ABSTRACT
The Arabian Peninsula is known in Arabic as jazírat al-‘árab, literally “the island of the Arabs.” It has the shape of a rectangle spanning 1,200 by 900 miles at its extreme measurements. Its territory is a little over one million square miles. The Peninsula is separated from the neighboring world by natural barriers: water on three sides (Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, and Red Sea) and the Syrian Desert on the fourth. The land consists of barren deserts, mountains and plateaus (especially in the west), and steppes. Its southernmost part is affected by the Indian Ocean’s monsoons that bring in a limited amount of rainfall. This area and the mountainous areas of North Yemen receive enough rainfall to allow local populations to grow wheat, millet, sorghum, and palm trees. The sandy desert, called al-Rub‘ al-Khali (literally, “the Empty Place”), in the southeast and the Nufúd desert in the north have almost no water. The principal cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina, are located in the rugged, inhospitable area in the central western part of the Arabian Peninsula, which is known as the Hijáz. As in the rest of Arabia, rains in the Hijáz are very rare, but when they come they may bring devastating flash floods that leave widespread destruction in their wake. In the aftermath of flash floods, the water which was not used for irrigation by the local population is stored in specially built reservoirs or in water holes. Amidst this barren terrain we find a small number of oases with springs and wells, where agriculture is possible. Yáthrib, later to be renamed as Medina, “the City [of the Prophet],” was one such agricultural oasis. Mecca, the native town of the founder of Islam, had no major source of water and had to sustain itself by caravan trade and proceeds from the annual pilgrimage to its shrines.
