http://www.inplainsite.org/html/quran_word_of_god_3.html#D4"Therefore, the earliest corroborative evidence we have for the existence of Mecca is fully 100 years after the date when Islamic tradition and the Qur'an place it. Why? Certainly, if it was so important a city, someone, somewhere would have mentioned it; yet we find nothing outside of the small inference by Ptolemy 500 years earlier, and these initial statements in the latter seventh to early eighth century.
And that is not all, for Muslims maintain that Mecca was not only an ancient and great city, but it was also the center of the trading routes for Arabia in the seventh century and before (Cook 1983:74; Crone 1987:3-6).
Yet, according to extensive research by Bulliet on the history of trade in the ancient Middle-East, these claims by Muslims are quite wrong, as Mecca simply was not on the major trading routes. The reason for this, he contends, is that, "Mecca is tucked away at the edge of the peninsula. Only by the most tortured map reading can it be described as a natural crossroads between a north-south route and an east-west one." (Bulliet 1975:105)
This is corroborated by further research carried out by Groom and Muller, who contend that Mecca simply could not have been on the trading route, as it would have entailed a detour from the natural route.
In fact, they maintain the trade route must have bypassed Mecca by some one-hundred miles (Groom 1981:193; Muller 1978:723).
Patricia Crone, in her work on Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam adds a practical reason which is too often overlooked by earlier historians. She points out that,
"Mecca was a barren place, and barren places do not make natural halts, and least of all when they are found at a short distance from famously green environments. Why should caravans have made a steep descent to the barren valley of Mecca when they could have stopped at Ta'if. Mecca did, of course, have both a well and a sanctuary, but so did Ta'if, which had food supplies, too" (Crone 1987:6-7; Crone-Cook 1977:22).
Furthermore, Patricia Crone asks, "what commodity was available in Arabia that could be transported such a distance, through such an inhospitable environment, and still be sold at a profit large enough to support the growth of a city in a peripheral site bereft of natural resources?" (Crone 1987:7) It was not incense, spices or other exotic goods, as many notoriously unreliable early writers had intimated (see Crone's discussion on the problem of historical accuracy, particularly between Lammens, Watts and Kister, in Meccan Trade, 1987:3).
In her study on the Meccan Trade, Dr. Crone points out that of the fifteen spices attributed to Mecca: six went out of fashion before the sixth century; two were imported by sea; two were exclusively from East Africa; two were inferior and thus never traded; one was of a problematic identity; and two cannot be identified at all (Crone 1987:51-83). Consequently, not one of the fifteen spices can be attributed to Mecca. So what was the trade for which Mecca was famous? Some Muslims maintain it was banking or perhaps camel herding; yet in such a barren environment?
According to the latest and much more reliable research by Kister and Sprenger, the Arabs engaged in a trade of a considerably humbler kind, that of leather and clothing; hardly items which could have founded a commercial empire of international dimensions (Kister 1965:116; Sprenger 1869:94)."
Much more:
http://www.inplainsite.org/html/quran_word_of_god_3.html#D4
