Muhammad’s revelations did not begin until he was forty years old. During the period of normal life, he ran their caravan trading business and raised his family. As noted earlier, he adopted the former slave Zayd fairly early in this time, and then his cousin Ali (age 5) much later, when the younger of his children were being born. His caravan trips probably followed the Meccan pattern of going to Gaza and Syria during the summer, and south to Aden during the winter. His uncle al-Abbas brought perfume from South Arabia to sell in Mecca during the pilgrimage month. (Mackintosh-Smith, 121) I don’t think we know what wares Khadijah’s and Muhammad’s business majored in, and mostly we hear of trips toward Syria.
Stories of Muhammad during this time depict him as very devoted to worship at the Ka’aba. The Ka’aba had a wide open space around it, known as the masjid. Going to the Ka’aba meant circumambulating (walking around) the building seven times and kissing the black stone embedded in its foundation. Years later, his friend Umar, now Caliph, was asked why Muslims still kiss the black stone. Umar said that he didn’t consider the stone itself to be significant, but if Muhammad had done it, he was going to do it too. It’s part of the sunnah, the customs and ways, of Muhammad.
Because Muslims believe that Abraham and Ishmael founded the Ka’aba as a temple to Allah, they don’t see Muhammad as being involved in idol worship. It’s true that there were idols inside the Ka’aba and that most of the worshippers had these idols in mind. But except for (perhaps) in his youth, Muhammad is believed to have been a Haneef, that is, an Arab who tried to worship the one Creator God without any particular creed to belong to. And at the same time that Muhammad reverenced the Ka’aba and its stone, he expressed disgust at the idols of Mecca and South Arabia.
He referred to God as “al-Illah,” the generic Arabic name for God (or in pagan context, “a god”); this name, of course, gets simplified to “Allah.” So like other Haneefs, Muhammad referred to “Allah” when he prayed or discussed, and although his fellow citizens worshipped Hubal and the rest, they would have recognized the meaning of what he was saying. They just thought he was pushing his luck by excluding the other gods and insisting on generic “Allah.”
Muhammad was nicknamed “al-Amin,” the Just Man, in reference to his insistence on conducting all business strictly and fairly. Many merchants did not follow these principles, so that he witnessed cheating and bribery in daily business. During these main adult years, Muhammad was integrated in city life, but he felt troubled about being part of what he saw going on.
Another feature of Meccan life that bothered Muhammad was the transition from desert virtues of generosity to commercial virtues of thrift. Desert chieftains of war bands gave feasts and lavish gifts (a pattern also followed by Germanic kings at the same time), using their generosity to create a reputation of nobility. Desert chiefs might give away half of what they owned, since loyal warriors might take just as much again at the next raid. But Meccan merchants operated on principles of investment and profit. They held onto profits, giving only limited banquets and never lavishly handing out gold. Worse, some of the desert generosity had always been directed at the unsuccessful herders and hunters, the poor. Meccan thrift did not include support for the poor. Muhammad was troubled to see growing urban poverty of a type that had been unknown in the desert.
As he grew older, Muhammad began spending much of the month of Ramadan in a cave near the city. Ramadan was already established in the Arabic calendar; it means “scorching heat.” I have not been able to determine much else about pre-Islamic meanings for Ramadan. It may have had some traditional purpose of fasting and meditation already, such that if you wanted to withdraw to a cave, that was the obvious time to do it. He didn’t always fast, for they say that he took provisions and shared them with any poor who stopped by the mountaintop.
The cave of al-Hira was located in the nearby mountain of Jabal al-Nour (Mountain of Light). The outskirts of Mecca now go right up to the mountain’s foot. You can hike up the mountain in about two hours, arriving at the cave. The cave entrance is low and stooping, but once inside, the visitor finds that it opens up with a flat floor and reasonable standing space.
- Revelation: The Story of Muhammad, by Meraj Mohiuddin and Sherman Jackson.
- Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Martin Lings. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1983.