Islamic tradeblockade had precipitatedWesternEurope's "DarkAges." That the results are similar should come as no surprise. Both argumentshave failed to persuadebecause each confrontsthe complex challenge of seeking to reconstructthe structure of any economy, medieval or modern, based on evaluating a market-basketof commodities cited in export trade. The examples found are often too sporadic to have serious economic consequences. Despite the fact that some seventy-five percentof its governmental revenues are generatedby oil production,for example, modern Saudi Arabic typically generates less than three percent of its gross domestic product formation from non-oil export earnings.In both moder and medieval contexts, then, using select tradedata as barometers of economic dynamism does not invariably yield accurate results. In Crone's case, they have producedquite controversialresults. Indeed, seldom have hypotheses predicatedupon an absence of commercial evidence invoked such intense scholarly scrutiny.R. B. Serjeant, in a 1990 article, for instance, describes her contentions as:
calculatedto attractpublicity by shocking Islamists throughthe strangetheories thatit advances on pre-IslamicMecca, novel theories to be sure, but founded upon misinterpretation, misunderstandingof sources, even at times incorrecttranslationsof Arabic.
1. R. B. Serjeant,"MeccanTradeand the Rise of Islam,"JAOS 111 (1990): 472.

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The acrimony has been longstanding. For while Crone and Serjeanthave polarized the Hijazi trade discussion, Watt,Wolf, Kister, Shaban, Simon, Peters, Donner, and Ibrahimand before them, Sprenger, Lammens, and sundry others-constructed the basic intellectual infrastructure upon which it is built.2 Much of the controversy centers on the continuing debate over the general reliability of the medieval Arabic sources as a foundation for sound economic analysis. Such a dialogue does enjoy a certain logic, since the topic is historical and original sources are a prime tool of the historian. The earliest classical sources are vulnerableto criticism since, founded on oral traditionsas capturedby often biased literary antiquarians, they are, by their very nature,anecdotal. As such, they can be useful in illustratingcertainincidents and trends,but unless taken in aggregate, as a basis for serious commercial history, in a non-pejorativesense, they are often little more than the early medieval equivalents of tabloid journalism. This is not itself a formal criticism, but rathera characteristiccommon to most chronicled medieval sources. While they can be useful in research, they must be recognized for what they are and treated accordingly. Both Crone and Serjeantconcede the challenge of attemptingto ascertainthe existence or non-existence of particulartypes of trade based on fragmentaryevidence.3 While the formercalls the early sources "of questionablehistorical value,"the latterdescribes them as "selective and the data that they record so fragmentarythat argumentfrom negative evidence has little value."4In the ongoing early Makkantrade debate, both contentions probably are correct. The problem is threefold. First, a prime reason that Crone and Serjeant Arab struggle in their argumentationis that they are trying to force early trans-peninsular commerce into something that it most likely was not: to wit, the overarchingeconomic raison d'etre of Makkah.Such an approach,however, is little more than the exercise of "recreating the elephant by feeling the dimensions of its trunk."For an ever-presentdanger of engaging in negative evidence argumentationusing limited trade data is that it can build toward conclusions that did not, in reality, obtain. invention Second, they are arguingfrom the shakyfoundationsof modernhistoriographic respecting sixth to seventh-centuryjHijazitransittrade. Crone and Serjeant,as well as F. E. Peters, properlytake issue with the conventional notion that the longstandingcommerce in basin during the early Christiancentuspices and other luxury goods to the Mediterranean ries had continued to the rise of Islam.5 This was an interpretation pioneeredby Lammens, popularized by Watt and Wolf, and promoted, to a certain degree, even by Donner. It has often been accompaniedby a notion that the success of contemporaryMakkah as a trade
2. See M. Watt, Muhammadat Makkah (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953); idem, Muhammadat Madinah (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956); M. Kister, "Makkah and Tamim: (Some Aspects of Their Relations)," JESHO 8 (1965): 117-63; idem, "Some Reports ConcerningMecca from Jahiliyya to Islam,"JESHO 15 (1972): 61-91; M. Shaban, Islamic History: A New Interpretation(London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971); F Donner, "Mecca's Food Supply and Muhammad'sBoycott," JESHO 20 (1977): 249-66; idem, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981); R. Simon, Meccan Trade and Islam: Problems of Origin and Structure(Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1989); F. E. Peters, "The Commerce of Mecca Before Islam,"in A Way Prepared: Essays on Islamic Culture in Honor of Richard Bayly Winder,ed. F Kazemi and R. D. McChesney (New York:New YorkUniv. Press, 1988); M. Ibrahim,Merchant Capital and Islam (Austin:Univ. of Texas Press, 1990); A. Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Muhammad(Berlin: Grosstenheils, 1869); H. Lammens, La Mecque a la Veille de l'Hegire (Beirut: ImprimerieCatholique, 1924). 3. See Serjeant,"MeccanTrade." 4. Crone, Meccan Tradeand the Rise of Islam (Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1987), 203; Serjeant,"Mec472. can Trade," 5. Crone, Meccan Trade,12ff.; Serjeant,"MeccanTrade," 474; Peters,Mecca: A LiteraryHistory of the Muslim Holy Land (Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1994), 30.

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emporiumwas highly instrumental, morally,economically, and socially, in the rise of Islam. Watt asserts: of had A.D.,they(IHijazi traders) gainedcontrol mostof thetrade By theendof the 6thcentury route fromYemen Syria-an important by whichtheWestgot Indian to luxury goodsas well as SouthArabian frankincense. had in Commercial disparities wealth,but also to a partial prosperity let not merelyto greater in of breakdown the systemof clansandtribeson whichthe security Makkah depended.... It is against socialandmoral beliefscurrent in this that background we mustlook at thereligious Makkah beforeMuhammad's call.6 immediately But even Watt, who has contributed two important works-Muhammad at Makkah and Muhammadat Medina-as cornerstonesfor these socioeconomic contentions, devotes but two brief paragraphsto the nature of this hypothesized trans-Hijaziluxury trade and just five others to the underlying indigenous industrialbase that would have made a more vibrantMakkah-centricregional trade economically viable.7 Though this traditionalnotion, as noted, has been rejected by Crone, Serjeant,and othto ers-at times, even attributingthe inherentmisinterpretations the ambiguity of the medieval Arabic sources themselves-such exegesis is no more than a "strawman"dialogue, as the sources never seriously claimed a trade in oriental luxury commodities coincident with the rise of Muhammad.Instead,they documenta more voluminous tradein lower unitvalue, indigenous West Arabian products-animals, leather, foodstuffs, cloth, perfumes, and similar consumer goods-a reality recognized by Sprenger,Kister, Simon, and Peters.8 Some of the regional import-exportventures in such commodities were, in reality, quite large, with commercial caravans consisting of as many as 1,500, 2,000, and even 2,500 transportcamels at the dawn of Islam, as cited in the sources.9 There are passim references to a sixth and seventh-centurytrade in luxury goods in the sources, to be sure. Ibn Sacdindicatesthatearly in his career,the ProphetMuhammadowned silk garmentsthat he subsequently abandonedas ostentatious.10Ibn Habib relates that the would-be Hijazi king 'Uthman b. Huwayrithal-Asadi al-Qurashicontracteda commercial b. pact to send spices to the Byzantines. Al-Isfahani contends that al-NuCman al-Mundhir importedsilk (harir) and othercloth from Aden to al-Hirah.1 Silk cloth also apparentlywas imported to the region to produce some other elegant clothing reported in the late preIslamic era. But overall, the urbancenters of the erstwhile Roman empire, whose requirementsfor orientalluxury goods had for centuriesbeen the lifeblood of trans-Arabian commerce, were
6. Watt,Muhammadat Makkah,3; idem, "Makkahas the Springboard the Call of Islam,"in Studies in the for History of Arabia: Arabia in the Age of the Prophet and the Four Caliphs (Riyadh:King Saud Univ., 1989), vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 23. 7. Watt,Muhammadat Makkah,3, 72-73; idem, "Makkahas the Springboard," E. Wolf, "The Social Or23; ganizationof Mecca and the Origins of Islam,"SouthwestJournal of Anthropology(1951): 334-36; Lammens,La Mecque; Donner, "Mecca's Food Supply,"240. 8. A. Sprenger,Das Leben und die Lehre, 2: 94ff.; Kister, "Makkahand Tamim,"116; Peters, Mecca: A Literary History, 33. 9. See al-Tabari,Ta'rikhal-Rusul wa al-Muliik,ed. M. de Goeje (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879-1901), 1: 271; alWaqidi, Kitab Maghazi Rasul Allah, ed. M. Jones (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), 1: 9-10, 12, 27, 198, 200; Ibn Kathir,Al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah (Riyadh:Maktabatal-Nasr, 1966), 2: 128. 10. Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqatal-Kubra,ed. E. Sachau (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1904-27), 1: 456-57. 11. On Yemeni to al-Hirahtrade,see al-Isfahani,Kitab al-Aghani (Cairo:Dar al-Kutubal-Misriyah,1927-74), 12: 57, 17: 319ff., 19: 75, 22: 57.

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now in economic chaos; and in the Hijaz itself, the demand for widespreadimportationof silk that had prevailed in earlier centuries has been explicitly explained by the compiler of historical traditions, al-Bukhari.With the rise of Islam, Muhammadbanned Muslim men from wearing silk.12 Hence, the striking silence of the sources on a more general sixth to seventh-centurytrans-Hijazitradein spices and other orientalgoods likely signaled exactly what was meant. That trade had died.13 Accordingly, Crone most probablyis correct when she asserts that: "Meccan trade was thus a trade generatedby Arab needs, not by the commercial appetitesof the surroundingempires,"yet she errs when she continues: "andit is as traders operating in Arabia rather than beyond its borders that the Meccans should be it seen."14 For, as will be demonstrated, is not what early Makkantradewas not, but what it was, that merits furtherscrutiny.Yet comprehendingits composition also requiresan understandingof the economic base from which it was derived. For what the sources do describe, as indicated,is a substantial,economically consequential,tradein fundamentalstaples:consumer and industrialgoods that the contemporary Hijaz unquestionablydid produce. Finally, the sketchy evidence from which orientalists debate is most often gleaned from the folklorist format the Arab chroniclers present. The early sources do not pretend to be detailed economic compendia. They are instead collections of human interest stories purporting to have, and generally enjoying, some basis in fact. But to attemptto portraythe economic vitality of the sixth to seventh-centuryHijazi based on the early Arabic sources alone, without ancillary evidence and more advanced analytic techniques, is tantamountto attemptingto reconstructthe economy of New Yorkstate based solely upon the archives of the New YorkPost. Prudent scholarship dictates that the trivialities in such details not be magnified. As Watt states of the traditionalaccounts, they are "not true in the realistic sense of the secular historian."15 Indeed, Crone herself acknowledges the futility of the undertakingusing "the methodology that currentlyprevails in the field."16 Though damning, however, the sheer franknessof such concessions nonetheless simultaneously suggests that perhaps a somewhat differentperspective and a different set of analytic tools are requiredto define more precisely the trade and industrialstructuresof the Hijaz at the rise of Islam. To these ends, seeking to reconcile the conflicting views, the analysis that follows augments the ongoing sixth to seventh-centuryMakkan"commercial structuresdialogue,"by synthesizing source documentationwith extant physical evidence. We then view the findings through the prism, and using the tools, of the modern business economist-in so doing, drawing analogies with the operationaldynamics of contemporary commerce that display similar characteristics.This can be a productive analytic approach. For, given the horizontally integrated free market economy that then prevailed in West Arabia, "modifiedupstreamdevelopment regression analysis"-i.e., tracing the commodities of trade back to their basic production processes, and in turn, further back to their 17 original resource inputs-can, in this instance, yield illuminating insights.
12. Al-Bukhari,Sah.h al-Bukhari(Istanbul:Al-Maktabahal-Islamiyah, 1979), 22: 30. 13. See Peters,Mecca: A LiteraryHistory, 30. 14. Ibn Habib, Kitab al-Muhabbar,ed. I. Lichtenstadter Da'iat al-Ma'arifal-'Uthmaniyah,1942), (Hyderabad: 171; Crone, Meccan Trade, 151. Again, note the parallels to Henri Pirenne,Muhammadand Charlemagne(London: Unwin University Books, 1974), 174, who states: "Itis a proven fact that the Musulmantradersdid not install themselves beyond the frontiersof Islam. If they did trade,they did so among themselves." 15. Watt,Muhammadat Makkah,33. 16. Crone,Meccan Trade,199. 17. Such an approachcan likewise be rationallysupportedin assessing the historic evolution of the Near East's Basin were sixth centuryA.D. For the economies of the early medieval Red Sea littoral and southernMediterranean

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2. The Issues in Question and the Tools Needed to Address Them That this inquiry seeks new methods-including archaeology, radiocarbon dating, industrial production and distribution analysis, and other modern scientific techniques-to capture more accurately the commerce and industry of early medieval West Arabia is no mere happenstance. Crone herself calls for better evaluative tools and evidence. To wit: "Without correctives from outside the Islamic tradition, such as papyri, archaeological evidence, and non-Muslim sources, we have little hope of reconstituting the original shapes of this early period."18 A review of her principal concerns, thus, is in order. For, given the vigor of the early Makkan trade dialogue precipitated by Crone through her critical source analysis, it is illuminating to examine the principal contentions of her thesis. Among them, she is baffled by certain bilateral trade transactions. A two-way exchange of certain cloths, agricultural foodstuffs, and animals between Syria and the Hijaz, for instance, is incongruous to her: "Once again, we see the Meccans engaged in the peculiar activity of exporting coal to Newcastle while at the same time importing it from there."19 In other words, if "Country X" were to produce a commodity and ship it to "Country Y," in Crone's view, then any evidence suggesting that "Country Y" shipped certain commodities within the same commercial categories back to "Country X" clearly must be flawed. Yet such two-way market flows abound in trade statistics, both historical and moder. This market reality is precisely why French restaurants are to be found in New York and there are "McDonald's" on the Champs-Elysees; this is also why Toyotas are common in the streets of Detroit and Fords grace the parking lots of Tokyo. It is not at all surprising, then, to find a diverse product mix circulating in the early medieval Hijaz. For Makkah, with its integrated network of seasonal markets, was legendary in its role as a key entrepot where competing goods from throughout the region were sold. Indeed, by its very nature, this is the entrepot's prime role: to serve as a commercial meeting ground. Consequently, analysis of the trading patterns of a major modern Mideast entrepot such as Dubai, based on anecdotal newspaper accounts of proximate, productive "fixed plant" industrial activity, would doubtless result in anomalies identical to those found by Crone in sixth and seventh-century West Arabia-portraying a caricature of this dynamic twenty-first century free port as a mere economic backwater in the course of EuroAfro-Asian commerce. Such, of course, is not the case. Because demand, price, quality, and consumer preference do invariably create their own trade patterns, it is not surprising that early medieval Busrans and Hijazis should have displayed mutual affinities for each others' clothing and
neither"static"systems, nor did they evolve in isolation, but instead were profoundlyimpactedby powerful synergies between them. Accordingly,while the unilateralimposition of moder economic theory upon early medieval economic models can admittedlynormallybe a somewhat risky proposition,in this case it can be justified-as the evolution of capitalistic institutions-such as the metamorphosisof the Islamic mudarabahand mukhatarah commercial and industrialinvestment contractsinto the Italian commenda and "mohatra," well as other analogous as business institutions and much medieval western commercial vocabulary-including carat(qirat), douane (diwan, customs office), magazines (makhazin,meaning "magazines"or "stores"),and tariff (ta'rifah)--derived from early Arabic antecedents.It can be effectively demonstrated,in fact, that no small measureof early Westerncapitalistic transactions(riba) to contempopractice-built by Muslim jurists to reconcile the Islamic ban on interest-bearing rary commercialexigencies-was subsequentlytransmittedto the West in the 9th to 1 th centuriesby Italianmerchants to directly circumventthe Holy Roman Empire's parallelban on "usury"duringEurope's Dark Ages. Thus, in comparingthe two "capitalisticmodels,"the analogy is not to one of "kind," ratherof in-kind "degree." but 18. Crone, Meccan Trade,230. 19. Ibid., 104, also 102, 107, 111.

