I think that there are clear parallels between this and Genghis Khan. Both united warring tribes within Herding societies into centralized political authority and turned them into vehicles for external expansion against much larger Agrarian empires. The biggest difference is that in the Middle East, religion played a much bigger role.
Please add a story on the Mongol herds glory (and fall from) on your list of future reports !
I’m particularly surprised at the contrast between their Western ventures (frightening, but which did not last) and their Persian and Indian/Mughal conqests, which built empires lasting centuries ?
I don’t really think you can count their descendants, taking over India. Several centuries after their empire fell apart as their conquest of India and their rule of Persia actually ended before their rule over China. If anything they ruled Russia longer than any of their other conquest and Crimea was the last place that the Royal dynasty ruled uninterrupted from the empire
It still intrigues me that they both conquered unprecedented swathes of territories (in just 1, then in just a few generations) - only to crumble and get either defeated or absorbed quickly afterwards.
The exact opposite of say, the Roman Empire (or almost any other one, for that matter) ?
Lovely post and I agree with most of it, although I would like to add a few thoughts regarding the Roman Persian war.
Firstly, I think that war was essential to Islam conquering Arabia because in the normal course of events, neither power would have permitted one single force to take over Arabia. It’s just that they were too busy fighting each other to do anything and afterwards, they were pretty exhausted. Secondly, Persia descended into a pretty chaotic civil war for four years after losing the war and ended up with a child king at the end with the actual government being run by a bunch of regents instead of a single king. This is a major problem both because of normal in fighting issues, but also because central authority was dramatically damaged and obviously no regent has the kind of legitimacy that an adult Kingwood and thus has less political capital. Also just easier to conquer a chaotic government recovering from a civil war instead of a prosperous and stable kingdom that has not undergone any recent problems.
On the Roamen front, the Persians had taken over a lot of their territories, including Egypt the Levant and parts of Anatolia, before being finally defeated, which meant that the territories had been outside their control for over a decade in many cases, which doubtless made them easier to conquer an integrate. And while they weren’t in civil war, when the conquest started their political stability during this period was generally pretty bad and got worse with time. Although I expect, this was also in part consequence of losing legitimacy on account of losing wars. Add in the fact that they had pretty much thrown everything they had into fighting the persons and with us pretty exhausted and it’s not surprising that they collapsed so fast, especially since in places like North Africa, the Arabs were pretty good at integrating other nomadic tribes into their military force, which obviously increased their military power. By integration, I don’t mean hear that they were treated like Arabs, but they became part of the Arab military, and this was obviously a force multiplier for them as it has always been for nomads, integrating other nomadic groups into their army.
Honestly, the whole thing reminds me of the step where the moment a single leader can get their snowball rolling by uniting the entire step under their leadership. They immediately become capable of taking over a huge empire. Although of course many of the advantages that the step gives you don’t exist for the Arabs. The obvious solution of course is to never let the step unite under a single leader and the same applies to Arabia, but as I mentioned earlier, being distracted, fighting each other meant nobody was keeping an eye on that.
Thank you! Perfect addition, and it highlights some of the topics for the next article. Some things I didn't know (Persia had taken Egypt just before!)
I think you mean steppe, not step. Just adding in case somebody reading yout comment is confused.
Sorry about the misspelling. I’m using speech to text, which unfortunately is very prone to this type of mistake.
Persia didn’t exactly take Egypt precisely, they occupied it for almost a decade and a half, but after their capital was threatened, they agreed to a peace deal where they returned it. It’s just that holding a territory for a few years after such a long occupation isn’t going to be enough to restore your old grip, although this is actually less applicable to Egypt, since it took longer for the Arabs to get there, compare to say Syria and it was also occupied for a shorter time compared to areas closer to Persia. Although mind you, I recommend you crosscheck the dates because it’s been several years since I read about this topic, so it’s entirely possible I’m mixing up the dates a little.
Good overview. One element missing is the role Arianism plays in Islam's spread to North Africa. The Vandals were Arians, in conflict with Rome on the very nature of Jesus Christ. They were persecuted especially after Rome recognized the Roman Tridentine version of Christianity. the Vandals were monotheistic but believed Christ was another prophet, in harmony with the Islamic view. The acceptance of Islam, therefore, could have been facilitated by a rejection of Roman and Byzantine versions of Christ.
There was a century without warmth due to volcanic activity , in Indonesia area , from 536 . Justinians plague etc. famine due to persistent cold wet summers . Sassanid and eastern Rome were totally weakened , barely able to man border forts . Western Rome fell to bits. Brittania went from Celt speaking to Germanic speaking as the Roman towns emptied due to plagues, hunger and cold. raiders, for that is what Islam is, found this to be a fertile ground for expansion , you pay less Sakhat or jizya than what the various emperors demanded.?time sxwere hard in the years before the Hejira . .. so look at climate … you missed that one.
In addition to the war between Rome and Persia weakening both powers was that both hired the tribes of Arabia as mercenaries- which gave them insights to both militaries. Then the plague hit the urban areas - which being more nomadic allowed the Arabian tribes to escape most of the impact of. Under the Sword of Islam (Tom Holland) and Patricia Crone both explore some of the foundational parts of Islam’s spread. Curious how it reached all the way to Indonesia- mostly skipping India (another centralized, dominant religion?).
Currently traveling in Granada and I'm really curious about the way the Moors learned from Romans and used geography and engineering to maintain their hold on the region. I hope you dig into that a bit, and also help us understand better the conquest of the Catholics that came next.
I had been expecting this article for some time. I like the way you explain geohistory.
A few ideas — let me know what you think.
I was thinking about the rapid expansion of Islam in relation to the expansion of Christianity over paganism, cf. Katherine Nixey. It is an equally fast phenomenon.
From the death of Muhammad (632) to the conquest of Spain (711) = 79 years.
From 313, the Edict of Milan of Constantine, which legally favored Christianity to the detriment of the ancient religions, to the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, where Christianity was declared the official religion of the Empire = 67 years.
The speed of the software is similar.
Let me now look at the hardware.
In terms of geographical spread, it is partly the same. The origin of Christianity lies in North Africa, which was also the first region to fall into Muslim hands, interestingly enough. By contrast, Europe resisted. Geography has much to say here. A comparison of both expansions could be quite fruitful.
A French historian, Joseph Pérez, says that Spain is the only country in Europe that consciously and explicitly refused to become Muslim. The Africans did not have such an option — those in the north, of course — and surely this was for geographical reasons. The French did not either, although in the opposite sense, because the Pyrenees provided them with a magnificent natural defense. Therefore, ideology could only offer a choice in between the geographical possibilities.
When I say software, I mean the speed at which both religions spread more or less across the same territory, which would be the hardware.
I think you are referring to something different, aren’t you?
Are you referring to the form?
Precisely in the area of Syria and the eastern part of the Empire, Christianity imposed itself in a very violent way (similar to that of Muhammad with the tribes). There were bands of monks who spread terror just with their chants of “Praise be to the Lord!”, which were interpreted by pagan cities as declarations of war. Not very different from “Allah is great!” as proclaimed by some fanatics.
It would be interesting to study this phenomenon from your point of view.
In contrast, in the West it was an intellectual and social phenomenon that came from the lower classes, until adopted by the upper ones.
There are historians who say that the Late Classical period was an intellectual ferment rarely seen throughout history. Many intellectual phenomena coexisted: astrology, paganism, Stoicism, Christianity–Judaism, Greek religions, etc.
In any case, the geo-historical study of the intellectual movements of this period — I am not sure whether anyone has done it.
The followers of Muhammad were very few compared with the vast territories they conquered in record time. Not to mention the population of Mecca as you say.
In general, the population remained quite passive: the same pagans converted to Christianity and later to Islam.
Minor quibble: Camels actually store fat in their hump, not water.
Per Wikipedia: "It is a common myth that a camel stores water in its hump, but the humps in fact are reservoirs of fatty tissue, which can be used as a reserve source of calories, not water.", whereas you wrote: "The cornerstone is the camel, which can eat the type of vegetation in this area and store water to sustain long trips in the desert."
Show the camel the respect it deserves ;) Without camels none of this would have been possible!
