ABSTRACT
Aside From the elements of religious verity recognized by the contemporaries in the message of the Prophet Muḥammad, the most effective factor in attracting adherents to the new faith was its ability to serve as a point of crystallization for a novel sociopolitical unity. Settled life in Arabia had been suffering from the paradoxical circumstance that its not inconsiderable economic and social organization had been developed under the shadow of the norms and sanctions of the desert. Superior to their Bedouin neighbors in every aspect of material civilization, the town dwellers remained subservient to nomad culture patterns in terms of the human ideal as well as of what minor intellectual or artistic aspirations they would support.