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the foodstuffs; or that such products should have been exchanged in the contemporarymarkets of Makkahand its environs. Indeed, these are the very factors that cause Pakistanileisure suits to be sold in haberdasheriesin urbancenters of the West today. Second, Crone is vexed by certain quantificationconcerns; to wit, that certain episodes in the sources appearto be duplicates, "mirror images," of each other. Speaking of two reported early Muslim raids on northboundMakkan commercial caravans, for instance, she states: Thatthe storiesof theraidsat Qarada 'Is aredoublets obvious. bothstories,a Qurashi is In and is caravan loadedwith silver(coinedor uncoined) raided Muhammad's The silveris men. by ownedor guarded Safwanb. Umayyaor Abu Sufyanin the Qarada by story,by Safwanb. or in is in commander Zaydb. Haritha both. CIs, Umayya AbuSufyan thatabout andtheMuslim a It is hardto believethatthe samecommander twiceintercepted Meccancaravan loadedwith the samecommodity manned verymuchthe samepeople.20 and by Yet upon closer scrutiny,the possibility that these parallel stories actually are "doublets" is not as obvious as it may appear.Here, both the political and economic dynamics in play become noteworthy,making a qualitativereevaluationof the source evidence highly appropriate.From a militarystandpoint,this was an extremely active era. Al-Waqidi documentsat and least ninety-threemajorMuslim "ghazawdt" "saraya"in the firstHijridecade;while Ibn Sa'd cites eighty-five and al-Dhahabi seventy-two.21Within this ongoing series of armed militaryexpeditions andraids,moreover,thereis a frequentrecurrenceof common commodities, as well as of key individuals,the latterboth as force commandersand as caravanleaders. Given these realities, we may observe the following of this particular"doublet." Though the circumstancesare somewhat similar, the two confrontationsnonetheless appear at two separate,distinct, known sites, and occur three years apart. Nor is the claim that each caravan was carrying silver that was subsequently stolen a remarkablecoincidence. For as Ibn Ishaq claims, and as will be demonstratedbelow, the in prime role of precious metals in such caravanswas for use as "currency" bartertransactions for other commodities that actually were the prime targets of the multilateraltrade missions.22What the Muslims were plundering,then, was money-"investment capital"common to all caravans. This circumstance makes a different commodity mix, with the same precious metals-denominatedinvestment capital, probable for each individual caravan. It likewise explains why these caravans were carrying silver both to and from Syria, anotherphenomenon that concerns Crone.23 While Zayyid b. Harithahdoes serve as expedition leader in both the al-Qaradahand al'Is engagements, he likewise appearsin numerousothers, among them at least five cited by al-Dhahabi in A.H. 6 alone, the year of his raid at al-'Is.24 Such raids, it seems, ranked among his prime preoccupations. So the fact that he is cited in engagements at two sites, separatedin time by three years, may not be all that extraordinary. There is admittedly some confusion in the sources as to who actually was in charge of these two trade missions. Al-Dhahabi places Abu Sufyan as a member of the caravan ambushed at al-Qaradahand Abu al-'As b. al-Rabi' in that at al-'Is,25 as does Ibn Ishaq.26
20. Ibid., 90. 21. Al-Dhahabi,Ta'rikhal-Islam: al-Maghazi (Beirut:Dar al-Kitabal-'Arabi,1990), 809-15; al-Waqidi,Kitab al-Maghazi, vols. 1 and 2. 22. Ibn Ishaq, cited in Crone,Meccan Trade,90. 23. Ibid. 24. Al-Dhahabi, Ta'rikhal-Islam, 810. 25. Ibid., 154, 354. 26. Crone,Meccan Trade,87, 90.

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caravanand Al-Waqidi places Safwan b. Umayyah as a spokespersonwithin the al-Qaradah confirmsthe presence of Abu al-'As and CAbd Allah b. Abi al-Rabi'ahin the al-'Is caravan.27 Ibn Sa'd, in turn, places Safwan b. Umayyah and 'Abd Allah b. Abi Rabilah within the alQaradahcaravan and Safwan b. Umayyah and Abu al-'As within that at al-'Is.28Though there is undeniable overlap in the participationsreportedin these two events, that in itself does not necessarily render them apocryphal.For Qurashi caravans generally were quite large, at times comprising as many as 2,500 camels. Yet they consisted of finite numbersof participantswho habituallycarriedthe goods of others.Thus, it is not at all surprisingto find the names of certain principal merchantsrecurringin the narrationof various commercial events, nor of numerousother prominentmerchantssimilarly cited in the sources, among them al-Aswad b. al-Muttalib,his son Zam'ah, and Huwaytib b. CAbd al-'Uzza, in conjunction with trade missions in general and with these two in particular.29 It is no way implausible to conclude from the evidence, then, that Makkancaravansformally operated as ongoing, quasi-permanentfunctional units frequently containing many of the same key players-or that participationby a merchant,or group of merchants,in a given mission, such as at al-Qaradah,did not perforce preclude them from involvement in another,similar trademission three years later, such as at al-l's. Indeed, given the complex, integratedorganizationalcommercial structuresthen in place, it would be surprisingif this scenario were not the case. For such Makkancaravansserved in a key private sector transport role run by the same "shippingcompany"carryingthe goods of many people. In sum, though there are parallels in the dual accounts, it is not unequivocal that the primary source treatmentof these two raids is indeed a "doublet,"as Crone contends. In this instance, in fact, the odds are likely that it was not, as there is strong countervailing evidence that suggests two separate incidents. At the close of her book, however, she returns to this allegation of "recurringthemes" with more compelling evidence, detailing "miracle stories" attributedto the Prophet Muhammad.30Here, her claim may be more plausible, as it is more likely to find embellishment by devout followers in their descriptions of the accomplishmentsof someone whom they believe to be the "Seal of the Prophets" than in their more mundane accounts relating that Abu Sufyan customarily led commercial caravans, that the banu Sulaym mined gold, or that Caliph Mu'awiyah was a grower of grapes. Such realities are not ipso facto failures of scholarship,of course. They merely indicate that furtherexamination of the economic circumstances is required,underscoringthe cogency of Crone's call for more tangible non-documentaryevidence to augmentthe Islamic sources. The ultimate solution, though, lies not in geographicallytransformingthe Qurashis furtherto the north,as she also attempts,but instead in better comprehendingwhat the trade base really was. For it is not what the sources do not say that is important;it is what they do say. The evidence is finite, without doubt. But it can unquestionablybe restructuredto make more economic sense-recasting the industrial determinantsof the early medieval Hijaz into a new commercial model.
27. Al-Waqidi, Kitab al-Maghazi, 2: 553. 28. Ibid., 1: 36, 2: 354. 29. They were key members of a small cadre of contemporarywealthy merchantsengaged in international trade cited in the sources whose ranks included Abu Sufyan; 'Abd al-Rahmanb. CAwf; b. 'Uthmanb. CAmir Ka'b; al-Hakamb. 'Abi al-'As; al-'Abbasb. 'Abd al-Muttalib,al-Aswad b. al-Muttalib,his son Zam'ah, and his grandson Yazid b. Zam'ah; 'Abd Allah b. Jud'an;Harb b. Umayyah and his more famous son, AbuiSufyan Sakhr;Hisham b. Mughirah, his brotherWalid, and his sons Abu Jahl and al-Harith;Sa'id b. al-'As b. Umayyah; Qays b. 'Udi b. Sa'd; and 'Utbah b. Rabi'ahb. 'Abd Shams. 30. Meccan Trade,219-21.

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Such realities thus suggest that a more productiveanalytic course might be to commence by examiningwhatwe do know aboutthe Hijazi economic dynamicat the time of the Prophet Muhammad'sreligious ascendancy,synthesizingchronicledtestimonywith physical artifacts representingthe workings of early medieval industrialactivity residualin the region, in the searchfor alternatehypothesesto explain the role of tradein forging thatdynamic.The quest perforce begins with precious metals. II. The Preeminenceof Precious Metals As suggested above, Crone doubtless is correct when she, like Serjeant,Peters, and othtrade in "spices" and other ers, argues that the longstanding trans-Hijazi-Mediterranean luxury goods that characterizedthe early Christiancenturies had lost much of its vitality by the sixth centuryA.D.31 But her contention may be as importantfor what it doesn't claim as for what it does.32 For an effective examination of the incipient dynamism of the Qurashi Makkaneconomy probablyshould not initially target export trade at all. An analogy to the economic structureof modern Saudi Arabia is likely a more productiveinquiry. Early in the twentieth century,before the discovery of oil, an overwhelming proportion of Hijazi public revenues-upwards of ninety percent-was derived from providing for the needs of religious pilgrims-the identical retail trade that had sustained the Qurashisfourteen centuries before. Merchandiseexports then were modest, not unlike those recordedin much of the most recent (1993-2003) decade, wherein Saudi Arabia's non-oil goods and services export sales have fluctuatedbetween 1.32%and 2.88% of its annualgross domestic product (GDP) formation. Had modern trade economists sought to capturethe vigor of the modern Saudi Arabian economy based on these non-oil export figures-undeniably far more comprehensivein its coverage than mere fragmentarycommercial references contained in the medieval Arabic sources-they would have missed entirely the fact that the Kingdom, despite its reducedoil revenues, nonetheless has produced record real GDP creation in recent years. The reason: liquid minerals-petroleum and its derivatives-still constitute about seventy-five percent of the nation's aggregate annual budgetaryrevenues. The lesson: absent a concerted analytic focus on other key economic, commercial, and financial factors, measurementsof merchandiseand service exports are often no more an effective gauge of economic activity today than they are for the seventh century. But the comparison to modern Saudi Arabia in explaining the early medieval Qurashi economy does not end with raw export data. For Crone likewise asserts the quite striking claim thatpreciousmetals played no economically significantrole in the contemporary HIijazi commerce:"TheMeccans cannotbe said to have exportedgold and silver at all.... Meccan tradethus cannot be identifiedas a tradein gold."33 Peters take the argumentfurtherstill: Thereare,in fact,no external indications Meccawas prosperous thattherewasanycapthat or ital to invest.... The absence gold andsilvercoinsis perhaps of but somewhat startling, only because assume thecitylivedon a monetary we did that whichit almost certainly not. economy, And two conclusions in that themselves consequence: Meccawas not inimmediately present volvedin international trade.... andsecond,whatever business Quraysh the were,in fact,conit barter.... 34 to be, been,quiteliterally ducting, hadto perforce andappears haveactually
31. 32. 33. 34. On this, see Crone,Meccan Trade,"Introduction," IV part 474; Peters, Mecca: A LiteraryHistory, 29-31. Ibid., 51ff.; also Serjeant,"MeccanTrade," Crone, Meccan Trade,95. Peters, "The Commerce of Mecca," 6.

