Pre-Islamic Arabia: Arabia's Precarious Location 🧭 🗺️

To the south of the peninsula was the Kingdom of Aksum in Abyssinia, modern Ethiopia. Based high in the Abyssinian mountains, Aksum was a powerful trading state that connected inland African kingdoms, the Indian Ocean sea routes and the south part of the Arabian Peninsula. As a crossroad for trade, it had considerable influence on Arab merchants, who dealt with the Aksumites in Yemen. Like Rome, Aksum was a Christian empire that had tension with Persia on numerous occasions. Control of the trades routes running through Yemen was a constant source of friction, as both sides sought to turn local leaders into vassals.

In the increasingly globalised world of the early 600s, the Arabs were aware of their neighbours and became affected by events outside the Arabian Peninsula. Being at a crossroads of three powerful states meant being aware of international politics and having the skill to use rivalries to their advantage. Yet despite their precarious location, the Arabs were safe in the depth of the desert. They called their peninsula jazirat al-Arab, meaning “the island of the Arabs” due ot how isolated its inhabitant were. This isolation proved to be greatly beneficial. The harsh environment meant that none of the surrounding state could invade and occupy Arab lands. The Arabs’ traditional cycle of wandering and their way of life was mostly unaffected by regional politics and wars.

In this protected environment a movement would rise in the early 600s that would have huge implications for the surrounding states, and eventually the entire world. It would change the destiny of the Arabs forever, building on and using their unique abilities and doing away with the negative cultural traits that kept them as wandering, warring nomads. Geography, climate, culture and politics together all led to the perfect environment in which Islam could rise to become a world power faster than any other movement, religion, or empire in world history. It would sweep out of the deserts of Arabia into the battered Roman and Persian Empires, conquering territories and assimilating diverse peoples, creating an empire that stretch from Spain to India by the early 700s - the world’s largest at the time.

This exponential growth in power and civilisation would have been unfathomable to the Arabs of the early 600s, who were struggling to survive. Yet all it took was the arrival of a man who came with a revolutionary message and a promise to the Arabs of a new destiny, one beyond the sands of Arabia: Muhammad ﷺ.