- Joined
- Mar 29, 2013
- Messages
- 34,952
- Reaction score
- 5,487
- Gender
- Female
- Political Leaning
- Undisclosed
Sorry for the late response. Christmas kind of got in the way.
I went to your Wikipedia article. It's been about 15 years since I read Balyuzi. He did mention that caravan raiding was a common practice throughout the Arabian peninsula. But I don't recall that was the reason for the Meccans to attack the Medinins. But it could have been even though I believe Balyuzi framed the attacks mostly as a religious battle. Maybe religion was used as a pretext to eliminate some business competition.
As for no more Jews in Medina, Balyuzi said that religion in those days with the Arabs was somewhat fickle. Mohammed managed to convert many Medinin Jews, Christians, and idolators to his way.
Here's an interesting read. It's long.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Arabia/Arabia-since-the-7th-centuryArabia since the 7th century
Arabian and Islamic expansion
Muhammad was born in 570 of the Hāshimite (Banū Hāshim) branch of the noble house of ʿAbd Manāf; though orphaned at an early age and, in consequence, with little influence, he never lacked protection by his clan. Marriage to a wealthy widow improved his position as a merchant, but he began to make his mark in Mecca by preaching the oneness of Allah. Rejected by the Quraysh lords, Muhammad sought affiliation with other tribes; he was unsuccessful until he managed to negotiate a pact with the tribal chiefs of Medina, whereby he obtained their protection and became theocratic head and arbiter of the Medinan tribal confederation (ummah). Those Quraysh who joined him there were known as muhājirūn (refugees or emigrants), while his Medinan allies were called anṣār (supporters). The Muslim era dates from the Hijrah (Hegira)—Muhammad’s move to Medina in 622 ce. (For more detail about the life of Muhammad and the rise of Islam, see Islam; Islamic world.)
After Muhammad’s entry into Mecca the tribes linked with Quraysh came to negotiate with him and to accept Islam; this meant little more than giving up their local deities and worshiping Allah alone. They had to pay the tax, but this was not novel because the tribal chiefs had already been taxed to protect the Meccan ḥaram.
Many tribesmen probably waited to join the winner. Doubtless they cared little for Islam—many tried to break away (the so-called apostasy) on Muhammad’s death.
Islam, however, was destined for a world role. Under Muhammad’s successors the expansionist urge of the tribes, temporarily united around the nucleus of the two sacred enclaves, coincided with the weakness of Byzantium and Sāsānian Persia.
Tribes summoned to the banners of Islam launched a career of conquest that promised to satisfy the mandate of their new faith as well as the desire for booty and lands. With families and flocks, they left the peninsula. Population movements of such magnitude affected all of Arabia; in Hadhramaut they possibly caused neglect of irrigation works, resulting in erosion of fertile lands. In Oman, too, when Arab tribes evicted the Persian ruling class, its complex irrigation system seems to have suffered severely. Many Omani Arabs about the mid-7th century left for Basra (in Iraq) and formed the influential Azd group there. Arabian Islam replaced Persian influence in the Bahrain district and Al-Ḥasā province in the northeast, and in Yemen.