You're right you didn't... I'm so used to people thinking that they store water in their humps that I had made that assumption of you... my bad! I used to think that it was the breakdown of the fat in the hump that released water, and while true, it only releases a little, as compared to how much they store in their bloodstream. Go camels, go!
Did you guys ever check how ‘ahadith’ are comprised, checked for authenticity and validated? I always find it fascinating how such crazy ideas can exist entirely outside of the traditional chain of Islam in orientalist/crusader like circles
I don’t intend to become an Islam scholar so I might never know. But it all starts by the source material so I just ordered an approachable version of the Quran
Think of the analogy with computer "intelligence" and coordination.
Hardware = land + people
Firmware = religion, morals, etc
Operating System = Governments
Apps = markets, schools, services, hospitals
One reason why Islam spread so quickly is it combines Firmware and Operating System in one, whereas Christianity didn't. Sharia=Law.
This is very good for trading peoples.
However, it's not ideal for innovation.
Any computers that combine Firmware, OS (and sometimes Application layer too) are good at doing one thing, like a garage door opener, but can't scale to mine bitcoin or develop AGI.
The same with Islam: fast replication, but hits an innovation limit.
A few months ago I heard somebody say: “Judaism and Islam are similar in that both are from pastoral societies, without a state, so the religion had to act as morals and government. Meanwhile, Christianism was born under the Roman Empire, so it makes a difference between government and religion. That makes Christianity more compatible with many types of governments
pastoral moral system had to include laws as well, very interesting! Christianity had to survive in an environment where caesar was still king. "Give to caesar what belongs to caesar and to god what belongs to god" found in Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, and Luke 20:25
I might cover it soon, but what surprised me about looking into this is that the breaks within Islam seem to be the result of the nature of Islam.
I think a big part of it is that Muhammad died suddenly, and as he was winning, so there was little succession planning. Different clans and potential successors immediately started fighting.
Also, there's a nuance I only understood while writing this article: Although Muslims say the Quran is the literal word of Allah, it doesn't mean every sentence must be read literally. In fact, it's impossible, because some verses contradict each other (eg on alcohol, religious compulsion). Plenty is left for interpretation, and of course different groups interpret things differently, leading to constant schisms within Islam: if it weren't Shia vs Sunni, it would be Wahhabis vs Sufis, etc.
Thanks Tomas, interesting read as always, it's fun to see the application of the geographic lens to historical events!
I have some criticism however if you will permit,
1. Mecca as a backwater
- Shoemaker's argument is reasonable, but it is presented as settled fact when it is actually a minority scholarly position, Hoyland/Donner and other heavyweights in this field have pushed back quite firmly
- Similarly, one cannot argue simultaneously that (a) Mecca was an insignificant backwater with no real trade, and (b) Muhammad's identity as a trader was central to his pacifying-for-commerce strategy. These don't sit comfortably together. If Meccan trade was negligible, the trader-as-pacifier story loses much of its force..
2. Missing major causal factors
- whatever one may think of whether his legacy was exaggerated, the story of 632-636 cannot be told without Khalid Ibn Walid. The pace of expansion is unlikely to have occurred without having such an excellent cavalry commander
- Little ice age/plague hammered the old empires disproportionately
- The extent of internal division within Byzantine territories effectively made the conquest quite straightforward - elites often preferred Jizya & protection over persecution from rival factions and handed the keys over.
3. Overreaching with Zakat argument
- Zakat has always been quite heavily regulated on what it can be spent on i.e. redistributive for the poor. You have a point in that there was a definite binding up of zakat with political allegiances in the founding period (vs. it being a private religious duty) but framing it as a 'subscription clan leaders used to control members' is a misreading.
- Zakat collection was patchy and often delegated, plus the revenue collected was insignificant compared to Jizya and Kharaj (you may be interested in Kharaj too fyi)
4. The part I enjoyed less however was the polygamy-as-sexual-frustration-valve argument which is crude. Treating an institution that exists across many cultures as essentially a mechanism for redirecting sexually frustrated young men into warfare is quite thin analysis. The 72 virgins gloss too is a tired trope which you correctly note as a later development, but then deploy it anyway.
n.b. A note on Jizya - functioned as tax for military upkeep - correct - however it was often bypassed where minorities committed to military service (many examples from Syria and Armenian minorities serving as auxiliary troops in exchange for Jizya exemption). It is also a contract by which minorities were (in theory) assured of freedom of life, property, to practice their own religions and legal systems, in exchange for funding for military upkeep.
I saw the controversy on Mecca, and I agree I’m only maybe 75% confident that it was below 600 people. But between the location today, and the fact that it had no agriculture back then, I think the 75% is reasonable. I would change my mind with other evidence. Most importantly, since calories couldn’t be generated locally, what was generated locally that could buy the food needed to feed a bigger city?
Connected to trade. There’s very little north of Mecca besides Medina. Which justifies some trade up to Medina or so, and then a tiny bit to the Levant, but that’s about it. So I didn’t say there was no trade. I said there was little. Or at least that’s what I meant!
2. These sound possible. Thanks for adding them!
3. I touch in some of these things in the next article. Agreed that I might have gotten the tax details right, but I’m pretty confident that the structure is there (financing expansion through taxation of conquered lands).
4. I don’t find your arguments against the polygyny side as convincing as the rest of your points. But I’d be happy to hear stronger ones!
Bismillaah. Thank you so much for such a thoughtful and well-researched piece! The geography has also been very beautifully done!
Learning the history of Islam, and especially the life of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him), is something that often leaves serious readers in tears. Not because of strategy or empire, but because of the depth of moral character, true friendship, and human transformation in the story. There is a book I'd warmly recommend if you ever want to go deeper into the primary sources: Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar) by Shaykh Safi-ur-Rahman Al-Mubarakfuri. It won first prize in a global Sirah (the Prophet's biography) research competition organized by the Muslim World League in 1979, and it draws directly from the classical sources (Ibn Hisham, Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Sa'd, etc.). It is freely available online. I'll lean on it for what follows.
The book also paints, in vivid detail, the condition of pre-Islamic Arabia — a society where fathers buried infant daughters alive, where two tribes fought for 40 years over a single camel wandering into the wrong pasture, where slavery, drunkenness, gambling, and tribal vendetta were the norm. That backdrop matters, because what came next did not look like clever strategy from inside it. It looked like a miracle.
Here are some specific points where I think the article's framing misses what the primary sources show.
1. Mecca was not a "village off the beaten path." It was a spiritual capital.
You're correct that Mecca was small and economically minor — Roman historians barely noticed it. But that's because Mecca's significance wasn't economic; it was sacred. It housed the Ka'bah, which Muslims and many pre-Islamic Arabs traced back to the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Isma'il. For centuries before Muhammad (PBUH), Arabs from across the peninsula made annual pilgrimage there. The Quraysh's prestige came from being custodians of the House, not from caravan volume. Surah Quraysh (Chapter 106) of the Qur'an makes this exact point: their winter and summer caravans were protected because of the sanctuary, not the other way around.
2. On trade goods.
The Sirah confirms what you outlined: limited commodities, mostly hides from herding, some seasonal goods, and the religious draw of pilgrimage season. One thing worth flagging — slaves were not a major Meccan trade commodity. Slavery existed (it existed everywhere in the 7th-century world), but Mecca was never a slave hub. This matters for point 7 below.
3. The Hijrah to Madinah was not an economic upgrade.
This is one of the points where the article diverges most sharply from the Sirah. You write that "he really started Islam not in Mecca, but in Medina," with the implication that Madinah was chosen because it had an oasis and was a better business base.
The Sirah tells a very different story:
- First, the Hijrah came after thirteen years of preaching in Mecca with zero political power, no army, no wealth, and (after his uncle Abu Talib died) no clan immunity. His followers were tortured. Sumayya — the first martyr of Islam — was speared to death by Abu Jahl. Bilal, an enslaved Abyssinian, had a heavy stone piled on his chest in the desert sun and was told he would die unless he renounced his faith; he kept whispering "Ahad, Ahad" (One, One). The Banu Hashim clan was boycotted in a sealed-off valley for three years, eating tree leaves to survive. If the Prophet (PBUH) were a calculating trader pacifying clans for caravan profit, this is the period he should have stopped. He was repeatedly offered kingship, vast wealth, and the most beautiful women of the Quraysh if he would just abandon the message. He famously replied: "By Allah, even if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left to make me give up this affair, I will not."