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Yet, as subsequent analysis will demonstrate,here both scholars can be challenged. For careful reading of the medieval Arab geographersleaves little doubt that at the rise of Islam, the analogue in seventh-centuryArabia's western province to its twenty-first century easternprovince's abundanceof liquid minerals was hard minerals-precious metals. Elsewhere, the prominentrole of indigenous Hijazi gold and silver mining in driving the operating dynamic of the early Islamic state has been amply documented. Their industrialand commercial contributionscannot be underestimated.For when they are factored into the contemporaryequation, a quite different economy emerges.35 Indeed, the combinationof source documentationand residual onsite physical evidence makes readily apparentthat one cannot begin to comprehendthe functioning of the early medieval Hijazi economy without firstperceiving the indispensablerole of precious metals. Mining created a variety of production,refining, and distributionjobs at over a thousand separate sites. Jewelry-makingfurther contributedto expansion of the local employment base. Gold, silver, copper, and iron were inputs in other industrial production. Precious metals were, moreover,the investment capital that underwrotethat production.Equally significantly, they lubricatedcommerce, serving as its currencybase for financing import acquisitions as well as "importsubstitution"indigenous industrialdevelopment. They were, in fact, capital looking for a place to happen. Yet, here a clarification of the role of precious metals in shaping trade is critical. For Crone may well be right, at least in part, when she asserts that the early Makkans did not export vast amountsof gold and silver; although,in an age of bulk bullion transactions,the linguistic distinction between gold "exported"in countertradefor other goods, and gold used as "currency" purchaseother goods, may not be commercially significant. For what to the foreign recipients of such metals ultimately did with such metals is not germane to the nature of the trade of the Hijazis. Makkan merchants undeniably did carry substantial quantities of bullion on their internationaltradingcaravans,whether for export or transactional purposes. Responding to Crone's specific concern that they reportedly carried gold and silver both to and from Syria, however, the sources make quite clear that it was the latter function-used as currencypayments for commodities-that was more common.36 Ibn Ishaq explicitly says, in fact, that the precious metals seized by Muslims in their various raids on caravans was intended for use as coin. When the Muslims won silver as booty in their raid at al-cIs in 8/630, it was trade investment capital they were plundering. Al-Waqidi's report that al-Harith b. 'Amir b. Nawfal had 1,000 mithqals, Umayyah b. Khalaf 1,000 mithqals, members of the baniu Abd Manaf 15,000 mithqals, and the banu Makhzum 5,000 mithqals of gold invested in one of Abu Sufyan's periodic northbound Syrian caravans concurrently makes clear that it was carried in the form of bullion to be used as currency to underwritecommerce.37
35. See G. Heck, "GoldMining in Arabiaand the Rise of the Islamic State,"JESHO42 (1999): 363ff. It is critical to bear in mind, however, that while this analysis focuses upon the Hijaz and West CentralNajd, there likewise are contemporaryreportsof medieval mining in what is now modem Yemen, Oman, and elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula. 36. Crone, Meccan Trade,87-95, esp. 90. 37. See al-Waqidi, Kitab al-Maghazi, 1: 27ff.; Ibn Hanbal, Al-Musnad (Cairo: Matba'at al-Sa'adah, 1895), 3: 271; al-Tabari,Ta'rikh, 1: 1374-75; al-Zubayrb. Bakkar, Al-Akhbaral-Muwaffaqiydt,ed. S. al-'Ani (Beirut: 'Alam al-Kutub,1996), 498; Ibn Hisham,Kitab Sirat al-Nabi, ed. M. Al-Saqqa (Cairo:MakatabatMustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1955), 364; al-Baladhuri,Ansab al-Ashraf,ed. M. Hamidullah(Cairo:Dar al-MaC'rif,1959), 1: 374, 377, 398ff.; al-Muqaddasi,Ahsan al-Taqdsimfi Ma'rifat al-Aqalim, ed. M. de Goeje (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1906), 101-2; Ibn Ishaq,Sirat Ibn Ishaq, ed. M. Hamidullah(Rabat:Ma'hadal-Dirasatwa al-Abhath,1976), no. 500; Ibn al-Athir, Al-Kamilfi al-Ta'rikh(Beirut:Dar al-Kitabal-'Arabi, 1985), 2: 145-46.

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Abu Baqa', in turn, claims that it was this quite common use of bullion in monetary transactionsthat caused one Syrian customs agent to query tUmarb. al-Khattabin some astonishment: "A caravanof Quraysh coming to Syria without gold? That isn't possible!"38 Contending that gold was the driving force behind their commerce, he adds that the Ghassanids would customarilyrelieve Makkanmerchantsof a portion of it in transitfees whenever Hijazi caravanspassed throughtheir territories.39 Importantfor understandingthe economic dynamic of contemporarywest Arabia, then, is the reality thatprecious metals were the prevailingcurrentdenominator. Early Hijazi mining proceeds createdqualityjobs, incomes, marketableproducts,and all of the stimulatory use economic multipliereffects normally attendantthereto.But it was in their contemporary as "money"that precious metals made their greatest financial impact. the Therewere otherproximatecurrenciespercolatingthroughout Near East in pre-Islamic times, to be sure, including the Byzantine gold dinar and the Persian silver dirham.Indeed, the Qur'an explicitly mentions the dinar,40the dirham,41and the waraq42-the latter defined by al-Mawardialso as a "silver coin,"43 most probablyof Himyariticissue-and it was the specific weights of such foreign currencies that were the denominationalbasis for determiningby proxy the value of the Hijazis' precious metal bullion used in commerce. Thus, the Arab sources commonly describe early Muslim commercial transactionsin dindr and dirham terms-employing them as numeraires-monetary benchmarks corresponding to specific common-use bullion weights, as there were very few "Arabic"coins struck in the first half century of Islam. For, irrespectiveof the provenance of any particularcurrencydenominator,use of precious metals in their uncast state was the preponderanttransactionalpractice. By way of example, the qintdr was a bullion coin weight equivalent to 4,000 dinars. Al-Baladhuriattests to the widespreadoperationof this bulk bullion tradingpractice,44a claim affirmedby In al-Maqrizi45and Ibn SaCd.46 sum, indigenously producedHijazi gold and silver were the "capital bridge" that compensated for commodity trade deficits, making possible acquisitions that were not directly attainablethrough barter;and because of them, the values of commodity exports did not, of necessity, have to equal the values of productimports.A review of the extant evidence is illuminating. In compelling confirmation that the medieval Arab chronicler's claims of abundant wealth in precious metals were not entirely apocryphal, there exists much physical testimony that documents their continuing existence. Indeed, hundreds of early medieval Hijazi-west-central Najdi mining locations are known, and some are even now being
38. Abu Baqa' Hibatallah,Al-Manaqibal-Mazyadiyah(Amman:Maktabatal-Risalahal-Hadithah,1984) (British Museum, London, MSAdd. 23), 1: 67. 39. Ibid.: wa kanuya'khudunshay'an mimdyakun ma'a al-tujjarmin al-dhahab. 40. Qur'an,3:75. 41. Qur'an, 12:20. 42. Qur'an, 18:19. 43. Al-Mawardi, Al-Ahkamal-Sultaniyah (Cairo:MaktabatMustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1973), 148. 44. Al-Baladhuri,Futuh al-Buldan, ed. R. Radwan (Beirut: Dar Maktabatal-Hilal, 1978), 452. Al-Baladhuri states that while in the pre-Islamicera, Byzantine dinars and Persiandirhamsdid reach the marketsof Makkah,the indigenous people tradedonly with one anotherusing metals bullion: la yatabayi'un ila'ald innahatibr. 45. Al-Maqrizi, Shudhural-'Uqudfi Dhikr al-Nuqud, ed. M. al-cUlum(Al-Najaf: al-Maktabahal-Haydriyah, 1967), 4. Al-Maqrizi indicates that in the pre-Islamicera: innamakanat tata'amulubi'l-mathdql wazn al-dardhim (wa) wazn al-dandnir. 46. Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqatal-Kubra, 2: 25. Ibn Sa'd furthercontributesthat the early medieval West Arabian merchantstypically made 100%returnson their investments:kanuyarbahiumfitijaratihimli'l-dindr dinaran.

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reopened for production.Several sites merit particularattention.Among them, the productivity of "al-Mindah"mine is lavishly lauded in pre-Islamic poetry; and several othersMahd al-Dhahab, al-Nuqrah,Bahran, and Biram among them-are directly linked by Arabic historical geographies to contemporaryactivities of the ProphetMuhammad'sQuraysh tribe.47Many others of the more than 1,000 sites in West Arabia mined in the early Middle Ages, whose residual evidence remains, likely were also active in his era. Indeed, carbon 14 datings from wood residuals at the smelters that supportedthese mining operation activities suggest that many dated to the pre-Islamic age and the earliest decades of Islam.48 The financing of these early medieval Arabian mining operations appearsto have been a "hybrid"individual/corporatesystem wherein private capital was employed. The purchase of one particularmine by CUmar CAbd b. and al-CAziz, the collective ownership of the b. principalbanfu Sulaym mine, Mahd al-Dhahab,in the caliphal reign of CUmar al-Khattab will be described presently. Al-Baladhurirelates that, at the rise of Islam, the tax-farming of state mining properties whereby mines would be consigned to private interests in exchange for payment of the zakdt, or alternately,the khumslevy-was also prevalent. Both he and al-Bakri cite a variety of mining propertiesthat were tax-farmedas "iqta'dt"to local entrepreneurs the ProphetMuhammad.49 by Privateexplorationand discovery likewise appearto have played key roles in mine ownLihb as asserting "Webroughtthe Prophetof ership. Ibn Hajarquotes membersof the baniu God ore from al-'Aqiq, and he wrote us a letter stating: 'Whoever finds something, it is his-and the twenty percent tax (khums) is to be levied on precious metals.'" Given the abundanceof privately owned medieval mining propertiesthat are documentedin the Arabic sources whose physical evidence remains, then, it is clear that precious metals production was a key private sector industryin Muhammad'sera. Indeed, many of these mining sites clearly were "big business." Source evidence and the remnants of on-site barrack-likestructuresindicate that they were often labor-intensive, employing as many as two thousand men. Production volumes also were impressive. Evidence suggests that in historic times an estimated 1,500,000 ounces of gold were produced from the more than one million tons of ore mined at the still producingmine Mahd al-Dhahab; and that more than 1,000,000 ounces of gold were produced at al-Hamdahin the early medieval era as well.

47. Al-Hazimi, Kitab al-Amakin,ed. H. al-Jasir(Riyadh:Dar al-Yamamah,1995), 2: 862-63; G. Miles, "Some Early Arab Dinars,"MuseumNotes (New York:AmericanNumismatic Society, 1948), 3: 102; M. Casanova, "Une mine d'or au Hidjaz,"Bulletin de la Section Geographie 35 (1920): 24-33; S. al-Rashid,Darb Zubaydah(Riyadh: Ma'din Amir al-Mu'minin," Al-Maskukat7 (1976): Riyadh Univ. Libraries,1980), 128; S. Shamma,"Al-Madinah: 106-9. 48. Indeed, indicative of the provenanceof early Makkangold, in a slightly later era, currencyminting operations also may have taken place using the ore yields of these sites-as there are numerous early Islamic coins whose metal content is directly linked to bullion mined in western Arabia. An Umayyad dinar dating to the year 105/724, for instance, includes the phrase"mineof the Commanderof the Faithfulin the Hijaz."Numerouscopper fulus have likewise been found thatbear similar inscriptions.On these developments, see Miles, "Some Early Arab Dinars," 102; Casanova, "Une mine d'or"; Shamma, "Al-Madinah," 106-9; S. al-Rashid. Darb Zubaydah, 128; Arab News (Jiddah,July 23, 1990), 2. 49. Al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Bulddn, 22-27; al-Bakri, Mujam ma Ustajam min Asma' al-Bilad wa alMawadi', ed. M. al-Saqqa' (Beirut: 'Alam al-Kutub, 1983), 28-29; Ibn Hajar, Kitab al-Isabah fi Tamylzal-Sahabah (Cairo:Matba'atal-Sharifah,1906), 4: 196. With clear evidence of the widespreaduse of the qirad/mudarabah commercial investment contract in pre-Islamic times, and with ancestors of the Prophet Muhammad also documentedin its use, it seems quite likely that this contract was the principal fiducial mechanism employed in such investments.

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In the early medieval Hijaz, gold and silver reigned preeminent.They were the key determinantsthat distinguished the relatively wealthy Makkaneconomy from its early medieval Near East counterparts.To take these valued commodities out of the contemporary West Arabiantradescene, then, would unquestionablyproducethe same economically vacuous results as if oil were to be deleted from modern Saudi Arabia's export data. To project the full economic picture, precious metals, predominantcomponents of both local industry and commerce, must be factoredin. Creditprecious metals with their properrole in driving the operating dynamic of the Hijaz economy at the dawn of Islam, however, and the remaining dimensions of the contemporarycommercial and industrialpicturefall readily into place.
THE QUESTION OF AN "ARABIA WITHOUT SPICES" (INSTEAD WITH GOLD AND SILVER)

I. The FrameworkforDebate Analysis to this point has focused upon Crone's controversial trade claims. Yet, if a fuller contemporarycommercial picture is to exist, the scope of analytic inquiry must be more encompassing than mere concerted focus on a single scholar's contributions,however careful their construction or compelling their contentions. Indeed, to ensure optimal accuracy, scientific evaluation must transcendhistoriographicrevisionism, tempering existing evidence with tests of classic economic theory. Questions of both the chronology and characterof pre-Islamic commerce have recently received considerable attention from other, equally distinguished medieval Near East historians. Robert Simon, Mahmood Ibrahim, and E E. Peters, for instance, are likely quite correctin their concurrencethat the sixth century witnessed dramaticgeopolitical developof ments that precipitatedthe culminationof the gradualtransformation the Makkaneconfrom a transit trade in luxury goods to the regional distribution of more basic, omy indigenously produced consumer goods. Simon states that "the rise of Makkan trade and the beginning of North Arabian history were not bolts from the blue, but were in close causal relationship with the history of the neighboring powers, i.e., Mecca's history was part of contemporaryworld history."50 There is much to commend this contention. For the economies of the early medieval basin were neither "static"economic systems, Red Sea littoral and southernMediterranean nor did they evolve in isolation, but instead were profoundly impacted by powerful synergies between them. Hence, the Qurashis' preeminence in early medieval Hijazi trade was no accident. Indeed, the convenient convergence of a sixth-century series of significant events had, almost by default, delivered control of ongoing commerce directly into their hands. Those events, largely economic at their origin, included: (i) an intensely hostile military confrontationbetween the Byzantines and the Sasanids within the region throughoutmuch of the sixth century; (ii) attendantexorbitant tariffs and import and export controls imposed by these twin combatantsupon goods transitingtheir borders; (iii) a series of traderelated alliances and counter-alliances between them and the Abyssinians and Yemenis; (iv) attemptsto set up allied local tribalchiefs as "kings"on the ArabianPeninsula;(v) vari50. Simon, Meccan Trade,22ff.; Ibrahim,MerchantCapital, 32ff., 42-52; Peters, "The Commerceof Mecca," 47ff.

