This is the second in a series of articles that will take a long, hard, look at the ancient evidence for the existence of Mecca. If you missed the first article, you can find it here.
If you rely on the classic Islamic sources, even asking questions about this might be seen as nonsensical, because they take for granted that Mecca was the most important city in the Arabian Peninsula. However, this picture is, to put it mildly, not supported by on-the-ground evidence. It must, furthermore, be remembered that the Islamic sources were committed to paper generations after the time when Muhammad was supposed to have lived. So, asking these questions is right and proper. In this first article we will look at evidence, or lack of it, from the writings of neighboring entities.
It must be stated from the outset that the title of this article series is something of a misnomer because if its contents were limited to actual pre-Islamic historical evidence for the ancient existence of Mecca, there would be nothing here. To put it as bluntly as possible: There is not a single shred of uncontested primary source evidence confirming the existence of an ancient city at the spot where the modern city of Mecca is located.
This may seem, at first glance, like a very bold and startling claim, and one that is likely to be profoundly disruptive to the faith of devout Muslims. The facts, however, speak for themselves. Mecca is not mentioned in any correspondence, travel description or gazetteer (geographical dictionary) or any other type of historical source before the 8th century. In fact, the first references to Mecca all occur more than a century after the date commonly given for the death of Muhammad, with the oldest mention of the city dating from 741 CE (i.e., 109 years after Muhammad’s death) where it is referred to in a document known as the ‘Continuatio Byzantia Arabica’.
In the previous article, we had a look at cities, kingdoms and civilizations that existed within striking distance of the current location of Mecca. We found that the scribes of these entities were entirely unaware of the great city supposedly right on their doorstep. We now turn to the records of some of the great empires of the ancient world. Several of these empires had a significant level of interest in the Arabian Peninsula.
The reason for this can be found in the place that the peninsula occupied between some of the most important political configurations of the ancient world. Exerting some level of control over Arabia was an attractive proposition because it would give whoever controlled it access to trade routes and natural resources.
Another very significant reason for the importance of Central-Arabia applies specifically to the Sassanians (Persians) and Romans. Arabia was very much on the frontline between the two great empires of Late Antiquity and whoever controlled the peninsula would be able to use it as a jumping-off point for an attack on the enemy. Whoever controlled Arabia could also better secure its borders and use the region as a recruitment ground for tribal mercenaries to fight in their wars.
The imperial powers we will be discussing here were in some ways globe spanning enterprises and the amount of source material associated with them is vast. There are, therefore, plenty of specific places where historians can go looking for evidence for the ancient existence of Mecca. The empires that will be profiled below are the following:
Babylonian
Assyrian
Persian
Hellenistic (Greek)
Roman
Arabia and the Babylonian Empire
The term ‘Babylonian Empire’ is a bit of a misnomer as there are several entities that can lay claim to this title and that controlled large parts of the Middle East for more than a millennium. For our purposes the most important manifestation of Babylonian interests in Arabia came right towards the end of the Babylonian era.
One of the Babylonian kings, Nabonidus (reigned 556-539 BCE), left his empire under the control of one of his sons, Belshazzar, and proceeded to conquer much of Arabia. He eventually set up his Arabian headquarters in a city called Teima (about 500 miles from the location of modern Mecca as the crow flies). From there he continued his conquests southwards, eventually gaining control of the most important cities of the Arabian interior including Dedan, Khaybar and Yathrib (later renamed Medina). These conquests are described in detail in the so-called ‘Haran Inscriptions of Nabonidus’, the ‘Verse Account of Nabonidus’ and the ‘Babylonian Royal Chronicles’.
By consulting these documents, we can reconstruct a detailed record of his conquests and movements. These conquests would have given him control of the all-important trade routes through the Arabian interior. Although even some small settlements are mentioned, there is not a single reference to the city that Muslim sources assure us was the most important city in Arabia since time immemorial. This is particularly baffling given that it was clearly the intention of Nabonidus to control Central-Arabia. Such a move would have been strenuously resisted by the military might of the Meccans (if they in fact existed).