Rise of Islam preceded by extreme drought

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The Living Force
Source (in Dutch): Opkomst islam vooraf gegaan door extreme droogte

Rise of Islam preceded by extreme drought

Climate Change
Research on a stalagmite shows that it was exceptionally dry on the Arabian Peninsula in the sixth century.

Bart Funnekotter - 20 June 2022 at 17:07

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Stones from a dam built by the kingdom of Himyar. In the sixth century, this water work
fell into disuse. Photo De Agostini via Getty Images

The birth of Islam was preceded by a period of great drought. Between 500 and 530, the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula received exceptionally little rainfall: it was the driest period in the past ten thousand years. These extreme weather conditions contributed to the disappearance of the kingdom of Himyar, which controlled this area for a long time. In the unstable situation that ensued, Islam emerged from the beginning of the seventh century. Scientists from Switzerland and the United States published a study of this special climatic situation in Science on Thursday.

To this end, they examined hydrological, historical and archaeological data and combined it with an analysis of the composition of a 2,600-year-old stalagmite in a cave in northern Oman. The particularly low growth rate of this drop-fed calcite stalagmite shows that at the beginning of the sixth century this region was very dry.

Sophisticated irrigation works

Himyar was the most important power in the southern Arabian Peninsula between the third and early sixth centuries. With the help of sophisticated irrigation works, the inhabitants of the kingdom practiced agriculture. From the year 500, Himyar fell into decline, and in 525 it was annexed by the Christian kingdom of Aksum, which lay on the other side of the Red Sea, in Ethiopia. Irrigation agriculture, which required a strong state to maintain infrastructure, collapsed.

It was already clear from historical and archaeological sources that Himyar was facing serious internal unrest in the early sixth century. The extreme drought might have weakened the kingdom to such an extent that it became a prey to Aksum, the authors write. In doing so, they hasten to state that correlation (things happen simultaneously) is not the same as causation (one thing comes through another).

After Himyar disappeared, the area entered a period of great political and religious change, including the rise of Islam, which began with the preaching of Muhammad beginning in 610. The absence of a strong central power changed the dynamics in the Arabian Peninsula and created space for the rise of a number of monotheistic religions. Judaism and Christianity also expanded. "We do not suggest that the extreme drought (...) was the direct cause of these fundamental changes," the authors say, again cautiously. But their research does highlight an "important and so far largely ignored factor that contributed to the Himyar kingdom being less resilient to both prolonged and more acute internal and external pressures."

Interesting building block

Petra Sijpesteijn, professor of Arabic at Leiden University and an expert on the origins of Islam, is impressed by the technical side of the research into the low rainfall in Himyar, but at the same time is even more cautious than the authors of the article when it comes to attributing great importance to the persistent drought in the early sixth century. "In short: an interesting building block has been found, but we cannot now say: Islam rose due to climate change. It is far from certain that without the fall of Himyar, Islam would not have become successful. Surely the main explanation was the person of the Prophet Muhammad and the nature of his message."

Muhammad began preaching eighty years after the fall of Himyar, says Sijpesteijn. "And in the meantime, all sorts of things happened in Arabia. For example, in the north there was a struggle between the Persian Empire of the Sassanids and the Byzantine Empire. This caused unrest among the Arab tribes. Contributing to that unrest may have been the drought and the resulting collapse of agriculture and trade."

In Muhammad's message, there was an important place for an impending end of time, Sijpesteijn says. "That's what made his preaching so urgent. It may be that climatic conditions contributed to that sense of doom. That's why it's nice that this kind of natural science research contributes to our understanding of the early history of Islam. For example, there are also scholars who believe that the Arab conquests began around 630 because warriors were driven from the peninsula by drought. So more research into the climatic history of this area is very welcome."
 
The drought aspect is interesting and may have contributed to what much later became islam. Himyar was a jewish kingdom so maybe a population movement towards the syria/iraq region contributed to the messianic/judaic movements with all their apocalyptic overtones there, which later became islam.
 
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