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ous skirmishes between these twin superpowers' trade vassals within the western peninsula, the Ghassanids and the Lakhmids respectively; and finally, (vi) Abyssinian occupation of Yemen in A.D. 525, which significantly disrupted Sasanid northbound commerce and diplomacy.51 These sundry conspiracies and intrigues predictably failed, it appears in retrospect, because of the unyielding natures both of the region and of its diverse inhabitants. Describing the unsuccessful attempt of the Byzantines to install Christian convert 'Uthman b. al-Huwayrith al-Asadi al-Qurashi as a proxy "King of Makkah" as part of their strategic commercial initiative, for instance, al-Zubayr b. Bakkar calls the Qurashis "a fiercely independent people who would never subject themselves to the sovereignty of a king." Accordingly, while the Byzantines and Sasanids were militarily engaged with each other, the Qurashis quickly moved in to fill the resultant economic and administrative voids.52 Adroitly perceiving the resulting commercial vacuum, according to medieval Arabic sources, the Hashimi clan of the bani Quraysh now moved with great dispatch. Among their various initiatives, for instance, they immediately concluded trade agreements with local representatives of the regional superpowers situated at their Arabian peninsula borders to broker their goods, as well as with other indigenous tribes guaranteeing them shares of the profits in exchange for security for Qurashi caravans as they transited their territories.53 The failure of the Yemeni invasion of the Hijaz in A.D. 570, moreover, combined with the "Hurub al-Fijar"-a series of petty intertribal wars for commercial control of West Central Arabia circa A.D. 580 wherein the Qurashis vanquished the banu Hawazin, banu Qays, and other allies of the regional commercial power, al-Hirah-would ultimately assure the Hashimis preeminent trade hegemony. These developments would likewise soon prove seminal not only for the Qurashis' own economic interests but also for the evolution of the Hijaz itself as a formidable commercial force. For the Hashimi ruling elite quickly demonstrated far-reaching economic and diplomatic talents, the effective range of which transcended the borders of the peninsula, producing a flourish of regional trade expansions involving key exports as well as imports. Their achievements concurrently enhanced the geographic mobility of Qurashi merchants within an ever-expanding network of mercantile activities. 54 Combined with these tectonic political and economic shifts, and attendant changes in Mediterranean-based market demand levels, it is likely not coincidental that the commodity mix of trans-Hijazi trade now gradually devolved from those "upscale," high unit-value oriental goods previously demanded by the rapidly degenerating urban centers of the Roman Empire as well as by Byzantium's war-ravaged and economically deteriorating provinces, to higher volume, lower unit-value Arab goods, in order to meet more fundamental consumer requirements in the proximate Near East. For, with Yemen and al-Hirah also both in
51. On these developments, see I. Shahid,"TheArabs in the Peace Treatyof 561 A.D.,"Arabica 3 (1956): 185. 52. Al-Zubayr b. Bakkar, JamharatNasab Qurayshwa Akhbaruha,ed. M. Shakir (Cairo: MaktabatDar al'Urubah,1961), 1: 425. 53. On these agreements, see al-Ya'qubi, Ta'rikhal-Ya'qubi (Najaf: al-Maktabahal-Murtadawiyah, 1939), 1: 201-2; Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1955), 58-59; al-Qali, Kitab Dhayl alAmali wa al-Nawadir (Cairo:Matba'atDar al-Kutubal-Misriyah,1926), 199; al-Tha'alabi,Thimaral-Qulub (Cairo: Kitab al-Tabaqatal-Kubra, 1: 45-46. Matba'atal-Zahir, 1908), 89; Ibn SaCd, 54. See al-Maqrizi,Shudhural-'Uqud, 4-6. Scholars often refer to this period of "commercesans guerre"as a "Pax Makkanah"or the era of the "Makkancommonwealth"-a consolidated economic regime that underwrote significant region-wide trade flows, as evidenced by the abundanceof Byzantine gold dinars and Sasanid silver dirhamsthen reportedlyflowing throughcontemporaryHijazi markets.

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decline, and with the Byzantines and Sasanids mutually preoccupied, the Qurashis' political and commercial interests were now effectively unleashed and unconstrained. the Accordingly,the Arabicchroniclesarelikely quite accuratein portraying first/seventhcommercialemporiumtradingin the exchange centuryHijaz as an integrated,multidirectional of basic staples and the importof fundamentaleconomic needs. From the northarrivedthe oils, foodstuffs, grains, wines, clothing, and weaponry of Syria and Iraq;from Persia to the northeast,iron products,musk, ambergris,andjewels; from the west, the slaves, ivory, and incense of Abyssinia; and from the south, the cloths and perfumes of Yemen. Concurringin the commercial portrayalthat the sources describe, the analyses of Simon, Ibrahim, and Peters are probablygenerally correct in identifying within its trade flows "aromatics," such as frankincenseand laudanum,indigenous to the Arabianpeninsula, and not the more general "condiments," such as ginger, pepper, and other seasonings that Crone evaluates in her broaderinterpretation the English term "spices."55 of Yet, while the primaryArabic sources for sixth-centuryArabia do speak of an ongoing trade in "aromatics," with only passing references to "condiments," evidence is not enthe tirely unequivocal. Various sources, for instance, cite an aloewood used as incense in the Hijaz at the dawn of Islam called "Indianwood" ('ud al-Hind). There are similar indications that ginger was exported to Aden from India and Ceylon, from classic antiquity through the sixth and seventh centuries, and it is likewise cited in the Qur'an using its Indian name: zanjabll. The fourth/tenth-century Arab scholar, al-Qummi, asserts that the Qurayshalso exported pepper, as well as cloth and leather goods, from the Hijaz to Syria. Thus, the sources provide certain indications that throughoutthis era, the Hijaz continued to be a venue for at least some Indian subcontinent "luxurygoods"-most likely to meet Arabianpeninsula and other proximate southwest Asian marketdemand.56 The fundamentalnatureof the private financial system that underwroteeconomic activity in the contemporaryHijaz is likewise a source of scholarly contention that merits further scrutiny. In such a focus, of course, clear distinction must be drawn between "mercantilecapitalism"-surplus capital generated as profits at the margin through commercial exchange-and "industrialcapitalism"-investment capital employed to underwrite facilities of production. Mahmood Ibrahim,for example, accepts the contemporary utility of mercantilecapitalism, while discounting industrialcapitalism, in framing an economic model for sixth-centuryArabia, whereas Simon and Peters do not. Contendingthat Makkanmerchantsmerely tradedin the goods of others, Ibrahimstates: Merchant is of that whether capital thatfraction capital is generated purelythrough exchange, merchants controlled meansof production, in Yemen, not,as in Mecca.... As theydid the as or notownmeansof production thetime,Meccan at merchants merely boughtandsoldtheirmercommercial the chandise, accumulating profitas they increased activityandenlarged areaof theirmarket.... Havingno surplus theirown,Mecca'smerchants accumulated of thus capital trade occasioned the institution theharam, of us onlythrough by providing witha classicillustration exchange the originof merchant of as capital.57
55. On this, see Simon, Meccan Trade,91-95; Ibrahim,Merchant Capital, 190; Peters, "The Commerce of Mecca,"6-7, 14-16; Crone,Meccan Trade,12ff., 61, 70, 76. 56. See al-Qummi, Tafsiral-Qummi, ed. T. Al-Jaza'iri (Najaf: Maktabatal-Huda, 1967), 2: 144; al-Azraqi, Akhbar Makkah, ed. F. Wtistenfeld (Hildesheim: George Olms, 1858), 176, 179; al-Tabari,Ta'rikh, 1: 1: 578; Qur'an76:17. Here, a clear distinctionmust be made between SouthwestAsian marketdemandandMediterraneanbased marketdemand. 57. Ibrahim,MerchantCapital, 5, 7, 34; Simon, Meccan Trade,13, 21, 74, 75, 95, 98; and Peters, "The Commerce of Mecca,"6, 11-12, 14, however,rejectthe notionof either"capital" "production" workin sixth-century or at Makkah.

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Yet here, both conclusions may be challenged. For the sources clearly suggest that both capitalistic structures were very much in evidence, particularly in the era of Muhammad when the dynamics of "Islamic economics" were initially being forged. While the evidence is less comprehensive for the pre-Islamic era, it is nonetheless clear that, by the first half of the seventh century, West Arabia was far more than a mere string of way-stations on the classic trade routes of antiquity. The region was instead a significant production center that manufactured commodities in surplus to be marketed by its merchants in regional commerce. It is how that productive investment was financed at its inception that merits further consideration. For as subsequent sections demonstrate, many first/seventh-century entrepreneurs were sufficiently wealthy that no external investment capital'was necessary to underwrite their productive ventures. Abu Talib, for instance, was among the Makkan wheat growers who sold their own produce, according to Ibn Qutaybah.58 Al-Baladhuri relates the grudging assessment by 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz of an unproductive mining property that he had purchased from the offspring of Bilal b. al-Harith al-Muzani which had been previously awarded to his family as a land concession by Prophet Muhammad. "Look at what was extracted from it and what I spent on it," he complains.59 But there likewise were collective forms of productive investment. At the rise of Islam, practically every wealthy Makkan was invested in agrarian properties near alTa'if.60 Al-Baladhuri describes a land reclamation partnership between Harb b. Umayyah and sundry Sulamis that was financed with a mudarabah contract.61 Al-Bakri, in turn, speaks of a dispute at Mahd al-Dhahab gold mine among the original investors, mine workers, and other Sulamis in the caliphal reign of 'Umar b. al-Khattab.62 Hence, though source references more commonly appear in commercial transactions, the concept of "pooled investment capital" to finance goods production was not unknown in the sixth and seventh centuries.63 It may be concluded, then, that the more prevalent commerce-based form of aggregate capital employment was due to its use as much as an income transfer mechanism aimed at wealth redistribution as to its use as a capital mobilization instrument. Some sources, alQurtubi among them, for example, indicate that Hashim, progenitor of the Quraysh, urged lesser merchants to pool their capital in order to gain from strength in numbers. Such comparative advantage appears to have been critical. For the sources suggest that this was an age of keen mercantile competition, with mundfarah, an intense vying for social status based on wealth and material strength, in the ascendancy-and with financial failure according to
58. See Ibn Qutaybah,Kitab al-Ma'arif, ed. F Wiistenfeld (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1850), 249-50. 59. Al-Baladhuri,Futuh al-Buldan, 26-27. 60. See, e.g., al-Balfdhuri,Ansab al-Ashrdf,ed. M. Hamidullih (Cairo:Dar al-Ma'arif,1959), 4: 74, 139, 142, and subsequentsections below. 61. Al-Baladhuri,Ansab al-Ashraf,ed. M. Schloessinger (Jerusalem:Hebrew Univ. Press, 1938a), 4a: 3. 62. Al-Bakri, Mu'jammd Usta'jam, 28-29. 63. It must be noted that some medieval Muslim jurists were of the opinion that its use in manufacturingveninvestment"applicationof the tureswas forbidden.Maliki and Shaficischolars,in particular,rejecteda "productive "mudarabah," arguingthat since the agent would be engaging in actual production,traditionallycompensatedby a fixed wage rate, all profitand loss should accrueexclusively to the investor.The Hanafijurist al-Sarakhsi(KitabalMabsut [Cairo:Matba'atal-S. adah, 1906/1986], 22: 54), however, believed that there were ways for producersto circumventthis prohibitionmerely by engaging in the sale, as well as in the manufacture,of the goods: "If the investor instructs his agent to employ his capital to purchase leather and hides-and then design them into boots, buckles, and leatherbags-this is all partof the practice of merchantsin their pursuitof profit, and is permissible in a mudarabahcontract."Hence, in this interpretation, mudarabahcould, in fact, be legally employed in prothe duction operations-but only if the producerof the commodity was also its distributor.

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some sources, even leading at times certain commercially unfortunateMakkan merchants to contemplate ritual suicide (i'tifad).64 The institutionsof sadaqah (alms-giving, and later zakat), rifadah (providingfood), and siqayah (providing water)-as well as the banning of monopolistic practices (ihtikar)were similar mechanisms aimed at wealth redistributionas well as at attractingpilgrim merchantsto Makkah.To underwritethe costs of such provisions, the Qurashi progenitor Qusayy b. Kilab levied taxes on both indigenous and incoming merchants.Thus, as Ibrahim contends, the notion of pooled merchantcapital as a welfare institution, as well as a commercial capitalizationtool, must not be discounted. Indeed, it was integral to the Qurashis' innovative marketingapproachof brokeredsecurity (khafdrah)caravan (ildfi) traffic.65 The evolution of each of these commercialphenomena,therefore,deserves furtherstudy in combination both with what the Arab chroniclers claim and what today remains in the form of tangible physical evidence. Given the general pedagogic skepticism regardingthe reliability of the early Arabic sources, much of the currentscholarly debate has centered upon "evaluativemethodology."Which analytic tools can most effectively be employed to substantiateor discreditextant data?The forensic undertakingis complicated by the highly fragmentarynatureof the source accounts themselves. For often a mass of anecdotal data must be woven together in the quest for a more consistent, rational whole. The difficulty has been compoundedfurtherby the targeted focus of modern inquiry. However, the narration of functional economic history was usually not the foremost objective of the medieval Arab chronicler. Given such challenges, Crone and others have called for new analytic tools to examine the extant body of finite evidence. The challenge is daunting.Yet such tools often do exist. Among them arephysical remains, such as mining tailings, remnantsof dams and other edifices, as well as the evaluative techniques of modern economic analysis. The historiographic evidence, a subchallenge thus is significant.Absent incontrovertible stantial measureof deductive reasoning often is requiredto ascertainunderlying economic realities. For while there areresidualtailings that indicate the undertakingof medieval West Arabianmining, and the ruins of contemporarydams to suggest the cultivation of agriculture, there is no market produce that reveals a specific commercial commodity mix, nor "Genizadocuments"to demonstratethe incidence of trade,nor often, even an abundanceof artifacts to prove the workings of particularcrafts. Concurrently, possibility cannot be the discounted that certain economic manifestationsthat do exist are ex post facto phenomena produced in later Umayyad or even early 'AbbSsid times. Analysis thus must focus on people, events, and artifactswhose existence can be linked to times and places certain. The textual evidence is undeniably finite, diverse, and complex, to be sure. At the same time, it is often complementary,with each part comprising a piece of a greaterpuzzle, capto turing a collage of synergistic productionanddistributionfunctions thatcan be retrofitted recreate the operations of a functional market-drivenindustrial system. In this quest, the sources provide a certain corroborativeutility, since at least five documented cross-checks can be combined to offer a fuller economic picture.They include: (i) Qur'anicreferencesto the pursuit of specific industries and crafts; (ii) chroniclers' accounts of private sector un64. Al-Qurtubi,Al-Jami' li-Ahkamal-Qur'an (Cairo:Dar al-Qalam, 1966), 2: 205; Ibrahim,Merchant Capital, 41, 65ff. 65. Al-Azraqi, AkhbarMakkah,66, 69, 107, 135, 436-41; Ibrahim,MerchantCapital, 39, 80. Qusayy b. Kilab reportedlyhad wells dug and rest stops built within the city's environs to supportthe transientlogistics needs of incoming merchants.

