The World Before the Light

Before the light came, Arabia was a land of extremes. Its people were capable of staggering generosity and of burying infant daughters alive. They prized honesty in speech and yet worshipped idols their own hands had carved. A man might be killed over a stray camel, and tribal wars could smoulder for forty years over less. The strong devoured the weak, slavery was ordinary, and a woman could be inherited like furniture.

And yet the threads of something older ran through that world. The Arabs of the Hijaz were children of Isma'il (as), and at the heart of their greatest city stood a simple stone house, the Ka'bah, built by Ibrahim (as) and Isma'il (as) for the worship of the One God. Over the centuries the pure call of Ibrahim (as) had been buried under layers of invention. By the sixth century, three hundred and sixty idols crowded the Sacred House, and pilgrims came to honour them from across the peninsula.

Still, not everyone bowed to the stones. A handful of seekers, remembered as the hunafa, refused the idols and searched for the religion of Ibrahim (as). Men like Zayd ibn 'Amr ibn Nufayl wandered asking rabbis and monks about the true faith, and died waiting for it. The People of the Book in Arabia, Jews of Yathrib and Christians of Najran, spoke among themselves of a prophet whose time had drawn near.

Beyond the desert, two empires, Byzantium and Persia, ground each other down in endless war and ruled their subjects with crushing taxation and rigid hierarchy. The world, east and west, was not at peace with itself. The historians of the sirah describe this moment simply: humanity was in need, and the need was everywhere.

It was into this world, in its most sacred and most contradictory city, that Allah chose to send His final Messenger. Not to an empire's capital, but to a valley with no river and no crops, whose only wealth was a house built by a prophet and a well that had quenched a child named Isma'il (as).