- Second, the Madinans came to him — not the other way around. The people of Yathrib (Madinah) had heard from the Jewish tribes living among them that a final prophet was expected, and they recognized the description in Muhammad (PBUH). They were also exhausted from a long civil feud between their two main tribes, the Aws and Khazraj, that had climaxed in the Battle of Bu'ath shortly before — so they were urgently looking for someone who could heal their fractured city. At the pilgrimage season, they sought him out. The First Pledge of Aqabah (12 men) and the Second Pledge of Aqabah (73 men and 2 women) were initiated by them. They pledged to protect him as they would their own wives and children. The Hijrah was a response to their invitation and to a divine command — not a strategic move toward better real estate.
- Third, the Prophet (PBUH) left Mecca because the Quraysh had agreed on a coordinated assassination plot — picking one young man from each clan so blood-revenge would be impossible.
4. Trade did not unite Arabia. Islam did.
This is one of the strongest counters to the article's central thesis. Trade had existed in Arabia for centuries. The Quraysh ran caravans to Yemen, Syria, Abyssinia, and beyond. There were even pre-Islamic peace alliances like Hilf al-Fudul, which the young Muhammad (PBUH) joined before prophethood and praised even after Islam. None of this produced Arabian unity. The Sirah opens with the 40-year tribal war I mentioned. The Battle of Bu'ath was fought between the Aws and Khazraj just before the Prophet's arrival in Madinah — and those same two tribes became brothers under Islam, embracing each other as one Ummah.
If trade or rational clan-pacification could have unified Arabia, it would have done so in the previous thousand years. What changed in 23 years was not the trade routes. It was the message of La ilaha illa Allah.
5. The Prophet's character before prophethood does not fit "calculating strategist."
The Sirah documents that Muhammad (PBUH) was known by both friends and enemies as Al-Amin — "The Trustworthy." Even Quraysh who later opposed him publicly entrusted him with their valuables for safekeeping; on the night of the Hijrah, while they were plotting to kill him, their deposits were still in his house, and he asked Ali (RA) to stay behind to return every single item to its owner.
From a young age, before any prophethood and before any "trade incentive," he refused to drink khamr, refused idol ceremonies, refused even pagan festivities.
He married Khadijah at 25; she was 40, a wealthy widow. He could have lived a comfortable merchant's life until old age. Instead, at 40, he began preaching a message that brought him persecution, exile, the deaths of his uncle Abu Talib and his beloved wife Khadijah in the same year, the loss of all his sons in childhood, and constant attempts on his life. People do not behave this way for power or money. They behave this way when they believe the message they carry is true.
6. On polygamy — the article frames this exactly backward.
Polygamy was not introduced by Islam. It was the near-universal norm of the 7th-century world.
- Pre-Islamic Arabs practiced it without any limit — men could take as many wives as they could afford.
- Many revered biblical figures — including Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon — had multiple wives. Jews, Christians, and Muslims regard these figures as righteous.
- Among Christian rulers contemporary with the Prophet (PBUH), the Merovingian kings of France (5th–8th centuries) openly practiced polygamy and concubinage; the Sassanid Persian elite did the same; so did rulers in China, India, Africa, and pre-Columbian Americas. Byzantine theory required monogamy, but elite practice often included concubines.
What Islam did was reform the institution, not invent it. The Qur'an capped polygamy at a maximum of four, and tied it explicitly to justice: "if you fear you cannot do justice, then only one" (4:3). A later verse adds: "and you will not be able to do justice between wives, however much you may wish to" (4:129) — which classical scholars have long read as a strong nudge toward monogamy as the default.
7. On slavery — Islam reduced it; it didn't introduce it.
This is worth stating clearly, because the article only gestures at slavery in footnotes.
Slavery was universal in the 7th century — Byzantine, Sassanid, African, pre-Islamic Arab. Islam came into that world and:
- Made freeing a slave one of the highest acts of worship — listed in the Qur'an among the categories of charity (9:60), and as the required expiation for several sins (broken oath, accidental killing, etc.).
- Required masters to feed slaves what they themselves ate, clothe them with what they themselves wore (authentic hadith in Bukhari).
- Encouraged contracts (mukatabah) by which slaves could buy their freedom — and obliged masters to accept reasonable terms.
- Closed off most pre-Islamic sources of slavery — debt slavery, kidnapping, free-for-all raiding all became forbidden.
- Treated freed slaves as full equals. Bilal, an Abyssinian, became the first muezzin of Islam. Salman al-Farsi, a Persian freed slave, became one of the most senior Companions.
Abu Bakr (RA) spent much of his personal wealth buying tortured Muslim slaves — Bilal among them — purely to free them. This is the Sirah's own account.
8. Zakat is worship, not a subscription — and it's for the poor, not the leaders.
The word zakat itself means "purification" — it purifies the wealth of the giver, and is treated as a right of the poor over the rich rather than as a favor or a state subscription. The Qur'an puts it beautifully: "and in their wealth was a known right for the one who asks, and the deprived" (51:19). The poor receive it as their due, with dignity. The rich give it as worship, not patronage. A wealthy Muslim who hoards while the poor go hungry is sinning against Allah and against them, simultaneously. This is structurally the opposite of "clan leaders controlling funds."
Non-Muslims in the early Islamic state did not pay zakat at all. They paid jizya in exchange for (a) state protection, (b) exemption from military service, and (c) exemption from zakat itself.
The Khaybar 50% also deserves context. The Khaybar Jews had broken their treaty with Madinah, allied with Quraysh against the Muslims during the Battle of the Trench (Khandaq), and lost the resulting war. They could have been expelled. Instead, they asked to keep their land and continue farming, sharing produce. The 50% was a negotiated arrangement they preferred to expulsion.
9. On "72 virgins" — also your own admission.
You note this image came "a couple of centuries later" — which alone undermines the idea that it was an early recruitment tool. The Qur'an's actual paradise is vastly broader: the meeting with Allah Himself (described as the highest joy of all), the company of the prophets, eternal peace, gardens with flowing rivers, reunion with loved ones, etc. That is the kind of reward the Qur'an centers on. Reducing it to a martyr incentive doesn't survive contact with the text — and paradise is for all believers, not fighters specifically.
10. On "monotheism adopted from Judeo-Christianity."
Islam's own claim — and this is important — is that tawhid (pure monotheism) is the original religion of all the prophets: Adam, Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses), Isa (Jesus), and on. Muhammad (PBUH) was sent not to borrow a Judeo-Christian innovation but to restore the religion of Ibrahim, with which the Ka'bah itself had been associated long before. The Qur'an addresses this directly: monotheism is what unbroken human nature (fitrah) and reason point to, with or without prior scripture (e.g., Surah 30:30). The "borrowed from Christianity" reading is a 19th-century Orientalist hypothesis — not what the primary sources claim.
11. On battles — most were defensive.
Badr (year 2 H): the Quraysh marched a 1,000-man army out of Mecca toward 313 Muslims who had just fled persecution and had their properties confiscated.
Uhud (year 3 H): Quraysh attacking Madinah.
Khandaq (year 5 H): a 10,000-man confederate siege of Madinah.
Hudaybiyyah (year 6 H): the Prophet (PBUH) accepted humiliating terms for peace rather than fight when it could be avoided.
Conquest of Mecca (year 8 H): 10,000 Muslims entered the city; total casualties were minimal; the Prophet (PBUH) granted a mass amnesty, including to the woman who had eaten the liver of his beloved uncle Hamza at Uhud. "Go, you are free" — was his message to the people who had tortured, exiled, and tried to kill him for 20 years.
This is not "scorched-earth" expansion. This is a man whose victories looked like reconciliations.