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dertakingsof such productive activities; (iii) source references to official attempts to promote their operationaldevelopment;(iv) documentationattesting to systematic trade in the resultingproducts;and (v) accountsof regulationof thattradeby Muhammadandothercontemporaryauthorities. The prospects for corroborationthus compel the analyst to evaluate any given body of textual evidence as a "datacomposite,"seeking to discern, in detail, what the totality of information,both chronicled and physical, may reveal about a particulareconomic function's operationand chronology. Partof the analytic challenge is subjective, part must be empirical. In the first instance, the challenge is to ascertainwhether, in a particularcircumstance, if the testimony of a given source is suspect, perhapsthroughan errorin transmissionor reception, could other, corroborating,chroniclers, acting independently,have made the identical mistake? In the lattercase, artifactsand advancedtechnology-based analytic tools-such as infrared sensing and radiometricdating-can fill in the blanks left by the written manuscripts. But while scientific evaluation as well as the application of modern economic theory can aid in the discovery process, they too clearly have their limitations. For while they may provide snapshots of specific economic phenomena at a given time, they nonetheless still require the reliability of corroboratingevidence, including the veracity of the medieval Arabic sources, to develop a fuller picture. The underlying determinant,in each instance, must again revert to the subjective issue of "preponderant plausibility,"when the data are viewed in aggregate. In other words, does the combinationof what the sources have to say convey a coherent economic logic? If in microeconomic functioning, for instance, they are remarkablyaccurate in depicting the mechanical operations of early medieval precious metals mining, of which there is ample physical proof, why should one then conclude that they are categorically wrong about trade, the crafts, and agriculture,of which there is less tangible proof? Here, however, the crucial distinction may often be less one of kind than of degree. To wit, despite a possible embellishment in numbers, does a given source provide a probable underlying truthin its data documenting the functioning of a particularindustrialsector? The medieval Arabchroniclerswere not entirely oblivious to economic reality,and hence deserve a certainattentionin measuringtheirmerit. As R. B. Serjeanthas aptly stated:"criticism of historical sources should aim at eliciting from them what is possible to accept as evidence, not at manufacturinga case for destroying them in toto."66This goal is crucial in reconstructingearly medieval Arab economic history.For, without a reasonablewillingness to accept elements of truthin the early source accounts, thereremainsno basis for meaningful commercial and industrialreconstructionof the first/seventh-centuryHijaz. Moreover, analysis is left with the improbableconclusion that Arab chroniclers,working quasi-autonomously on an ad hoc basis, a full seven centuriesbefore Adam Smith, heuristically and inadvertently derived an almost perfect (albeit fictitious) working model of what today is known as "free marketeconomics."
DEFINING THE ECONOMIC DYNAMICS OF THE FIRST/SEVENTH-CENTURY HIJAZ

Having fixed the primacy of precious metals at the core of early medieval WesternArabian economic operations,the challenge becomes that of fitting into place remainingpieces
66. Serjeant,"MeccanTrade," 486.

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industrialand commercialpuzzle-a matchmade possible by the availof the contemporary ability of significant, albeit anecdotal, source data. Indeed, when viewed in aggregate, and throughthe analyticprism of moderneconomic theory,the chroniclers' accounts often may be seen not as mere human interest stories, but as complementarycomponents of a highly functional, integratedmicroeconomic system. The ready availability of adequate supplies of investment capital to supportproduction has previously been demonstrated;and with such finance available in abundance,a greater understandingof the other factors of productionfalls into place. At this stage, a review of the uses to which these capital resources were put, as well as of the operations of the economic base industriesto which they were committed will be helpful. 1. The Productivityof Agriculture played a key role in the Despite the barrensetting, therecan be little doubtthat agriculture The region's landscape was dotted commercial vitality of the first/seventh-century HIijaz. with trees, bushes, grasses, andplants, and fertile oases existed at al-Ta'if,al-Nakhlah,Khaybar, Fadak, Turabah,Yanbu',Wadi al-Qura,al-Suwarqiyah,Wadi al-'Aqiq, throughoutalMadinah region, and elsewhere. The Asir, to the south, also historically served as a key breadbasket West Arabia.The farmproduceof these areasincluded grains such as wheat for and barley, sorghum,alfalfa, a wide variety of vegetables, citrus and other fruits, grapes, olives, dates, and pomegranates. Al-Ta'if, called by al-Qalqashandi"a little bit of Heaven transported God from Syria by to the Hijaz"-a beneficiary of a substantial 200-450 millimeters of rain annually-was particularlyknown for its grape and raisin production,with Mu'awiyahb. Abi Sufyan, 'Abd b. Allah b. CAbbas, al-'Abbas b. 'Abd al-Muttalib,Abu Talib, and CAmr al-'As all owning there. It, together with al-Madinah,was also legendary for exporting quallarge vineyards ity wines made from dates and grapes. Indeed, the very first booty won by Muhammad's newly formed Muslim forces were al-Ta'ifi wines, raisins, and leather goods seized from a Qurashicaravanin their raid at al-Nakhlah.67 Dates, another farm product, also were ubiquitous and were used not only as a basic foodstuff but also as an in-kind currencyto settle commercial obligations. Because of their durability,raisins too were extremely convenient foodstuffs, both as commercial goods and consumables, the latter particularlyon lengthy trade and military expeditions. They likewise could be used in local desalinationand water-purification processes, and al-Istakhriindicate that their productionwas anotherprime industry of al-Ta'if region. Of these farm products,the Qur'anstates: "Wegrow for you gardensof date palms and vines; in them, you have abundantfruit, and of them, you eat."68Various regions throughout the Hijaz distinguished themselves through their cultivation of particular farm products. Numerous Qu'ranicverses testify to the abundanceof dates, grapes, grains, fruits, and vegetables produced in the vicinity of al-Madinah.The fruit and date farms of al-Ta'if were famous both for their quantity and quality of output. Khaybar similarly was known for its fine dates,
67. Al-Qalqashandi,Subh al-A'sha (Cairo: al-Matba'ahal-Amiriyah, 1914), 4: 65; al-Istakhri,Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1927), 19; al-MuqaddasiAhsan al-Taqasim,69, 79; Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi, Alwa 'Iqd al-Farid (Cairo:Lajnatal-Ta'lif wa al-Turjimah al-Nashr, 1948), 38; Ibn Hisham,Das LebenMuhammad's nach Muhammad Ibn Ishak, ed. F Wtistenfeld (Gottingen, 1858), 424; al-Waqidi, Kitab al-Maghazi, 1: 16; N. Saqar,Al-Ta'iffi al-'Asr al-Jahili wa Sadr al-Islam (Jiddah:Dar al-Shuriq, 1981), 40ff. 68. Qur'an23:19; also sources cited in the precedingnote.

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whereas Dumat al-Jandal (modern al-Jawf) was situated in an area propitious for the production of dates as well as cereals.69 Hijazi agriculture was frequently carried out on a significant scale. Capital availability was a key to its success, with wealthy citizens often cited as major financiers of agrarian activities. In al-Madinah region, Mucawiyah b. Abi Sufyan and Talhah b. 'Ubayd Allah appear as major wheat growers, with the latter credited as the first to grow wheat in Wadi Qanah north of the city. The sources report that investments in ten farms by MuCawiyah, who owned numerous grain and date-producing properties in the vicinities of Makkah and al-Madinah, resulted annually in the production of 150,000 camel loads of dates and 100,000 camel loads of wheat.70 This future caliph also dedicated special care to developing properties in the Wadi al-Qura area and elsewhere that had been previously owned by Jewish farmers. The famed Muslim conqueror of Egypt, CAmrb. al-'As, is said to have had a vineyard in al-Ta'if that contained more than one million vines; whereas Hamzah b. 'Abd Allah b. Zubayr owned a grove of 20,000 date palms in al-Furu'. Al-Samhidi relates that Ja'far b. Talhah spent 200,000 dinars for land reclamation on his estate in Umm 'Iyyal, which contained 20,000 spring-irrigated date palms that produced 4,000 dinars in annual income. 71 Livestock likewise was a key industry at the dawn of Islam, with animal herds frequently very large. We have already noted that caravans consisting of as many as 2,500 camels are cited in the sources. The victorious Muslim forces reportedly seized 24,000 camels in the battle of Hunayn in the year 8/630. Ibn 'Abd al-Barr asserts that future caliph CUthman b. CAffanpersonally contributed 950 camels, 50 horses, and 1,000 dinars to the embryonic Islamic army. Over 1,000 horses participated in the Muslims' conquest of Makkah in 8/630; and in the battle of Badr in 2/624, Prophet Muhammad is said to have employed seventy camels in his cavalry.72 Mu'awiyah b. Abi Sufyan similarly was reportedly the beneficiary of an animal bequest involving 2,000 sheep,73 and Zubayr b. Bakkar relates that a prime occupation of Hakim b. Hizam was marketing camels at the Makkah market.74 He likewise relates the purchase of a female slave in exchange for 100 she-camels.75
69. See Qur'an2: 261, 264, 266; 6: 99, 141; 18: 33-34; 23: 19; 36: 33-34; 50: 7-11; Ibn Habib, Kitab al-Muhabbar,263-64, 267. Varioussources (see al-Mubarrad, Al-Kamilfi al-Lughahwa al-Adab, ed. M. Ibrahim[Cairo: Dar NahdatMisr, n.d.], 3: 207) relate,for instance, that 'Ali b. Abi Talib grew an assortmentof gourdson his estate in Yanbuc. 70. Al-Samhudi, Wafa'al-Wafd'fi Ta'rikhDar al-Mustafd(Beirut:Dar Ahya' al-Turath al-'Arabi,1973/1981), 3: 988, 4: 1130, 1272; al-Azraqi,AkhbarMakkah,442-43; Ibn al-Faqih,MukhtasarKitab al-Buldan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1885), 22; al-Zubayrb. Bakkar,JamharatNasab Quraysh, 1: 52; al-Zubayri,Kitab Nasab Quraysh, ed. E. Levi Provenqal (Cairo: Dar al-Ma'arif, 1953), 172, 746; Ibn Rustah, Al-A'laq Al-Nafisah (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1892), 178; Ibn Hazm, JamharatAnsab al-'Arab (Cairo:Dar al-Ma'arif, 1971), 140; al-Isfahani,Kitab al-Aghani (Cairo:Dar al-Kutubal-Misriyah, 1927-74), 3: 130; M. Gilmore et al., "A PreliminaryReport on the First Season of Excavations at al-Mabiyat, an Early Islamic Site in the NorthernHijaz," Atlal: Journal of Saudi Arabian Archaeology 9 (1985): 110. 71. See preceding note. 72. Ibn 'Abd al-Barr,Al-Isti'ab fi Ma'rifat al-Ashab (Cairo: MaktabatNahdat Misr, n.d.), 3: 1040; al-Qalqashandi, Nihayat al-Arabfi Ma'rifat Ansab al-'Arab (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Lubnani, 1980), 463; al-Isfahani, Kitab al-Aghdnl, 13: 118; al-Samhudi,Wafd'al-Wafa', 1: 544, 2: 222. 73. Ibn Kathir,Al-Biddyahwa al-Nihayah, 8: 325; Ibn Fahd,Ithafal-Ward bi-AkhbdrUmmal-Qurd, MS2204 (CairoDar al-Kutubal-Misriyah,n.d.), fol. 330. 74. Al-Zubayrb. Bakkar,JamharatNasab Quraysh, 1: 364. 75. Ibid., 1: 80, 115-16 Ibn Qutaybah,Al-Shi'r wa al-Shu'ara' (Cairo:Dar al-Ma'arif,1966), 2: 61, relates that while serving as governorof al-Madinah,'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz received a gift of 15,000 she-camels.

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Thus, farming clearly was a significant industry within Islam's birthplace, the Hijaz. And again, there is physical evidence, in the form of remains of irrigationcanals and dams dating to this period, to supportthe documentarysources. Indeed, the remnantsof at least nineteen dams from thatperiod still exist in various state of preservationin the Hijaz-thirteen in al-Ta'if region, three in the vicinity of the KhaybarOasis, and three near al-Madinah. While many of these dams were built in the early Islamic era, recent archaeological expeditions investigating their structuraldesign and provenance suggest that some, such as "Sadd Qasr al-Bint," in the Khaybarregion, likely are attributableto late pre-Islamic times.76 2. The Outputof Manufacturing The non-agriculturalindustrialbase of the early medieval Hijaz was likewise quite diverse, ranging from mining to hunting and fishing, to constructionand manufacturing,and other productiveundertakings.Amongst the various enterprises,indigenous manufacturing was an industrialsector thatconsisted of several substantialsub-sectors,as Hijazi craftsmen were engaged in diverse productiveactivities that createda noteworthyselection of marketable commodities. For illustrativepurposes,let us focus on five key sub-sectors:(i) jewelrysmithing, (ii) black-smithing,(iii) tanning, (iv) textiles, and (v) perfumes. (i) Jewelry-Smithing. Because of the proliferation of indigenous gold and silver, it was logical thatjewelry-making would become a key profession. Hijazis were historically known for their love of decorationwith precious metals, and the Qur'anaboundswith references to gold and silver as esteemed possessions. For instance, "Fairin the eyes of men is the love of things they covet; women and sons; heaped up hoards of gold and silver";and "Forthem will be Gardensof Eternity;beneaththem, rivers will flow; they will be adorned thereinwith bracelets of gold."77Malik b. Anas relates that so passionate were local Arabs in their reverence for gold and silver tablewareat this time that the Prophetfelt compelled to ban its production and use as being an ostentatious detraction from religious observance.78 Jewelry-makingwas a specialty of Jews in general-and of the Jewish banu Qaynaqac in al-Madinahin particular.This city was especially known for its craftsmen of precious metals throughoutearly medieval times. Al-Salihi al-Shami relates that when ProphetMuhammadvanquishedthe banu Qaynaqacin al-Madinah,he seized great numbersof swords and black-smithing and jewelry-making equipment.79Al-Waqidi, in turn, affirmsthat the principal products sold in "siq bani Qaynaqacin the pre-Islamic era were jewelry, bows, lances, and swords.80Indeed, Medinese jewelers, together with the goldsmiths of Fadak and Khaybar,were regionally renownedfor the qualityof their work; and al-Samhudi,citing
76. See al-Samhudi,Wafd'al-Wafa', 3: 1044, 1050, 1072; 4: 1231; al-Isfahani,Bilad al-'Arab,ed. H. al-Jasir 1968), 401; al-Harbi,Kitabal-Manasikwa AmakinTuruq (Riyadh:Dar al-Yamamah, al-Hajjwa Ma'ilim al-Jazlrah (Beirut:Matba'atal-Mutannabi,1969), 330; Ibn Rustah,Al-A'laq Al-Nafisah, 20; al-Halabi,Al-Sirahal-Halabiyah fi Sirat al-Aminal-Ma'mun(Beirut:Dar al-Ma'arif,1980), 2: 393; J. 'All, Al-Mufassalfi Ta'rikhal-'ArabQabl alIslam (Beirut:1970-80), 7: 173; S. al-Rashid,Darb Zubaydah,8-10; SaudiArabianMinistryof AgricultureandWa20. ter, WaterAtlas of Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, 1984), 15; M. Gilmoreet al., "APreliminary Report," M. KhanandA. "Ancient Dams in al-Ta'if Area-1981 (1401),"Atlal: Journalof Saudi ArabianArchaeology6 (1982): Mughannam, 'AsrRasul Allah (Riyadh: 'A. al-'Umari, 1985), 230. 129-30; 'A. al-'Umari,Al-Hirafwa al-Sina'atfi al-Hijdazfi 77. Qur'an,3:14, 18:31, 22:23, 76:15-16. 78. Malik b. Anas, Al-Muwatta'(Beirut:Dar al-Afaq al-Jadidah,1981), 799. 79. Al-Salihi al-Shami, Subal al-Hudanwa al-Rashadfi Sirat Khayral-'Ubbad, ed. 'Abdal-'Aziz 'Abdal-Haqq (Cairo:LajnatAhya' al-Turath al-Islami, 1975), 4: 267. 80. Al-Waqidi, Kitab al-Maghazi, 1: 138-40.

