ABSTRACT
Arabia to the Mediterranean remained commercially important after the decline of Petra; and among the goods which the Fertile Crescent exported in return were the elements of its higher civilizations, Christianity and Judaism: colonies of adherents o f these faiths lived in the towns along this route, side-by-side with the Arabs who worshipped the manifold forces of nature through the medium of idols. The principal town in the sixth century a .d . was Mecca, where the road to the Mediterranean branched from another leading to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf; it had an important pagan cult centring round a meteoric Black Stone built into a sanctuary called the Ka’ba; and it was in this environment, culturally outlandish but impregnated by its commercial contacts with the higher civilization of the Fertile Crescent, that the Prophet Mohammed was bom in 570.