12. The Qur'an itself — left out of the article entirely.
The Sirah preserves a striking moment. Walid ibn al-Mughirah, the Quraysh's most respected judge of Arabic eloquence — a poet to whom rival tribes brought their verse for ranking — was pressured by his clan to come up with something to discredit the Qur'an before pilgrimage season. He ruled out every category they offered: "He's not a soothsayer — we know soothsayers. Not a madman — we know madness. Not a poet — by Allah, no man among you knows poetry better than I do, and what he recites resembles no form of it. Not a sorcerer — we know sorcery." Cornered for an answer, he finally conceded: "By Allah, his speech has a sweetness, and upon it is a grace. Its top is fruitful, and its bottom is gushing. It rises above all speech, and nothing rises above it. This is not the speech of a human being." (Occasion of revelation for Qur'an 74:11–25; preserved in Ibn Hisham and al-Wahidi's Asbab al-Nuzul.) He still chose, under pressure from Abu Jahl, to publicly call it "magic" — but only after privately admitting it wasn't. The Qur'an was revealed to an unlettered (ummi) man, over 23 years, in non-linear pieces responding to live events, and reads as a single coherent book whose linguistic unity has been studied for fourteen centuries. The "social engineering" frame doesn't address any of this.
13. One last thing — the early Caliphs.
The article frames the post-Muhammad expansion as efficient state-building. But Umar ibn al-Khattab (RA) — who ruled an empire stretching from Egypt to Persia — patched his own cloak, ate barley bread, slept under a tree in the marketplace, and walked through Madinah at night with no guards. Persian envoys arriving to negotiate famously could not believe he was the Caliph. This is not the behavior of empire-builders maximizing tax revenue. This is the behavior of men who believed they were stewards, accountable to God for every coin.
If you have the curiosity to read further, I'd warmly recommend Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar). What you find there does not reduce to a strategy. There is a man — and behind him, the One who sent him.
That's all nice and good an all. But according to your sources, he married a 6 year old and fucked her when she was nine. Then he abolished adoption so he could marry Zainab and not be a sodomist.
The notion that he reduced slavery is laughable. They did nothing to stop the Barbary Pirate slave trade and took for themselves sex slaves and wives. They might not have been worse than the surrounding culture, but they CERTAINLY weren't any better.
We can appreciate his statecraft. His moral character is something else to be desired.
Bismillaah. These are serious accusations and deserve serious answers.
1. On Aisha (RA).
- In 7th-century Arabia, Byzantium, Persia, and Europe, marriage at puberty was the universal norm — including among Christian kings and nobility. King Richard II of England married Isabella of Valois when she was 6 and he was 29. King John married Isabelle of Angoulême at 12. Eleanor of Aquitaine was married at 13. Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII, gave birth at 13. English common law set the age of consent at 10 from 1576 well into the 1800s.
Judging the 7th century by 21st-century standards condemns every civilization before about 1900.
- The Quraysh attacked the Prophet (PBUH) on every conceivable point — calling him a poet, a soothsayer, a madman, a magician — and never once raised this marriage as an objection. If it had been scandalous in their context, they would have used it. The silence is historical evidence.
2. On Zaynab (RA) and the "sodomist" accusation.
There is zero evidence — not weak, not contested, but zero — in any classical source, friendly or hostile, accusing the Prophet (PBUH) of homosexual conduct. Not from the Quraysh. Not from the Madinan hypocrites. Not from the Jewish tribes. Not from any Roman or Persian source. Inventing a charge no one in 1,400 years of recorded enmity ever made isn't analysis — it's slander.
The actual story of Zaynab (RA):
- She was the Prophet's cousin. He arranged her marriage to Zaid ibn Haritha, his freed slave and adopted son — a deliberate public assault on Arabian class hierarchy. Zaynab and her family initially objected to marrying a former slave; the Qur'an itself addressed their hesitation (33:36) and they submitted.
- The marriage was unhappy. When Zaid (RA) wanted to divorce her, the Prophet (PBUH) told him to stay married — the Qur'an preserves the command: "Keep your wife and fear Allah" (33:37).
- After the divorce, Allah commanded the Prophet (PBUH) to marry her (33:37) — to abolish the pre-Islamic taboo that adopted sons were treated as biological sons, which had distorted inheritance, marriage law, and family identity.
3. On slavery and the Barbary Pirates.
The Barbary Pirates operated roughly 900 to 1,200 years after the Prophet (PBUH). Holding him responsible for them is a basic category error in historical reasoning — like blaming someone for what people did in his name a thousand years after his death.
4. On sex slaves and wives.
The Qur'an explicitly forbids forcing enslaved women into sexual exploitation (24:33), and the Prophet (PBUH) declared: "There is no place for prostitution in Islam" (Abu Dawud). The strongest classical recommendation for war captives was manumission and marriage — which is exactly what happened with Juwayriyah, Safiyya, and Maria (RA).
Now the point that matters most.
You made two serious accusations: that the Prophet (PBUH) was a child molester and a homosexual.
The Quraysh hated him. They tortured his followers, killed Sumayya, boycotted his clan in a valley for three years until they ate tree leaves, plotted his assassination, and fought him at Badr, Uhud, and Khandaq. They spent twenty years trying to destroy his credibility — calling him him a poet, a soothsayer, a madman, a magician, a fabricator. They would have used anything.
Not one of them — not one Qurayshi enemy, not one Madinan hypocrite, not one Jewish or Christian opponent, not one Roman or Persian observer in 1,400 years of recorded history — ever accused him of either thing you just accused him of.
lol I didn’t even call him gay. You inserted that.
Regarding Zaynab:
Your authoritative commentator al-Tabari provided this context regarding Zaynab: that when Muhammad was looking for Zaid, he came to Zaid’s residence but instead found Zaynab, dressed “only in a shift.” Of which caused Muhammad to turn away and say “Glory be to God, who causes the hearts to turn!”
When Zayd heard about this, he said to Muhammad “Messenger of God (police be upon him), perhaps Zaynab has excited your admiration, and so I will separate myself from her.”
Regarding Aisha:
There is still a world of difference raping a girl who is prebuscent (no period yet) and someone who has had their period. I am perfectly fine with condemning every civilization before 1900: every civilization including ours has their moral failings. Unfortunately for you, your main guy is a sex-addicted pedo like many other kings of the period. A false prophet whose only correct vision was that false prophets would have their aorta severed. Other religions at least follow higher moral examples like Jesus (of whom most major religions view as a positive example) or Buddhism. Not some illiterate caravan robber having sex paradise.
Again, all to say, very smart political leader. Very far from a moral example besides the power he could project.
Let’s not even talk about the Hadiths about losing verses in the Quran.
2. The al-Tabari "shift" story you quoted has no authentic chain of transmission and was rejected by classical Muslim scholars themselves (Ibn Kathir, al-Razi, Ibn al-Arabi al-Maliki). al-Tabari recorded BOTH sound and unsound narrations. Please learn this before citing him.
3. Where is your source that the Prophet (PBUH) had sexual relations with Aisha (RA) before her period? Classical sources state the opposite - consummation happened after puberty. Bring your source.
4. You called him a "pedo", while the Quraysh, the Madinan hypocrites, the Jewish tribes, and the Roman and Persian observers all spent decades looking for anything to discredit him, and not one of them ever raised this marriage as a moral objection. Who are you Mr. 21st century man?
5. What do you mean by "Let’s not even talk about the Hadiths about losing verses in the Quran"?
Interesting article.
I think that there are clear parallels between this and Genghis Khan. Both united warring tribes within Herding societies into centralized political authority and turned them into vehicles for external expansion against much larger Agrarian empires. The biggest difference is that in the Middle East, religion played a much bigger role.
Genghis Khan built unity through:
* Forced restructuring of tribes
* Merit-based advancement
* Military organization
* Shared spoils and success
* Strict legal code (Yassa)
I had the same thought! I asked ChatGPT pro about it and it told me it's not the case, but I intuit you (and I!) might be more right than wrong.
From what I can tell, the best parallel is between Arabs and Mongols. Islam took a life of its own (as memes do).
In my experience, asking AI to analyze history is a waste of time, especially when the subject is outside mainstream consensus.
Please add a story on the Mongol herds glory (and fall from) on your list of future reports !
I’m particularly surprised at the contrast between their Western ventures (frightening, but which did not last) and their Persian and Indian/Mughal conqests, which built empires lasting centuries ?
I don’t really think you can count their descendants, taking over India. Several centuries after their empire fell apart as their conquest of India and their rule of Persia actually ended before their rule over China. If anything they ruled Russia longer than any of their other conquest and Crimea was the last place that the Royal dynasty ruled uninterrupted from the empire
Interesting, thank you !