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Ibn Zubalah, indicates that there were more than three hundred jewelers at this time in the Medinese suburb of al-Zuhrah alone.81 Makkah, al-Ta'if, and Wadi al-Qura likewise reportedly had sizable jewelry-smithing sectors. Their output doubtless enjoyed a receptive market, as references to jewelry permeate the sources-and include descriptions of opulent rings, earrings, bracelets and anklets, bangles, pendants, and other objects of adornment. One lady of al-Madinah, Zaynab bint MuCawiyah al-Thaqafiyah, reportedly owned a necklace whose gold content weighed more than twenty mithqals. 82 Gold and silver plating also was a handicraft pursued by early medieval Hijazi jewelry smiths. The sword worn by Prophet Muhammad upon his triumphant entry into Makkah in 630 reportedly had gold and silver inlay. The sword of Abu Jahl, seized as booty in the Battle of Badr in the year 2/624, is said to have had similar features; and lances and shields likewise were often embellished in this manner. Doors and window frames were a particular focus of gold-leaf decoration. Al-Azraqi, al-Fasi, and al-Qutbi relate that in pre-Islamic times, Qurashi tribal chieftains would take great pride in embellishing the Ka'bah with elaborate gold and silver overlay-a practice that has been perpetuated until the present day.83 (ii) Blacksmithing. With iron ore and copper available in commercial quantities on the Arabian peninsula, blacksmithing was another craft practiced in many of the towns and villages of the sixth and seventh-century Hijaz. Production included weapons, tools, utensils, and sundry other iron goods, as well as local copper kitchenware and piping. Pre-Islamic poetry extols the virtues of professional iron-working.84 When the first/seventh-century Arab conquests dramatically increased the contemporary demand for weaponry such as swords, shields, arrowheads, and other instruments of war, additional iron ore was imported from India and Persia via al-Basrah for use in armaments production. Hijazi craftsmen thus made metal-working a significant cottage industry at the rise of Islam. Indeed, the sources indicate that there were at least thirty prominent blacksmiths plying their trade during the Prophet's era in Khaybar. They further relate that at the siege of al-Ta'if, after the battle of Hunayn in 8/630, a Roman slave skilled in smithing, who took the name al-Azraq b. 'Uqbah al-Thaqafi after defecting to the Muslim camp and embracing Islam, became renowned for his work. Al-Azdi reports the presence of wholesale iron dealers operating in al-Madinah at this time as well.85 Local metal-working output appears to have been substantial. Upon the Muslims' subjugation of the banu Qurayzah in 5/626, for instance, the victorious troops reportedly
81. Ibn Zubalah,as relatedby al-Samhudi,Wafa'al-Wafa', 4: 1230. 82. Abu CUbayd, Kitab al-Amwal, ed. M. Hiras (Cairo: Maktabatal-Kulliyah al-Azhariyah and Dar al-Fikr, 1975), 538; Ibn Hajar,Kitab al-Isabah, 4: 319; al-Samhudi,Wafa' al-Wafa', 4: 1230. 83. Al-Sudayli, Al-Rawd al-Unuffi Tafsiral-Sirah al-Nabawiyah (Beirut: Dar al-Ma'rifah, 1978), 3: 49; alTirmidhi,Al-Jami' al-Sahih, ed. Ahmad Shakir(Beirut:Dar Ahya' al-Turath al-'Arabi,n.d.), 4: 401; Malik b. Anas, Al-Muwatta', 799; al-Azraqi and al-Fasi, both cited in Qutb al-Din, Kitab al-I'lam bi-Bina' Bayt Allah al-Haram (Hildesheim: George Olms, 1981), 53-57; M. al-Alusi, Bulug al-Arabf Ma'rifat Ahwdl al-'Arab,ed. Muhammad al-Athri(Cairo:Dar al-Kutubal-Hadithah,1924), 3: 404; RiyadhDaily, 2 April 1992, p. 2; on "tahliyatal-Ka'bah bil-dhahabwa al-fiddah"throughouthistory,see al-Qutbi,I'lam al-'Ulamd' al-A'lam bi-Bind' al-Masjid al-Haram (Riyadh: Dar al-Rifc'i, 1982), 53ff. 84. See Yaqut,Mu'jamal-Buldan (Beirut:Dar al-Sdr, 1957), 5: 447. 85. Al-Azraqi, AkhbarMakkah,476; al-Zubayrb. Bakkar,JamharatNasab Quraysh, 1: 372; al-Isfahani,Bilad al-'Arab, 30; al-Baladhuri,Futuh al-Buldan, 67; al-Suhayli, al-Rawd al-Unuf, 3: 260; al-Azdi, Ta'rikhal-Mawsil, ed. 'A. Habibah(Cairo:Dar Ahya' al-Turath al-Islami, 1967), 49; M. al-Alusi, Bulug al-Arab, 3: 401; 'A. al-'Umari, Al-Hirafwa al-Sina'atfi al-Hijaz, 313ff.; 'A. al-Sayf, Al-Hayah al-Iqtisadiyah wa al-Ijtima'iyahfi al-Najd wa al.Hijazfial-'Asr al-Umawi (Riyadh:Mu'assasatal-Risalah, 1983), 156.

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seized 1,500 swords, 2,000 lances, 300 suits of armor, and 500 shields. Three thousand lances are also said to have been employed in the battle of Hunayn in 8/630, an encounter wherein, the chroniclers claim, Muhammadarmed his troops for battle with two hundred suits of armorprovided by Safwan b. Umayyah.86The Qur'anmakes frequent references to body armor-for instance, "Make thou coats of mail; balancing well the rings of chain armor";and "It was We who taught the making of coats of mail for your benefit to guard you from each other's violence."87The Qur'an, in fact, devotes an entire chapter to iron, Surat al-Hadid, where we find the following verse: "We sent down iron, an ingredientfor war, as well as having many benefits for mankind."88 Muhammad's son Ibrahim's day-care was provided by the wife of a blacksmith, Abu Sayf. Anotherof his close acquaintanceswas the Makkanblacksmith, Khabbabb. al-Aratt, who also specialized in the manufactureof swords. He is cited in the sources as having made a number of swords for al-'Isa b. Wa'il, tribal chieftain of the banu Jumah. An apand prentice, Marzuqal-Sayqal, worked with him as a "metal-polisher"; together, they reportedly embellished the Prophet's favorite sword, dhu al-Faqdr, which, Ibn Sa'd reports, had been seized as booty by the Muslims from the Qurayshin the battle of Badr. Walid b. al-Mughirah,al-'As b. Hisham, and al-Azraq b. 'Uqbah al-Thaqafi are among other Arab blacksmiths known to history; the latter, according to al-Baladhuri,having been a slave freed by ProphetMuhammadafter the conquest of al-Ta'if.89 livestock resourcesof the early (iii) Tanningand Leather-Making. Given the abundant medieval Hijaz, it was logical that the preparation(al-dibaghah) of animal hides and skins (adm) for leather should likewise become a key contemporaryindustry.To this end, leather craftsmen would purchase hides from local tanners to manufacturetents, saddles, bridles, sword sheaths, shields, knapsacks, clothing, shoes, sandals, belts, sacks, food containers, floor coverings, water basins, bottles, and other containers. Even certain very prominent Makkans,among them Abu Sufyan b. Harband Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani,reportedlyworked as leathermerchants.The sources relate thatboth men and women were involved in the tanning profession, the economic significance of which is indicatedin the Qur'anicverse: "Itis God who made your habitationshomes of rest for you; and made for you out of the skins of animals dwellings which you find most light when you pause in your travels; and makes out of their wool and soft fibers valuable things and articles of convenience to serve you."90
86. Al-Zubayr b. Bakkar, Jamharat Nassab Quraysh, 1: 372; al-Isfahani, Bilad al-'Arab, 30; al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan, 67; al-Suhayli, Al-Rawd al-Unuf, 3: 125-26, 260, 298; al-Salihi al-Shami, Subal al-Hudan wa al-Rashad, 4: 286, 307, 408; al-Azdi, Ta'rikhal-Mawsil, 49; al-Halabi, Al-Sirah al-Halabiyah, 2: 666; J. 'All, AlMufassalfi Ta'rikh,7: 554-60; M. al-Alusi, Bulug al-Arab, 3: 401; 'A. al-Sayf, Al-Hayah al-Iqtisadiyah wa alIjtima'iyah, 156; 'A. al-Umari, al-Hiraf wa al-Sina'at, 314ff.; 'A. al-Kitani, Nizam al-Hukumahal-Nabawiyah al-Musammaal-Taratibal-Idariyah (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-'Arabi, n.d.), 2: 75. 87. Qur'an,34:11, 21:80. 88. Qur'an,57:25; also 18:96: "Bringme blocks of iron. At length, when he had filled up the space between the two steep mountainsides,he said: 'blow (with your bellows).' Then, when he had made it red as fire, he said: 'bring it to me, that I might pour over it molten lead.'" 89. Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, 1: 485; al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari (Istanbul: al-MaktabahalIslamiyah, 1979), 3: 13; al-Shawkani, Fath al-Qadir al-Jami' bayna Fand al-Riwayah wa al-Dirayah min 'Ilm al-Tafsir (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1979), 3: 195, 349; 4: 60; Ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Qur'an al-'Azim (Beirut: Dar alMa'rifah, 1968), 2: 586; 3: 135; Ibn Qutaybah,Kitab al-Ma'arif, 249-50; Ibn Hisham. Kitab Sirat al-Nabi, ed. M. al-Saqqa (Cairo: MaktabatMustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1955), 1: 357; al-Suhayli, Al-Rawd al-Unuf, 2: 105; al-Baladhuri,Futuh al-Buldan, 67; 'A. al-'Umari, Al-Hiraf wa al-Sina'dt, 316ff.; A. 'Awd Allah, Makkahfi 'Asr ma Qabl al-Islam (Riyadh: Da'irat al-Malik 'Abd al-'Aziz, 1981), 148. 90. Qur'an, 16:80; al-Azraqi, AkhbarMakkah,466; al-Zubayrb. Bakkar,JamharatNasab Quraysh, 1: 370; al-Baghdadi,Khazanatal-Adab (Cairo: al-Matba'ahal-Salafiyah, 1928), 1: 106; Malik b. Anas, Al-Mudawwanah

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Leather-making was particularly prominent in al-Ta'if area, a region famous for the quality of its production to the extent that it enjoyed a significant export market, not only to Suq CUkaz and other neighboring areas, but also to Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Persia, Iraq, and Abyssinia. The fourth/tenth-century Yemeni geographer al-Hamdani marvels at the extent of al-Ta'if's leather industry, calling it "a land of tanners," and al-Waqidi and other chroniclers as well cite numerous commercial caravans departing from there bearing leather goods.91 In this trade, the sources relate that Hashim b. 'Abd Manaf commenced his commercial career by gaining official permission to sell leather goods in Byzantine-occupied Syria. They likewise contain various references to camel caravans bearing leather goods from the Hijaz to Syria as well as to CAmrb. al-'As and others selling IHijazi leather goods in Egypt and Abyssinia; and indeed to CAmrb. al-'As ostensibly discussing the merits of his Hijazi hides with the latter's ruler. Amongst the first goods seized by the Muslims as booty was al-Ta'ifi leather, in their raid on a Makkan caravan at al-Nakhlah.92 An abundance of both wild and domesticated animals, combined with a suitable climate, made al-Ta'if region a natural center for the processing of hides and for leather goods manufacturing. In addition, qaraz trees, which produced a substance used in tanning, were indigenous to both the Hijaz and the Najd. This product appears to have enjoyed a brisk demand, as one Companion of Muhammad reportedly became so wealthy brokering it that he was known as "Sa'd al-Qaraz."93 Other cities of the region developed significant tanning and leather-making industries as well. Both Makkah and al-Madinah had major hide-processing centers, importing their qaraz from Wadi al-'Aqiq, near al-Madinah. A variety of sources suggest that the sale of leather goods in the regional markets was generally quite buoyant, particularly at the peak of the pilgrimage season.94 (iv) Textiles and Weaving. Hijazi textiles also were a flourishing industry. Weaving was an art form in early medieval Arabia that capitalized upon the ready availability of various raw materials. Wool was available in abundance. It was an input in the production of yarn, which local craftsmen specialized in weaving into useful household and clothing articles. Dying and sewing cloths also were key sub-sectors of this industry, and al-Bukhari devotes
(Cairo:Dar al-SaCadah, 1905), 11: 391, 491; al-Samhudi,Wafa' al-Wafa', 4: 1230; Ibn Qutaybah,Al-Shi'r wa alShu'dra, 1: 440; al-Isfahani, Kitab al-Aghani, 3: 346; 8: 152-53; 9: 55ff.; Ibn Sacd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, 5: 230; 'A. al-Kitani,Nizam al-Hukumahal-Nabawiyah, 2: 57; J. 'All, Al-Mufassalfi Ta'rikh,1: 537ff., 587ff. 91. Al-Hamdani, Sifat Jazirat al-'Arab, ed. M. al-'Akwa (Riyadh: Dar al-Yamamah,1977), 260; al-Waqidi, Kitab al-Maghazl, 1: 92. 92. On this trade, see al-Kindi, The Governors and Judges of Egypt, ed. R. Guest (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1912), 6ff.; al-Hamdani,Sifat Jazirat al-'Arab, 260; al-Zubayrb. Bakkar,JamharatNasab Quraysh, 2: 486; Ibn Habib, Kitab al-Muhabbar, 32, 73; al-Qali, Kitab Dhayl al-Amali, 199; al-Baladhuri,Ansab al-Ashraf, 1: 101, 232; alWaqidi, Kitab al-Maghazi, 1: 13, 16; 2: 742; Ibn Rustah, Al-A'laq Al-Nafisah, 215; al-Rashidb. al-Zubayr,Kitab al-Dhakhd'ir wa al-Tuhuf,ed. M. Hamidullah (Kuwait: Da'irat al-Matbu'atwa ala-Nashr, 1959), 11; Ibn Kathir, Al-Bidayahwa al-Nihayah, 8: 345; Ibn Fahd,Ithafal-Warabi-AkhbarUmmal-Qura, MS2204 (Cairo:Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyah,n.d.), fol. 330; Ibn al-Athir,Usd al-Ghabahfi Ma'rifat al-Sahabah (Cairo:Jam'lyatal-Ma'arif al-Misriyah, 1864), 3: 315; Ibn al-Mujawir,Ta'rikhal-Mustabsir (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1951), 25, 32; al-Khuza'i, Takhrj al-Dalalat al-Sam'iyah 'ala ma KdndafAhd al-Rasul (Cairo:al-Majlis al-A'la li'l Shu'unal-Islamiyah, 1980), 715; al-Salihi al-Shami, Subal al-Hudan wa al-Rashad, 2: 87. 93. See sources cited in the preceding footnote, plus 'A. al-'Umari, Al-Hiraf wa al-Sina'atfi al-Hijaz, 326ff.; J. 'Ali, Al-Mufassalfi Ta'rikh,7: 538-39, 587; A. al-Kitani,Nizam al-Hukumahal-Nabawiyah,2: 56-57; N. Saqar, Al-Ta'ifft al-'Asr al-Jahili, 44. 94. Ibn al-Mujawir,Ta'rikhal-Mustabsir, 13; al-Azraqi, AkhbarMakkah,466; Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-TabaqatalKubra, 5: 26, 366; 8: 73, 206; 'A. al-'Umari,Al-Hirafwa al-Sina'atfi al-Hijaz, 327-28.

