Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE PAST REMEMBERED t 35
doubt, however, that the various rights and privileges connected
with the shrine—its wardenship and the control of food and drink
for pilgrims—are authentic and ancient; many of them persisted as
coveted emoluments into Islamic times, which would explain their
prominent place in the later historians.
More ubiquitous in our sources, though preserved in a far more
diffuse and discursive fashion, are observations about the social
(and deeply political) relationships that underlay the town’s organization.
“Town” may be somewhat overgenerous: Mecca was a
tiny, haphazard collection of mud-brick dwellings around a water
hole. It was, for all that, a permanent settlement and not a nomadic
camp, yet it was tribal in its outlook and its manner of
conducting its affairs. The tribal Quraysh were the masters of the
place, but they suffered their own internal divisions from the outset,
divisions that escalated into continuous power (or perhaps
class) struggles between the principal clans of the Quraysh and
came to a head in the formation of powerful though shifting alliances
among them.
Finally, though organized as a tribal society, Mecca was also
socially open. The rulers of Mecca welcomed individuals and small
groups of immigrants from among its tribal neighbors. There were
tribal outsiders as well, merchants and mercenaries, at least some
of whom were Jews and Christians. Some among the population of
Mecca appear to have been Abyssinians from across the Red Sea,
Christians most likely, and they were possibly part of a merchant
colony, or perhaps even a mercenary contingent that served as the
Quraysh’s military arm.
The Holy Place
Mecca the haram, the holy place, appears to antedate Mecca the
city. The later Muslim authorities credit the latter to Qusayy, who,
if he is a historical personage, must be dated in the late fourth or
early fifth century of the common era. That there was a shrine
before a settlement in that inhospitable valley we assume simply
from the circumstances of the place: Mecca possessed none of the