It still intrigues me that they both conquered unprecedented swathes of territories (in just 1, then in just a few generations) - only to crumble and get either defeated or absorbed quickly afterwards.
The exact opposite of say, the Roman Empire (or almost any other one, for that matter) ?
Lovely post and I agree with most of it, although I would like to add a few thoughts regarding the Roman Persian war.
Firstly, I think that war was essential to Islam conquering Arabia because in the normal course of events, neither power would have permitted one single force to take over Arabia. It’s just that they were too busy fighting each other to do anything and afterwards, they were pretty exhausted. Secondly, Persia descended into a pretty chaotic civil war for four years after losing the war and ended up with a child king at the end with the actual government being run by a bunch of regents instead of a single king. This is a major problem both because of normal in fighting issues, but also because central authority was dramatically damaged and obviously no regent has the kind of legitimacy that an adult Kingwood and thus has less political capital. Also just easier to conquer a chaotic government recovering from a civil war instead of a prosperous and stable kingdom that has not undergone any recent problems.
On the Roamen front, the Persians had taken over a lot of their territories, including Egypt the Levant and parts of Anatolia, before being finally defeated, which meant that the territories had been outside their control for over a decade in many cases, which doubtless made them easier to conquer an integrate. And while they weren’t in civil war, when the conquest started their political stability during this period was generally pretty bad and got worse with time. Although I expect, this was also in part consequence of losing legitimacy on account of losing wars. Add in the fact that they had pretty much thrown everything they had into fighting the persons and with us pretty exhausted and it’s not surprising that they collapsed so fast, especially since in places like North Africa, the Arabs were pretty good at integrating other nomadic tribes into their military force, which obviously increased their military power. By integration, I don’t mean hear that they were treated like Arabs, but they became part of the Arab military, and this was obviously a force multiplier for them as it has always been for nomads, integrating other nomadic groups into their army.
Honestly, the whole thing reminds me of the step where the moment a single leader can get their snowball rolling by uniting the entire step under their leadership. They immediately become capable of taking over a huge empire. Although of course many of the advantages that the step gives you don’t exist for the Arabs. The obvious solution of course is to never let the step unite under a single leader and the same applies to Arabia, but as I mentioned earlier, being distracted, fighting each other meant nobody was keeping an eye on that.
Thank you! Perfect addition, and it highlights some of the topics for the next article. Some things I didn't know (Persia had taken Egypt just before!)
I think you mean steppe, not step. Just adding in case somebody reading yout comment is confused.
Sorry about the misspelling. I’m using speech to text, which unfortunately is very prone to this type of mistake.
Persia didn’t exactly take Egypt precisely, they occupied it for almost a decade and a half, but after their capital was threatened, they agreed to a peace deal where they returned it. It’s just that holding a territory for a few years after such a long occupation isn’t going to be enough to restore your old grip, although this is actually less applicable to Egypt, since it took longer for the Arabs to get there, compare to say Syria and it was also occupied for a shorter time compared to areas closer to Persia. Although mind you, I recommend you crosscheck the dates because it’s been several years since I read about this topic, so it’s entirely possible I’m mixing up the dates a little.
Good overview. One element missing is the role Arianism plays in Islam's spread to North Africa. The Vandals were Arians, in conflict with Rome on the very nature of Jesus Christ. They were persecuted especially after Rome recognized the Roman Tridentine version of Christianity. the Vandals were monotheistic but believed Christ was another prophet, in harmony with the Islamic view. The acceptance of Islam, therefore, could have been facilitated by a rejection of Roman and Byzantine versions of Christ.
Very interesting
There was a century without warmth due to volcanic activity , in Indonesia area , from 536 . Justinians plague etc. famine due to persistent cold wet summers . Sassanid and eastern Rome were totally weakened , barely able to man border forts . Western Rome fell to bits. Brittania went from Celt speaking to Germanic speaking as the Roman towns emptied due to plagues, hunger and cold. raiders, for that is what Islam is, found this to be a fertile ground for expansion , you pay less Sakhat or jizya than what the various emperors demanded.?time sxwere hard in the years before the Hejira . .. so look at climate … you missed that one.
In addition to the war between Rome and Persia weakening both powers was that both hired the tribes of Arabia as mercenaries- which gave them insights to both militaries. Then the plague hit the urban areas - which being more nomadic allowed the Arabian tribes to escape most of the impact of. Under the Sword of Islam (Tom Holland) and Patricia Crone both explore some of the foundational parts of Islam’s spread. Curious how it reached all the way to Indonesia- mostly skipping India (another centralized, dominant religion?).
Ah I didn't know the plague part. Interesting.
I'll discuss the Indonesia thing!
Just about to reply that their was plague at the time that reduced Sassanid and Byzantine manpower. Good job!
It didn't skip India; it took a lot of time, but eventually the Indian kings were defeated and Islam spread to india in 1192
Currently traveling in Granada and I'm really curious about the way the Moors learned from Romans and used geography and engineering to maintain their hold on the region. I hope you dig into that a bit, and also help us understand better the conquest of the Catholics that came next.
I’ll touch on it but unfortunately won’t dig into it too much 😩
I had been expecting this article for some time. I like the way you explain geohistory.
A few ideas — let me know what you think.
I was thinking about the rapid expansion of Islam in relation to the expansion of Christianity over paganism, cf. Katherine Nixey. It is an equally fast phenomenon.
From the death of Muhammad (632) to the conquest of Spain (711) = 79 years.
From 313, the Edict of Milan of Constantine, which legally favored Christianity to the detriment of the ancient religions, to the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, where Christianity was declared the official religion of the Empire = 67 years.
The speed of the software is similar.
Let me now look at the hardware.
In terms of geographical spread, it is partly the same. The origin of Christianity lies in North Africa, which was also the first region to fall into Muslim hands, interestingly enough. By contrast, Europe resisted. Geography has much to say here. A comparison of both expansions could be quite fruitful.
A French historian, Joseph Pérez, says that Spain is the only country in Europe that consciously and explicitly refused to become Muslim. The Africans did not have such an option — those in the north, of course — and surely this was for geographical reasons. The French did not either, although in the opposite sense, because the Pyrenees provided them with a magnificent natural defense. Therefore, ideology could only offer a choice in between the geographical possibilities.
Very interesting!
The software is dramatically different though, how can it be comparable?
When I say software, I mean the speed at which both religions spread more or less across the same territory, which would be the hardware.
I think you are referring to something different, aren’t you?
Are you referring to the form?
Precisely in the area of Syria and the eastern part of the Empire, Christianity imposed itself in a very violent way (similar to that of Muhammad with the tribes). There were bands of monks who spread terror just with their chants of “Praise be to the Lord!”, which were interpreted by pagan cities as declarations of war. Not very different from “Allah is great!” as proclaimed by some fanatics.
It would be interesting to study this phenomenon from your point of view.
In contrast, in the West it was an intellectual and social phenomenon that came from the lower classes, until adopted by the upper ones.
There are historians who say that the Late Classical period was an intellectual ferment rarely seen throughout history. Many intellectual phenomena coexisted: astrology, paganism, Stoicism, Christianity–Judaism, Greek religions, etc.
In any case, the geo-historical study of the intellectual movements of this period — I am not sure whether anyone has done it.
The followers of Muhammad were very few compared with the vast territories they conquered in record time. Not to mention the population of Mecca as you say.
In general, the population remained quite passive: the same pagans converted to Christianity and later to Islam.
Yeah for me hardware is everything that is physical, like computers. That can be geography, but also brain structure.
Software is how you configure them, which mostly means politics, incentives, religion… basically ideas.
You are right.
If ideation is the evolutionary response to an environment that changes at great speed (Lewis Dartnell), then software comes from hardware.
We should be able to find common intellectual patterns in the same geographical locations.
Ideas, politics, and religions are largely determined by the shape of the territory. The other part is interaction with others.
Very interesting article!
Minor quibble: Camels actually store fat in their hump, not water.
Per Wikipedia: "It is a common myth that a camel stores water in its hump, but the humps in fact are reservoirs of fatty tissue, which can be used as a reserve source of calories, not water.", whereas you wrote: "The cornerstone is the camel, which can eat the type of vegetation in this area and store water to sustain long trips in the desert."
