ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out general outlines of the West-Asian world in which in the early 7th century an Islamic history started to make something of an appearance. Traditionally, Islamic history has been rather simply regarded as an outsider in human history that tends to be equated with a particular trajectory that leads to, and explains, Christian Europe. The origins of the Sasanian Empire date back to the 3rd century CE, and it continued to exist to the middle of the 7th century. There is, in fact, very little direct information about the historical circumstances in which the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and its more northern extension, the Syrian Desert, actually lived. Unlike these frontier regions of Arabia, the central and western parts of the peninsula never had sufficient resources to support more complex social and political organizational forms. Yet another story is that of the clans that had settled to guard one of many local sanctuaries on the Peninsula.
