The Formation of Islam Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800

To the south of the Fertile Crescent stretches the peninsula which takes its name from the Arabs who inhabit it. Arabia was the setting for the career of the Prophet Muhammad as recounted in the Muslim sources, and so makes a special claim upon the attention of those interested in the subsequent unfolding of Near Eastern history. From the beginning, however, we should bear two caveats in mind. First, the connection between Arabia and its people and their culture, on the one hand, and Islam on the other, is problematic. The religious tradition which we now identify as “Islam” may have begun in an Arabian context, and certainly that context remained central to the later development of the religion for any number of reasons – for example, the fact that the Koran is in Arabic, the language of the inhabitants of the peninsula, or the importance which Muslims later accorded to the behavior of the Prophet and his companions in determining what constitutes a “proper” Islamic life. But is it useful to think of Islam as principally a product of Arabia, as the Islamic tradition does? Certainly the demographic and cultural center of gravity in the Islamic world quickly moved beyond the Arabian peninsula. Even if the Arabian crucible is important, what exactly does that mean? To what extent, for example, was Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries integrated into the larger cultural and religious patterns of the rest of the Near East? Arabia may be where Islam began, but the cultures and traditions of other areas, most notably the more populated regions of the Near East from Egypt to Iran, arguably played a more critical role in the subsequent delimitation of Islamic identity.