Show the camel the respect it deserves ;) Without camels none of this would have been possible!
Thanks!
I don’t think I say he stores water in the humps though! Only that it stores water. Which is true!
You're right you didn't... I'm so used to people thinking that they store water in their humps that I had made that assumption of you... my bad! I used to think that it was the breakdown of the fat in the hump that released water, and while true, it only releases a little, as compared to how much they store in their bloodstream. Go camels, go!
It's not clear that he was really from Mecca
https://www.kyleorton.com/p/review-the-sacred-city-2016-location-of-origins-of-islam
A few days ago I’d have thought this was crazy. Seeing that there are so few sources about this outside of the Quran, I’m open to it
Did you guys ever check how ‘ahadith’ are comprised, checked for authenticity and validated? I always find it fascinating how such crazy ideas can exist entirely outside of the traditional chain of Islam in orientalist/crusader like circles
I don’t intend to become an Islam scholar so I might never know. But it all starts by the source material so I just ordered an approachable version of the Quran
Software you mention could be critical.
Here's how:
Think of the analogy with computer "intelligence" and coordination.
Hardware = land + people
Firmware = religion, morals, etc
Operating System = Governments
Apps = markets, schools, services, hospitals
One reason why Islam spread so quickly is it combines Firmware and Operating System in one, whereas Christianity didn't. Sharia=Law.
This is very good for trading peoples.
However, it's not ideal for innovation.
Any computers that combine Firmware, OS (and sometimes Application layer too) are good at doing one thing, like a garage door opener, but can't scale to mine bitcoin or develop AGI.
The same with Islam: fast replication, but hits an innovation limit.
Super cool metaphor.
A few months ago I heard somebody say: “Judaism and Islam are similar in that both are from pastoral societies, without a state, so the religion had to act as morals and government. Meanwhile, Christianism was born under the Roman Empire, so it makes a difference between government and religion. That makes Christianity more compatible with many types of governments
pastoral moral system had to include laws as well, very interesting! Christianity had to survive in an environment where caesar was still king. "Give to caesar what belongs to caesar and to god what belongs to god" found in Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, and Luke 20:25
Interesting post and please ignore the AI slop accusors, I sense it's a jealousy thing. 😉
How did the family fight between the brothers that produced the two forms of Islam affect the outcome and development and spread
I might cover it soon, but what surprised me about looking into this is that the breaks within Islam seem to be the result of the nature of Islam.
I think a big part of it is that Muhammad died suddenly, and as he was winning, so there was little succession planning. Different clans and potential successors immediately started fighting.
Also, there's a nuance I only understood while writing this article: Although Muslims say the Quran is the literal word of Allah, it doesn't mean every sentence must be read literally. In fact, it's impossible, because some verses contradict each other (eg on alcohol, religious compulsion). Plenty is left for interpretation, and of course different groups interpret things differently, leading to constant schisms within Islam: if it weren't Shia vs Sunni, it would be Wahhabis vs Sufis, etc.
Roger, are you a doctor who was previously in the Bay Area?
Thanks Tomas, interesting read as always, it's fun to see the application of the geographic lens to historical events!
I have some criticism however if you will permit,
1. Mecca as a backwater
- Shoemaker's argument is reasonable, but it is presented as settled fact when it is actually a minority scholarly position, Hoyland/Donner and other heavyweights in this field have pushed back quite firmly
- Similarly, one cannot argue simultaneously that (a) Mecca was an insignificant backwater with no real trade, and (b) Muhammad's identity as a trader was central to his pacifying-for-commerce strategy. These don't sit comfortably together. If Meccan trade was negligible, the trader-as-pacifier story loses much of its force..
2. Missing major causal factors
- whatever one may think of whether his legacy was exaggerated, the story of 632-636 cannot be told without Khalid Ibn Walid. The pace of expansion is unlikely to have occurred without having such an excellent cavalry commander
- Little ice age/plague hammered the old empires disproportionately
- The extent of internal division within Byzantine territories effectively made the conquest quite straightforward - elites often preferred Jizya & protection over persecution from rival factions and handed the keys over.
3. Overreaching with Zakat argument
- Zakat has always been quite heavily regulated on what it can be spent on i.e. redistributive for the poor. You have a point in that there was a definite binding up of zakat with political allegiances in the founding period (vs. it being a private religious duty) but framing it as a 'subscription clan leaders used to control members' is a misreading.
- Zakat collection was patchy and often delegated, plus the revenue collected was insignificant compared to Jizya and Kharaj (you may be interested in Kharaj too fyi)
4. The part I enjoyed less however was the polygamy-as-sexual-frustration-valve argument which is crude. Treating an institution that exists across many cultures as essentially a mechanism for redirecting sexually frustrated young men into warfare is quite thin analysis. The 72 virgins gloss too is a tired trope which you correctly note as a later development, but then deploy it anyway.
n.b. A note on Jizya - functioned as tax for military upkeep - correct - however it was often bypassed where minorities committed to military service (many examples from Syria and Armenian minorities serving as auxiliary troops in exchange for Jizya exemption). It is also a contract by which minorities were (in theory) assured of freedom of life, property, to practice their own religions and legal systems, in exchange for funding for military upkeep.
Love this! Thanks for the pushback.
I saw the controversy on Mecca, and I agree I’m only maybe 75% confident that it was below 600 people. But between the location today, and the fact that it had no agriculture back then, I think the 75% is reasonable. I would change my mind with other evidence. Most importantly, since calories couldn’t be generated locally, what was generated locally that could buy the food needed to feed a bigger city?
Connected to trade. There’s very little north of Mecca besides Medina. Which justifies some trade up to Medina or so, and then a tiny bit to the Levant, but that’s about it. So I didn’t say there was no trade. I said there was little. Or at least that’s what I meant!
2. These sound possible. Thanks for adding them!
3. I touch in some of these things in the next article. Agreed that I might have gotten the tax details right, but I’m pretty confident that the structure is there (financing expansion through taxation of conquered lands).
4. I don’t find your arguments against the polygyny side as convincing as the rest of your points. But I’d be happy to hear stronger ones!
Thanks again
Great article, well researched! 🎉 👏
by the sword. convert or die. I have lived in islamic countries.
Bismillaah. Thank you so much for such a thoughtful and well-researched piece! The geography has also been very beautifully done!
Learning the history of Islam, and especially the life of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him), is something that often leaves serious readers in tears. Not because of strategy or empire, but because of the depth of moral character, true friendship, and human transformation in the story. There is a book I'd warmly recommend if you ever want to go deeper into the primary sources: Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar) by Shaykh Safi-ur-Rahman Al-Mubarakfuri. It won first prize in a global Sirah (the Prophet's biography) research competition organized by the Muslim World League in 1979, and it draws directly from the classical sources (Ibn Hisham, Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Sa'd, etc.). It is freely available online. I'll lean on it for what follows.
The book also paints, in vivid detail, the condition of pre-Islamic Arabia — a society where fathers buried infant daughters alive, where two tribes fought for 40 years over a single camel wandering into the wrong pasture, where slavery, drunkenness, gambling, and tribal vendetta were the norm. That backdrop matters, because what came next did not look like clever strategy from inside it. It looked like a miracle.
Here are some specific points where I think the article's framing misses what the primary sources show.
1. Mecca was not a "village off the beaten path." It was a spiritual capital.
You're correct that Mecca was small and economically minor — Roman historians barely noticed it. But that's because Mecca's significance wasn't economic; it was sacred. It housed the Ka'bah, which Muslims and many pre-Islamic Arabs traced back to the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Isma'il. For centuries before Muhammad (PBUH), Arabs from across the peninsula made annual pilgrimage there. The Quraysh's prestige came from being custodians of the House, not from caravan volume. Surah Quraysh (Chapter 106) of the Qur'an makes this exact point: their winter and summer caravans were protected because of the sanctuary, not the other way around.
2. On trade goods.
The Sirah confirms what you outlined: limited commodities, mostly hides from herding, some seasonal goods, and the religious draw of pilgrimage season. One thing worth flagging — slaves were not a major Meccan trade commodity. Slavery existed (it existed everywhere in the 7th-century world), but Mecca was never a slave hub. This matters for point 7 below.