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several chapters of his book of traditions to their pursuit. Various Companions of the b. b. Prophet-among them 'Abdal-Rahman 'Awf, 'Amrb. al-'As, al-Zubayr 'Awwam,Talhah b. 'Ubayd Allah, and futurecaliphs Abu Bakr and 'Uthmanb. 'Affan-are said to have specialized as cloth (bazz) merchants,marketingtheir outputin the aswdq of al-Madinah.95 This was a significantregionalindustrialsector,both in tradeandmanufacture. Al-Waqidi cites the inventoriesof one merchantconsisting of 1,500 articlesof clothing andtwentybales of Yemeni cloth on sale in al-Madinahduringthe time of the Prophet;and other sources indicate that at one point in Muhammad'sera, no less than seven caravansbearingSyriancloth arrivedin al-Madinahin a single day. Egyptian and Coptic textiles likewise made their way Slaves appearto have been exalong well-plied traderoutesto a variety of Hijazi markets.96 Al-Isfahani states that 'Umarb. Abi tensively involved in indigenous clothing manufacture. Rabi'ah owned seventy slaves who were engaged in weaving,97that members of the banu and Makhzumemployed slaves for the same purpose,98 still otherswere involved in weaving date-palmleaves into baskets and other useful products.99 Kiswahs from the early Islamic era-coverings measuring fourteen meters by fortyseven meters, bearing gold and silver decorative embroidering(and later Qur'anicverses), made each year to cover the Ka'bah during the pilgrimage season-evince sophisticated They were not invariably entirely "Hijdzi,"of course, for the requisite cloth tailoring.100 was often importedfrom Yemen or Egypt. Perpetuatinga traditionthat dated to pre-Islamic times, the Makkan historian al-Fasi relates that whereas Muhammadcovered the Ka'bah his with "al-thiyabal-Yamaniyah," early successors had dressed it with cloth made of Egyptian "Coptic"linen. 101 Nonetheless, local decorative and inlay workmanshipoften appearsto have been intriwho introduced cate. Certain sources claim that it was the third caliph, CUthmanb. CAffan, brocaded ornamentalembellishments to the kiswah, a practice that appearsto have grown increasingly more elaborate with the passage of time. Though it was not until the onset of the eighth/fourteenth century,accordingto a much later chronicler,al-Fasi, that Qur'anicinscriptionsfirst appeared,the sources nonethelessmake clear thatthe Prophetand his caliphal successors were committedto quality workmanshipand sparedno expense in the manufacture of the kiswah, a phenomenonthat has been perpetuatedto the presentday.102 By relative cost analogy, even with modern automated technologies, the most recent kiswahs-black, five-piece silk curtains covering 658 square meters-have required for
95. See Ibn Khaldin, MuqaddimatIbn Khaldun(Beirut: Dar al-Hilal, 1978), 411-12; al-Bukhari,Sahih alBukhari, 3: 13-14, 19, 52; al-Khuza'i, Takhrijal-Dalalat al-Sam'iyah, 702; al-Shawkani,Fath al-Qadir al-Jami', 3: 190; Ibn Qutaybah,Kitab al-Ma'arif, 249-50; al-Salihi al-Shami, Subal al-Hudan wa al-Rashad, 3: 350; 'A. al'Umari, Al-Hirafwa al-Sind'datfial-Hijaz, 330ff.; J. CAll,Al-Mufassalfi Ta'rikh,7: 525, 588, 594; 'A. al-Kitani, Nizam al-Hukumahal-Nabawiyah, 2: 59-60; Sergeant,"MeccanTrade,"476. 96. On this trade,see al-Waqidi,Kitab al-Maghazi, 2: 664; al-Jahiz, Al-Tabassurfi al-Tijarah(Cairo:Dar alKitab al-Jadid, 1966), 25ff., 35; al-Tha'alibi, Thimaral-Qulub, ed. M. Ibrahim(Cairo: Dgr Nahdat Misr, 1965), 534, 539; Ibn Habib, Kitab al-Munammaq(Beirut:'Alam al-Kutub,1985), 32, 73, 106; Ibn Hanbal, Al-Musnad,4: 75; al-Qali, Kitab Dhayl al-Amali, 3: 199; al-Isfahani,Kitab al-Aghani, 18: 123. 97. Al-Isfahani, Kitab al-Aghdni, 1: 78. 98. Ibid., 5:114. 99. Al-Baghdadi,Khazanatal-Adab, 1: 106; Malik b. Anas, Al-Mudawwanah,9: 24; 15: 153. 100. See al-Azraqi,AkhbarMakkah,174. 101. Al-Fasi, Al-'Iqd al-Thaminf Ta'rikhal-Bilad al-Amn (Beirut: Maktabatal-Risalah, 1985), 1: 195-97; M. al-Ruqqun,Kiswat al-Ka'bah al-Mu'azzamah'abr al-Ta'rikh(Cairo:Matba'atal-Jiblawi, 1986), 27, 31. 102. Al-Fasi, Al-'Iqd al-Thamin, 1: 198ff.; M. al-Ruqqun,Kiswat al-Ka'bah, 28, 73-74.

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production each year the Saudi Riyal equivalent of more than U.S. $4.5 million and more than two hundred laborers. The heretofore cited 100-dinar gowns and 1,000-dirham thiyab said to have been worn by contemporaries of Muhammad-not to mention the Prophet's grandfather's burial gown, which reportedly was gilded with 1,000 mithqals of gold-must also have been distinguished by their fineness to have commanded such imposing prices. 103 The latter story, however, may border on the apocryphal, since the gold weight alone in this burial gown would have exceeded three kilograms. (v) Perfumes. Perfumes likewise were in high demand in contemporary West Arabian commercial markets, causing al-Bukhari to title a significant section of his assembled traditions "A Chapter on Buying Perfumes and Musk." 104 The Hijaz, and al-Ta'if in particular, were known both for the production of fragrances and their subsequent wholesale and retail distribution, a portion of which would be dispatched annually to Makkah to perfume the Kacbah.105 Abu Jahl's mother is said to have sold perfumes in Makkah, as did 'Abd Allah b. Kathir.106 Al-Isfahani states that during one pilgrimage season, 'Umar b. Abi Rabicah purchased perfumes and cloth at the Makkan market valued at a thousand dinars; and adds that he often procured such goods from the Yemen as well.107 Al-Tabari asserts that 'Abbas b. 'Abd al-Muttalib also dealt in Yemeni perfumes,108 whereas al-Kindi testifies that 'Amr b. al-'As sold perfumes (as well as leather goods) in Egypt;109 and al-Isfahani claims that Hakam b. Abi al-'As sold them to the Lakhmids in al-Hirah. 10 Ibn Qutaybah indicates that in addition to being a major grain broker, Abu Talib was a perfume merchant dealing in a kind called 'itr.ll The compiler of prophetic traditions, Muslim, describes the operations of a first/seventh-century Qurashi merchant in al-Madinah who traded in a perfume-yielding plant called idhkir. 112 Al-Baladhuri, in turn, relates that there were over four hundred perfumers at this time in al-Madinah alone, and that they participated with Prophet Muhammad in the defense of the city while it was under siege by Umayyad forces.113 In sum, the industrial economy of the Hijaz at the rise of Islam was not as primitive as it has been portrayed. Indeed, wealth generated from precious metals made productive investment possible in a very diversified industrial base, enabling local entrepreneurs to pursue a wide variety of economic ventures. The early Makkans did possess commodities to consume and export, and trade in them they did, producing those complex bilateral trade patterns that seem to have mystified Crone. Let us now turn to a review of her most perplexing trade concerns.

103. T P. Hughes, Dictionary of Islam (New Delhi: Cosmo Publications, 1982), 280; Arab News (Jiddah) 25 March 1998, p. 3; RiyadhDaily, 25 March 1998, p. 2. 104. Al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari,9: 176. 105. Ibn Rustah, Al-A'laq Al-Nafisah, 198. 106. Al-Waqidi, Kitab al-Maghazi, 1: 65; Ibn Khallikan,Wafayatal-A'yn, ed. Ahsan 'Abbas (Beirut:Dar alThaqafah,1969), 3: 41. al-Kamil 107. Al-Isfahani, Kitab al-Aghani, 1: 167; Ibn Sacd,Kitab al-Tabaqatal-Kubri, 8: 220; al-Mubarrad, fi al-Lughah wa al-Adab, 2: 230. 108. Al-Tabari,Ta'rikh,1: pt. 1, 162. 109. Al-Kindi, The Governorsand Judges of Egypt, 6ff. 110. Al-Isfahani, Kitab al-Aghani, 17: 369; 22: 38. 111. Ibn Qutaybah,Kitab al-Ma'arif, 249-50. 112. Muslim, Sahih Muslim (Cairo:MaktabatMustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1929), 8: 143-44. 113. Al-Baladhuri,Ansab al-Ashraf,4: pt. 2, 42-43, 136; 7: 158.

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UNRAVELING THE "COALS TO NEWCASTLE" ENIGMA

1. The Role of Multi-Directional Trade in Forging the Medieval Hijazi Economic Dynamic. Recent scholarly analysis has focused extensively upon the countertradedimension in early medieval HIijazicommerce; and with apparentreason, as it was not inconsequential. The diversified economic base of early Makkahand its environs constituted a significant consumption center, both from the standpointsof productioninputs and consumer purchases, as well as serving as a crucial nexus for transittrade. The division of labor documented in the Arabic sources suggest that local merchantsand entrepreneurs met both their business and personal consumption requirementsthroughacquisitions from others. Wholesale purchases to meet the physical needs of pilgrims and other participantsin the seasonal tradefairs in the form of foodstuffs, tent housing, and other accommodations lent furtherimpetus to regional market demand. At the same time, the reported wealth of local businessmen suggests that Makkah's citizens possessed sufficient resources to make such acquisitions. The sources thus make clear that the legend of an expansive early medieval Hijazi trade was by no means a myth. It was, instead, the story of a dynamic, diverse, integratedeconomy comprisednot just of merchantsand financiersbut of miners, farmers,jewelers, blacksmiths, tanners,tailors, and otherproducers;in short,people who had commodities to trade, to export as well as to import. In the species of free marketeconomics then at work in the we IHijaz, observe the truism that "tradefollows demand,"producingquite naturalbilateral commercial flows. Yet Crone, among others, wrestles with what she calls the "carryingcoals to Newcastle" trade phenomenon. Why would a region export products from a specific commodity category-be it clothing, leather goods, or foodstuffs-to a particulararea, and then import products from the same category back again? From the standpointof economic theory, the answer is simple. Demand, quality,taste, preference,and price differentialsplay highly significant roles in creatingparticularcommercial patterns.It often is the case that one region manufacturesa lesser quality productthatmeets lower or middle-class needs, while another makes more pricey, sophisticated products of the same generic type, and that these goods are then exchanged between them. Thatis why one finds today a particularindustrialdistrict of GermanymanufacturingVolkswagens, "people's vehicles," while anotherproduces the more expensive Mercedes. It is a timeless axiom of macroeconomics that the only way net wealth is generated in any jurisdiction is through the sometimes quite complex combination of external exports and reverse investments. Foreign tradehas historically been prerequisiteto both processes, since selling only to those within the samejurisdictionis economically no more than a zerosum game; as it is an inescapable commercial reality that if you are to produce significant wealth through industrial production, then you must export the products that you make. This fact has been recognized in all civilizations, and the early medieval Hijazis were clearly no exception. Thus it is that the Qur'anspeaks of annualtradingcaravansto Yemen and Syria; and the early sources find Hashim, the ostensible Qurashi founder of Makkan internationaltrade, in southern Syria selling leather goods and cloth, indeed setting up an entire Qurashitrading community there. Thus it is that we also find Abu Sufyan and 'Abd al-Rahmanb. CAwf often in Syria selling leather, cottage cheese, and clarifiedbutter;the Prophethimself journeying to Busra with his uncle Abu Talib to promotethe sale of diverse productsincluding, througha muddrabahtradecontract,the merchandiseof his futurewife Khadijah;the mili-

