Muhammad's Prophetic Authority and Tribal Authority in Pre-Islamic Arabia
Albert Hourani (14) commented that, by the early seventh century, there existed a combination of a settled world in Arabia, which had lost something of its strength and assurance, and another world on its frontiers, "which was in closer contact with its northern neighbors and opening itself to their cultures." The decisive meeting between these groups took place in the middle years of that century when a Meccan merchant known as Muhammad of the Quraysh tribe began revealing the Word of Allah as had been given to him. Muhammad's new prophetic teachings, derived from a path leading back to the Prophet Abraham, represented a very real challenge to the tribal system of authority developed by the Arabs, who were originally nomads (Nasr, 173). Inevitably, Muhammad's vision of an Islamic community or ummah "dominated by the truth of the Quranic revelation" threatened tribal allegiances in general and the authority system developed under the leadership of the most powerful branch of the Quraysh in Mecca (Nasr, 173). The resulting clash was inevitable.
John Esposito (6) notes that Muhammad was born in Mecca at a time when the city had become a prosperous center of trade and commerce. At the same time, it was a society "in which traditional tribal ways were strained by Mecca's transition from a semi-Bedouin to a commercial, urban society" (Esposito, 6). The ruling tribe in Mecca from which Muhammad descended was initially extremely opposed to Muhammad's teaching. Esposito (7) asserts that "for the powerful and prosperous Meccan oligarchy, the monotheistic message of this would-be reformer, with its condemnation of the socioeconomic inequities of Meccan life, constituted a direct challenge not only to traditional polytheistic religion, but also to the power and prestige of the establishment." Muhammad's activities in Mecca were resisted by the Umayyad ...