3. The Hijrah to Madinah was not an economic upgrade.
This is one of the points where the article diverges most sharply from the Sirah. You write that "he really started Islam not in Mecca, but in Medina," with the implication that Madinah was chosen because it had an oasis and was a better business base.
The Sirah tells a very different story:
- First, the Hijrah came after thirteen years of preaching in Mecca with zero political power, no army, no wealth, and (after his uncle Abu Talib died) no clan immunity. His followers were tortured. Sumayya — the first martyr of Islam — was speared to death by Abu Jahl. Bilal, an enslaved Abyssinian, had a heavy stone piled on his chest in the desert sun and was told he would die unless he renounced his faith; he kept whispering "Ahad, Ahad" (One, One). The Banu Hashim clan was boycotted in a sealed-off valley for three years, eating tree leaves to survive. If the Prophet (PBUH) were a calculating trader pacifying clans for caravan profit, this is the period he should have stopped. He was repeatedly offered kingship, vast wealth, and the most beautiful women of the Quraysh if he would just abandon the message. He famously replied: "By Allah, even if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left to make me give up this affair, I will not."
- Second, the Madinans came to him — not the other way around. The people of Yathrib (Madinah) had heard from the Jewish tribes living among them that a final prophet was expected, and they recognized the description in Muhammad (PBUH). They were also exhausted from a long civil feud between their two main tribes, the Aws and Khazraj, that had climaxed in the Battle of Bu'ath shortly before — so they were urgently looking for someone who could heal their fractured city. At the pilgrimage season, they sought him out. The First Pledge of Aqabah (12 men) and the Second Pledge of Aqabah (73 men and 2 women) were initiated by them. They pledged to protect him as they would their own wives and children. The Hijrah was a response to their invitation and to a divine command — not a strategic move toward better real estate.
- Third, the Prophet (PBUH) left Mecca because the Quraysh had agreed on a coordinated assassination plot — picking one young man from each clan so blood-revenge would be impossible.
4. Trade did not unite Arabia. Islam did.
This is one of the strongest counters to the article's central thesis. Trade had existed in Arabia for centuries. The Quraysh ran caravans to Yemen, Syria, Abyssinia, and beyond. There were even pre-Islamic peace alliances like Hilf al-Fudul, which the young Muhammad (PBUH) joined before prophethood and praised even after Islam. None of this produced Arabian unity. The Sirah opens with the 40-year tribal war I mentioned. The Battle of Bu'ath was fought between the Aws and Khazraj just before the Prophet's arrival in Madinah — and those same two tribes became brothers under Islam, embracing each other as one Ummah.
If trade or rational clan-pacification could have unified Arabia, it would have done so in the previous thousand years. What changed in 23 years was not the trade routes. It was the message of La ilaha illa Allah.
5. The Prophet's character before prophethood does not fit "calculating strategist."
The Sirah documents that Muhammad (PBUH) was known by both friends and enemies as Al-Amin — "The Trustworthy." Even Quraysh who later opposed him publicly entrusted him with their valuables for safekeeping; on the night of the Hijrah, while they were plotting to kill him, their deposits were still in his house, and he asked Ali (RA) to stay behind to return every single item to its owner.
From a young age, before any prophethood and before any "trade incentive," he refused to drink khamr, refused idol ceremonies, refused even pagan festivities.
He married Khadijah at 25; she was 40, a wealthy widow. He could have lived a comfortable merchant's life until old age. Instead, at 40, he began preaching a message that brought him persecution, exile, the deaths of his uncle Abu Talib and his beloved wife Khadijah in the same year, the loss of all his sons in childhood, and constant attempts on his life. People do not behave this way for power or money. They behave this way when they believe the message they carry is true.
6. On polygamy — the article frames this exactly backward.
Polygamy was not introduced by Islam. It was the near-universal norm of the 7th-century world.
- Pre-Islamic Arabs practiced it without any limit — men could take as many wives as they could afford.
- Many revered biblical figures — including Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon — had multiple wives. Jews, Christians, and Muslims regard these figures as righteous.
- Among Christian rulers contemporary with the Prophet (PBUH), the Merovingian kings of France (5th–8th centuries) openly practiced polygamy and concubinage; the Sassanid Persian elite did the same; so did rulers in China, India, Africa, and pre-Columbian Americas. Byzantine theory required monogamy, but elite practice often included concubines.
What Islam did was reform the institution, not invent it. The Qur'an capped polygamy at a maximum of four, and tied it explicitly to justice: "if you fear you cannot do justice, then only one" (4:3). A later verse adds: "and you will not be able to do justice between wives, however much you may wish to" (4:129) — which classical scholars have long read as a strong nudge toward monogamy as the default.
7. On slavery — Islam reduced it; it didn't introduce it.
This is worth stating clearly, because the article only gestures at slavery in footnotes.
Slavery was universal in the 7th century — Byzantine, Sassanid, African, pre-Islamic Arab. Islam came into that world and:
- Made freeing a slave one of the highest acts of worship — listed in the Qur'an among the categories of charity (9:60), and as the required expiation for several sins (broken oath, accidental killing, etc.).
- Required masters to feed slaves what they themselves ate, clothe them with what they themselves wore (authentic hadith in Bukhari).
- Encouraged contracts (mukatabah) by which slaves could buy their freedom — and obliged masters to accept reasonable terms.
- Closed off most pre-Islamic sources of slavery — debt slavery, kidnapping, free-for-all raiding all became forbidden.
- Treated freed slaves as full equals. Bilal, an Abyssinian, became the first muezzin of Islam. Salman al-Farsi, a Persian freed slave, became one of the most senior Companions.
Abu Bakr (RA) spent much of his personal wealth buying tortured Muslim slaves — Bilal among them — purely to free them. This is the Sirah's own account.
8. Zakat is worship, not a subscription — and it's for the poor, not the leaders.
The word zakat itself means "purification" — it purifies the wealth of the giver, and is treated as a right of the poor over the rich rather than as a favor or a state subscription. The Qur'an puts it beautifully: "and in their wealth was a known right for the one who asks, and the deprived" (51:19). The poor receive it as their due, with dignity. The rich give it as worship, not patronage. A wealthy Muslim who hoards while the poor go hungry is sinning against Allah and against them, simultaneously. This is structurally the opposite of "clan leaders controlling funds."
Non-Muslims in the early Islamic state did not pay zakat at all. They paid jizya in exchange for (a) state protection, (b) exemption from military service, and (c) exemption from zakat itself.
The Khaybar 50% also deserves context. The Khaybar Jews had broken their treaty with Madinah, allied with Quraysh against the Muslims during the Battle of the Trench (Khandaq), and lost the resulting war. They could have been expelled. Instead, they asked to keep their land and continue farming, sharing produce. The 50% was a negotiated arrangement they preferred to expulsion.
9. On "72 virgins" — also your own admission.
You note this image came "a couple of centuries later" — which alone undermines the idea that it was an early recruitment tool. The Qur'an's actual paradise is vastly broader: the meeting with Allah Himself (described as the highest joy of all), the company of the prophets, eternal peace, gardens with flowing rivers, reunion with loved ones, etc. That is the kind of reward the Qur'an centers on. Reducing it to a martyr incentive doesn't survive contact with the text — and paradise is for all believers, not fighters specifically.
10. On "monotheism adopted from Judeo-Christianity."
Islam's own claim — and this is important — is that tawhid (pure monotheism) is the original religion of all the prophets: Adam, Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses), Isa (Jesus), and on. Muhammad (PBUH) was sent not to borrow a Judeo-Christian innovation but to restore the religion of Ibrahim, with which the Ka'bah itself had been associated long before. The Qur'an addresses this directly: monotheism is what unbroken human nature (fitrah) and reason point to, with or without prior scripture (e.g., Surah 30:30). The "borrowed from Christianity" reading is a 19th-century Orientalist hypothesis — not what the primary sources claim.
11. On battles — most were defensive.
Badr (year 2 H): the Quraysh marched a 1,000-man army out of Mecca toward 313 Muslims who had just fled persecution and had their properties confiscated.
Uhud (year 3 H): Quraysh attacking Madinah.
