800 miles south of the Byzantine frontier, in Mecca, a city of the Hejaz, a middle-aged man, after a mediocre career as a merchant, began wandering d… - Peter C. Brownell

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800 miles south of the Byzantine frontier, in Mecca, a city of the Hejaz, a middle-aged man, after a mediocre career as a merchant, began wandering disconsolately among the sinister hills outside the city. In C.E.610, this man, Muhammad, began to have visions. He narrated these visions in metrical form and constituted his Qur'an, "recitation". Strengthened by these experiences he gathered a community around himself: the Umma, the "people of Allah". Within twenty years Muhammad and his Umma had established themselves as rulers of Mecca and nearby Medina, and as the main party of the Arabian Peninsula. (Part 2, chapter III, p. 155)