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tary commander'Amrb. al-'As in Egypt selling perfumes and leather;Hakamb. Abi al-'As in al-Hirahselling perfumes;'Uthmanb. al-Huwayrithcontractingto sell clarified butterto b. Byzantine Syria; and Abu Sufyan in Iraq, CUthman 'Affan and Sa'id b. al-'As in Syria, b. b. CAbbas CAbd al-Muttalib,Abu Rabi'ah, and Walid b. al-Mughirahin Yemen, and CAmr al-'As and Umarahb. Walid al-Makhzumiin Abyssinia on similar tradingexpeditions.114 For they were on a common mission: promoting familiar products, all of which were in manufactured their home base, the Hijaz, at the rise of Islam. One need not be baffledby should their activities. Nor is it illogical thatcontemporary Hijazis, like othermanufacturers, want to export the commodities that they produced. This is homo economicus at workcreatingtradepatternsdictatedby the quest for net wealth generation, as shaped by market demand,unit price, and consumer preference. 2. The Role of the Pilgrimage in Shaping MakkanTrade. As we have seen, the nature and content of the Makkah region's sixth and seventh-centuryexport flows can be rationally explained by evaluating the full spectrum of commodities indigenously produced. The same is true for imports. For it is not improbablethat, because of other, equally cogent economic factors, the early Makkans should have wanted to procureproductswithin commodity categories similar to those they exported. Indeed, given a sizable, albeit fluctuating, consumer base that possessed a nucleus of self-sustaining productive industries but a paucity of various specific naturalresources, what they importedmay be as economically significant as what they exported. Accordingly,one finds reportsof Hashim importingwheat from Syria; of Syrians bringing grains and oils to Makkahin the Prophet'sera; of Makkansalso bringingoils from Syria by camel caravan (al-zayt al-rikabl, an early version of the "mobile oil corporation");of wheat being broughtin from Hawranand al-Balqa'; of 'Abd al-Rahmanb. CAwf employing seven hundredcamels to import grains and flour back from Syria after having delivered other agriculturalcommodities there;of 'Abd Allah b. JudCan bringing two thousandcamel loads of honey, wheat, and clarified butter, and Talhahb. 'Ubayd Allah carryingquantities of cloth back from the Levant as well; of 'Abd Allah b. Abi Rabilah selling Yemeni perfumes in al-Madinah;of Safwan b. Umayyah, according to both al-Azraqi and al-Fakihi, running a marketfacility in lower Makkahwherein he stored goods that he importedfrom Egypt; and sundry other reports documenting Hijazi imports of various armaments,food products,clothing, textiles, and perfumes from Syria, Egypt, Yemen, and Abyssinia-commodities similar to those that they also made and exported to those countries.115 What was the dynamic? Again, nothing more than demand, price, and preference-the basic functioning of free marketeconomics-at work in the early Makkan economy. This is why the Makkansdelivered clothing and foodstuffs to Syria and also broughtback their Syrian commodity equivalents. This is also why Michigan, which has its own dairy herds,
114. See Qur'an,106:1-4; Ibn Hisham,Das LebenMuhammad 119ff.; idem, Kitab Sirat al-Nabi, 1: 192; Ibn 's, Sa'd, Kitabal-Tabaqatal-Kubra, 1: 75, 126ff., 156; Ibn Habib,Kitabal-Muhabbar,162; idem, Kitdbal-Munammaq, 42, 171; al-Salihi al-Shami, Subal al-Hudan wa al-Rashad, 1: 316ff.; al-Tha'alabi, Thimar al-Qulub, 115-16; al-Qali, Kitab Dhayl al-Amali, 199; al-Kindi, The Governorsand Judges of Egypt, 7; al-Isfahani,Kitab al-Aghani, 8: 206, 369; 9: 55ff.; al-Waqidi,Kitab al-Maghazi, 1: 28, 197; al-Azraqi, AkhbarMakkah, 175; al-Tabari,Ta'rikh, 1: pt. 1, 162; Ibn Hajar,Kitab al-Isabah, 3: 237-38; Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad,82-83. 115. See Ibn al-Athir,Usd al-Ghdbah,3: 115; Ibn Sa'd, Kitabal-Tabaqatal-Kubra, 1: 43-44; 3: 125ff., 215; Ibn Kathir,Al-Bidayahwa al-Nihayah, 8: 4, 70; 9: 232; al-Tabari,Ta'rikh,1: pt. 1, 162; al-Waqidi,Kitab al-Maghazi, 1: 395; 2: 523; 3: 989ff., 1051; Ibn Hisham, Das Leben Muhammad's,232, 531, 911; al-Zabidi, Taj al-'Urus min Jawahiral-Qamus,ed. A. Farraj(Kuwait:Wizaratal-Irshadwa al-Anba', 1965), 1: 277; al-Azraqi,AkhbarMakkah, 474; al-Fakihi,Ta'rikhMakkah(Leiden, n.d.), MSOr. 463, fol. 461b.

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imports cheeses from a sister state, Wisconsin, just as successful Westernbusinessmen today often prefer Hong Kong tailored suits to local fashions. Crone is aware of the bilateraltrade activities cited above. Many, if not most, of them, are mentioned in her book. Yet she remains troubled by the "common commodities" dimension to bilateraltrade,based on a few transactionsdocumentedin anecdotal source evidence, while missing the true significance of the total trade picture. "It makes no sense," she laments.116 But it does. The annualHajj has historically generateddramaticseasonal shifts in local populace levels; and with them, concomitant changes in consumer demand. In the off-season in early Makkah,the regional economic base probablywas adequateto meet proximateconsumption needs and even to permit some exporting, thereby creating rational, market-driveneconomies of scale. But duringthe rapidupswing in numbersof consumersin the sacred months of pilgrimage,more voluminousimportsof transport animals,foodstuffs, clothing, andother consumergoods doubtless were required-commodity needs that,in slackertimes, would be met throughlocal production.To meet these seasonal requirements,then, the Makkanshad to import consumer goods in substantialwholesale volume. There were other concurrentcogent commercial and economic factors actively at work in the early medieval Makkanmarketplaceas well. For example, basic productioneconomics would dictate that annualmanufacturing infrastructure capacity not be substantiallyexpanded for just three months of increased consumption, particularlyfor perishable goods that could not be stockpiled in this pre-refrigerationage. Also, transportationeconomics would dictate thatHijazi merchantcamel caravansnot returnfrom their destinationsemptyhanded. Only with additionalwholesale acquisition risk could they effectively compete, at retail, with the incoming foreign pilgrim-merchantswith their own home-based goods-a practice readily viable within the essentially laissez faire economy that characterizedthe contemporary IHijaz.117 Moreover, in this tight merchandisedemandmarket,selling to foreign pilgrims productsfrom their own homelands with which they were acquaintedwould doubtless have been more marketablethanthe promotionof less familiar,and perhapslesser quality,Hijazi goods. Finally, the seasonal trade fairs likewise allowed for "productdiversity"-offering an ideal venue for the exchange of a broad range of merchandise, distinguished by price and quality differentials,obtainedfrom a wide rangeof sources. They were a commercial midpoint for merchantsof many nationalities. A Yemeni pilgrim wholesale peddlar might be seeking a line of Syrian thiyab, but not Hijazi counterparts.Hijazi merchants, prudently attuned to market demand and profit motive, therefore, would have a ready selection of them in theirinventories.Thus it is thatal-Marzuqistates of "Suq'Uqdz": "Therewere in 'Uqdz things that were not in any other Arab market.A Yemeni king would send a good sword and the finest cloths, and holding these up in 'Uqaz, would say: 'Let the noblest of Arabs take these.' "118 At the same time, a better understandingof the commercial role of key players in early Makkantradelikewise contributesto comprehendingits structureand direction.Forjust as numerous Qurashis were individually involved in trade at the rise of Islam, so its "blue116. Crone,Meccan Trade,102. 117. This is a point made by F Donner, "Mecca's Food Supply and Muhammad'sBoycott,"JESHO20 (1977): 254: ".. for the caravansthat went northbearing spices, ivory, and gold could easily have returnedcarryingloads of cereals, dried fruits, and oils, which were plentiful and inexpensive in Syria." 118. Al-Marzuqi,Kitab al-Azminahwa al-Amkinah(Hyderabad: Matbacat Da'irat al-MacSrif,1914), 2: 66; alIsfahani, Bilad al-'Arab, p. 32, echoed by Ibn Habib, Kitab al-Muhabbar, 267. Al-Marzuqi, 2: 165, also states: "These are the marketsof the Arabs and there is none greaterthan 'Uqaz."

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blood" banu Hashim clan was collectively involved in the regional promotion, regulation, and administrationof trade. Indeed, their "Dar al-Nadwah,"generally functioned economically not unlike a modern "chamberof commerce,"having majortradecontractsdrawnup within its confines. Major trading caravans are said to have started out from its doorstep, and it was to there that they returned.119 Such developments were not without precedent, of course. Indeed, it would be surprising were it otherwise. For the bani Hashim, within the Hijazi tribal matrix, historically functioned as "first among equals"-charged with such functions of public religious administrationas the siddnah (custodianshipof the Ka(bah),hijdbah (opening and closing of the Ka'bahto visitors), sifdrah (negotiating inter-tribalaffairs), rifadah (providingpilgrims with sustenance), and "siqayah"(providing pilgrims with water). Ibn Habib indicates that full-scale commercial caravansas well as individual pilgrims would be provided with such
services.
120

Many of these responsibilities, such as the rifadah, were significant commercial functions in their own right, involving substantiallogistical coordination.Al-Muqaddasistates, for instance, that when Caliph (Umar b. al-Khattab ordered rebuilt an erstwhile Roman canal, across Egypt north of al-Fustat, that connected the Nile with the Red Sea, thereby enabling Egyptian merchantships bearing corn, grains, and other produceto sail directly to ports situated on the western coastline of the Arabian peninsula, no less than three thousand camel loads of corn were exported from Egypt to the Hijaz in a single season to meet the needs of pilgrims.121 In short, the marketfunctioning of the early medieval Hijaz was no more than the dynamic of fundamentalfree-marketeconomics operatingin an early medieval Mideast commercial setting. Hijazi marketdemand fluctuatedby season, creating certain infrastructural imbalances and, with them, demand shifts in both import and export requirements.It was precisely this dynamic that produces the quite natural"coals to Newcastle" bilateral trade patterns.For Newcastle imports coals perforce when it cannot readily meet local demand.
CONCLUSIONS

Crone ends her compelling treatmentof early Makkan trade by concluding modestly: Yet "This is a book in which little has been learnt and much unlearnt."122 in debunking the notion of early Christianera trans-Arabiantrade patternsperpetuatingwell into the sixth and seventh centuries, she, like Serjeant, Simon, Ibrahim,Peters, and others, has made a considerable contributionto the study of early Islamic commercial historiography.For her analysis downplaying the significance of contemporarytransit trade has permitted a refocusing on other critical facets of the medieval Hijazi industrialbase that were far more economically significant-among them, indigenously generated import and export trade derived from agriculture,mining, and manufacturing.Indeed, such a focus, tying the testimony of the chronicled sources to tangible physical evidence, clearly supportsthe contention that the region did produce many of those commodity exports that have been the source of recent scholarly concern. Likewise, a better understandingof the commodity demand requirementsof the Hajj unravels the various bilateral trade dilemmas that Crone poses, indicating that substantial
119. 120. 121. 122. Al-Azraqi, AkhbarMakkah,69, 436-41. Ibn Habib, Kitab al-Muhabbar,176ff. "Zamzamwater"was anotherQurashimonopoly. See al-Muqaddasi,Ahsan al-Taqasim,97, 195. Crone, Meccan Trade,203.

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importslikely were requiredto meet the incoming pilgrims' needs, whereasin the pilgrimage off-season, certainexports in similar commodities were possible. This was a simple case of economic rationalization,a delicate industrial and commercial fine-tuning invoking those economies of scale that shape all tradepatterns.In this instance, ever-present,market-driven the local productioninfrastructure appearsto have possessed the capacityto generateexportable commodities beyond routine local needs, but doubtless lacked the ability to meet the massive volume of inboundHajji "consumerdemands"entirely from internalresources. Accordingly, the present inquiry has developed complementaryevidence presented by written sources, supportedby the residual physical artifacts, that incontestably indicates that sixth to seventh-centuryMakkah was far more than a mere transit stop on the classic trans-Arabian spice route of antiquity.Because of the prevalence of gold and silver, the indigenous macroeconomywas both vibrantand productive. Precious metals underwroteinvestments in expandingindustriesthat producedexportablecommodities. They also served as production inputs for key manufacturingindustries; and what emerged was a wealthy, burgeoningeconomy with its own basic export mandatesand importneeds. The early Makkan trade claims of the medieval Arab chronicles thus are not incomprehensible nor are they even particularlycontradictorywhen examined under the scope of modern economic theory. It This is a reconciliatory,somewhat revisionist interpretation. is sustained by both textual and extant tangible evidence, and enjoys the additionalmerit of allowing closure on a more positive note than has often characterizedthe early Makkantrade debate. Now, on at least four issues, most scholarsof the region's early economic history should concur:(i) that anas economic resources,the medieval Arabic sources must be treatedas the fragmentary, ecdotal accountsthatthey are, not historicalfiction, but also not detailed statisticalabstracts; (ii) that they document a quite significant import-exporttrade in high-volume, lower unitvalue goods of the types then being producedin the Hijaz; (iii) that their noteworthysilence on perpetuationof the Near Easterntradepatternsthat obtainedin the second Christiancentury is probablysignificant;and finally (iv) that the significance may lie in the reality that a sixth to seventh-centurytrade in "spices, silks, frankincense,and myrrhof Arabi"is likely no more than a modern orientalistmyth. For the reality is that the Arabic sources did not make such extravagantclaims-modern scholars merely presumedthat they had-and the great contributionof Crone, Serjeant,Peters, Simon, Ibrahim, and others has been to prove a critical non-sequiturto be precisely what it was. As such, and in this context, their historiographictrade concerns might more precisely be addressedto MontgomeryWatt (and before him, Henri Lammens) than to Muhammad al-Waqidi. In sum, the early medieval Arabs had at their disposal both the resource base and the business tools needed to achieve what the Islamic sources claim they did. Whatever the strengthsor weaknesses of any particularsource, moreover, the data, when taken in aggregate, converge in a compelling way to indicate that early medieval West Arabia enjoyed the presence of a substantiallyproductiveeconomic base and an attendant,equally significant multi-directional trade in the commodities produced. The net result, then, is not a commercial illusion producedby hagiographiclore. It is, instead, a rationaldata-composite effectively defining a complete and fully integratedfree-marketmacroeconomy.