Khandaq (year 5 H): a 10,000-man confederate siege of Madinah.
Hudaybiyyah (year 6 H): the Prophet (PBUH) accepted humiliating terms for peace rather than fight when it could be avoided.
Conquest of Mecca (year 8 H): 10,000 Muslims entered the city; total casualties were minimal; the Prophet (PBUH) granted a mass amnesty, including to the woman who had eaten the liver of his beloved uncle Hamza at Uhud. "Go, you are free" — was his message to the people who had tortured, exiled, and tried to kill him for 20 years.
This is not "scorched-earth" expansion. This is a man whose victories looked like reconciliations.
12. The Qur'an itself — left out of the article entirely.
The Sirah preserves a striking moment. Walid ibn al-Mughirah, the Quraysh's most respected judge of Arabic eloquence — a poet to whom rival tribes brought their verse for ranking — was pressured by his clan to come up with something to discredit the Qur'an before pilgrimage season. He ruled out every category they offered: "He's not a soothsayer — we know soothsayers. Not a madman — we know madness. Not a poet — by Allah, no man among you knows poetry better than I do, and what he recites resembles no form of it. Not a sorcerer — we know sorcery." Cornered for an answer, he finally conceded: "By Allah, his speech has a sweetness, and upon it is a grace. Its top is fruitful, and its bottom is gushing. It rises above all speech, and nothing rises above it. This is not the speech of a human being." (Occasion of revelation for Qur'an 74:11–25; preserved in Ibn Hisham and al-Wahidi's Asbab al-Nuzul.) He still chose, under pressure from Abu Jahl, to publicly call it "magic" — but only after privately admitting it wasn't. The Qur'an was revealed to an unlettered (ummi) man, over 23 years, in non-linear pieces responding to live events, and reads as a single coherent book whose linguistic unity has been studied for fourteen centuries. The "social engineering" frame doesn't address any of this.
13. One last thing — the early Caliphs.
The article frames the post-Muhammad expansion as efficient state-building. But Umar ibn al-Khattab (RA) — who ruled an empire stretching from Egypt to Persia — patched his own cloak, ate barley bread, slept under a tree in the marketplace, and walked through Madinah at night with no guards. Persian envoys arriving to negotiate famously could not believe he was the Caliph. This is not the behavior of empire-builders maximizing tax revenue. This is the behavior of men who believed they were stewards, accountable to God for every coin.
If you have the curiosity to read further, I'd warmly recommend Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar). What you find there does not reduce to a strategy. There is a man — and behind him, the One who sent him.
May Allah guide all of us to the truth.
That's all nice and good an all. But according to your sources, he married a 6 year old and fucked her when she was nine. Then he abolished adoption so he could marry Zainab and not be a sodomist.
The notion that he reduced slavery is laughable. They did nothing to stop the Barbary Pirate slave trade and took for themselves sex slaves and wives. They might not have been worse than the surrounding culture, but they CERTAINLY weren't any better.
We can appreciate his statecraft. His moral character is something else to be desired.
Bismillaah. These are serious accusations and deserve serious answers.
1. On Aisha (RA).
- In 7th-century Arabia, Byzantium, Persia, and Europe, marriage at puberty was the universal norm — including among Christian kings and nobility. King Richard II of England married Isabella of Valois when she was 6 and he was 29. King John married Isabelle of Angoulême at 12. Eleanor of Aquitaine was married at 13. Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII, gave birth at 13. English common law set the age of consent at 10 from 1576 well into the 1800s.
Judging the 7th century by 21st-century standards condemns every civilization before about 1900.
- The Quraysh attacked the Prophet (PBUH) on every conceivable point — calling him a poet, a soothsayer, a madman, a magician — and never once raised this marriage as an objection. If it had been scandalous in their context, they would have used it. The silence is historical evidence.
2. On Zaynab (RA) and the "sodomist" accusation.
There is zero evidence — not weak, not contested, but zero — in any classical source, friendly or hostile, accusing the Prophet (PBUH) of homosexual conduct. Not from the Quraysh. Not from the Madinan hypocrites. Not from the Jewish tribes. Not from any Roman or Persian source. Inventing a charge no one in 1,400 years of recorded enmity ever made isn't analysis — it's slander.
The actual story of Zaynab (RA):
- She was the Prophet's cousin. He arranged her marriage to Zaid ibn Haritha, his freed slave and adopted son — a deliberate public assault on Arabian class hierarchy. Zaynab and her family initially objected to marrying a former slave; the Qur'an itself addressed their hesitation (33:36) and they submitted.
- The marriage was unhappy. When Zaid (RA) wanted to divorce her, the Prophet (PBUH) told him to stay married — the Qur'an preserves the command: "Keep your wife and fear Allah" (33:37).
- After the divorce, Allah commanded the Prophet (PBUH) to marry her (33:37) — to abolish the pre-Islamic taboo that adopted sons were treated as biological sons, which had distorted inheritance, marriage law, and family identity.
3. On slavery and the Barbary Pirates.
The Barbary Pirates operated roughly 900 to 1,200 years after the Prophet (PBUH). Holding him responsible for them is a basic category error in historical reasoning — like blaming someone for what people did in his name a thousand years after his death.
4. On sex slaves and wives.
The Qur'an explicitly forbids forcing enslaved women into sexual exploitation (24:33), and the Prophet (PBUH) declared: "There is no place for prostitution in Islam" (Abu Dawud). The strongest classical recommendation for war captives was manumission and marriage — which is exactly what happened with Juwayriyah, Safiyya, and Maria (RA).
Now the point that matters most.
You made two serious accusations: that the Prophet (PBUH) was a child molester and a homosexual.
The Quraysh hated him. They tortured his followers, killed Sumayya, boycotted his clan in a valley for three years until they ate tree leaves, plotted his assassination, and fought him at Badr, Uhud, and Khandaq. They spent twenty years trying to destroy his credibility — calling him him a poet, a soothsayer, a madman, a magician, a fabricator. They would have used anything.
Not one of them — not one Qurayshi enemy, not one Madinan hypocrite, not one Jewish or Christian opponent, not one Roman or Persian observer in 1,400 years of recorded history — ever accused him of either thing you just accused him of.
May Allah guide us all to the truth.
lol I didn’t even call him gay. You inserted that.
Regarding Zaynab:
Your authoritative commentator al-Tabari provided this context regarding Zaynab: that when Muhammad was looking for Zaid, he came to Zaid’s residence but instead found Zaynab, dressed “only in a shift.” Of which caused Muhammad to turn away and say “Glory be to God, who causes the hearts to turn!”
When Zayd heard about this, he said to Muhammad “Messenger of God (police be upon him), perhaps Zaynab has excited your admiration, and so I will separate myself from her.”
Regarding Aisha:
There is still a world of difference raping a girl who is prebuscent (no period yet) and someone who has had their period. I am perfectly fine with condemning every civilization before 1900: every civilization including ours has their moral failings. Unfortunately for you, your main guy is a sex-addicted pedo like many other kings of the period. A false prophet whose only correct vision was that false prophets would have their aorta severed. Other religions at least follow higher moral examples like Jesus (of whom most major religions view as a positive example) or Buddhism. Not some illiterate caravan robber having sex paradise.
Again, all to say, very smart political leader. Very far from a moral example besides the power he could project.
Let’s not even talk about the Hadiths about losing verses in the Quran.
Bismillaah.
1. You wrote "sodomist"
2. The al-Tabari "shift" story you quoted has no authentic chain of transmission and was rejected by classical Muslim scholars themselves (Ibn Kathir, al-Razi, Ibn al-Arabi al-Maliki). al-Tabari recorded BOTH sound and unsound narrations. Please learn this before citing him.
3. Where is your source that the Prophet (PBUH) had sexual relations with Aisha (RA) before her period? Classical sources state the opposite - consummation happened after puberty. Bring your source.
4. You called him a "pedo", while the Quraysh, the Madinan hypocrites, the Jewish tribes, and the Roman and Persian observers all spent decades looking for anything to discredit him, and not one of them ever raised this marriage as a moral objection. Who are you Mr. 21st century man?
5. What do you mean by "Let’s not even talk about the Hadiths about losing verses in the Quran"?