Now, at age twenty-five, Muhammad had an opportunity to escape his relative poverty. When the modest camel trains assembled outside Mecca to go to Syria, Khadija’s rivaled all the others combined—that is, she may have possessed half of the town’s long-distance merchant capital. Muhammad’s uncle Abu Talib had recommended him when she asked for someone honest and reliable. Khadija, somewhat Muhammad’s elder, would have met him in her receiving room with her circle of advisers. Making her decision, she underlined the responsibility she was vouchsafing to him: “I’ve entrusted you with twice as many goods as any of your predecessors among your people.”
She sent along her manservant Maysara, likely as much to keep an eye on her capital as to serve Muhammad. The young man had just gained a magnificent opportunity, but he had incurred daunting risks as well. Let us try to imagine what his hazardous journey through the world of the late sixth century was like.
The caravan may have set out from the small Arabian holy city in August 592. Citizens gathered beneath the lambent late-afternoon sun to see the traders off, having invested in the mission, ringing bells and beating tambourines. Muhammad and the other traders wore the white robes of merchant-priests of peace. They thereby signaled to any hostile tribesmen that they had no warlike intentions and traveled between sanctuaries under the protection of the Creator God. Members of the Hashim clan had a special advantage in this regard since they served as caretakers of the Kaaba and even coarse rural tribesmen respected their vocation. Bedouin children ran up to them, giggling and hawking fruit and water. Muhammad and his men would have passed through occasional adobe villages, roofs thatched with palm leaves, as they traversed the auburn steppe, interrupted by teal abal bushes and strewn with colorful loose chert.
Such travelers rode through the night beneath a spangled sky. At dawn the sun slowly flared behind low basalt hills, tinting the twisted crags with rose and violet, then embossing them in brass. They halted when the heat of the day grew too oppressive, catching some sleep and waiting for nightfall. After several days of riding, the party would have reached the date-palm oasis of Yathrib. There, happy to see some limpid pools and fruit-laden date and jujube trees after days of eating dust, they would have stocked up on water, dates, and other refreshments for the precarious arid trek north. A vassal of Sasanian Iran from the local pagan Khazraj tribe then ruled this city, but the Meccans had preserved their own neutrality between Iran and the Roman Empire.
Muhammad would have visited with his relatives in Medina. His great-grandmother Salma was a Khazraji woman of the Najjar clan. The Banu Najjar, despite being such distant cousins, would have valued their connection to Muhammad’s family, custodians of the sacred Kaaba. Medinans went on pilgrimage to the shrine of God in Mecca, though they also visited the temple they had erected to the goddess of fate, Manat.
Then Muhammad and his convoy would have set off again north in the late afternoon. When voyagers passed over patches of white sand, the granules glinted in the relentless sun like miniature diamonds. Thirst and discomfort beset the travelers, as distant mirages of sweet water spitefully vanished on their closer approach. Occasionally, they might have startled ranging herds of spear-horned oryx, which scattered with dazzling speed. Keening desert gales assailed them like the breath of a dragon, and when a sandstorm came up, it pricked their skin as though with innumerable tiny needles. The Meccans would have been inordinately grateful for the occasional majestic cumulus cloud that offered them some respite from the irate summer sun.
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During the blistering day, when the sand scorched their feet, travelers huddled miserably in sheepskin tents, awaiting the gloaming to start their journey afresh. They typically accomplished some of the trip at night. The nocturnal journey challenged the camel drivers and their steeds, bouncing their passengers unevenly as their mounts stumbled blindly across jagged lava fields and rock-strewn dry riverbeds.
Such excursions depended on detailed Quraysh knowledge of the rugged countryside, of where the wells and oases lay and where robber bands might lie in wait. Occasionally, local tribes would have confronted Muhammad and the Quraysh, demanding that they pay out some of their goods for passage through that land. The Meccans are said to have bought off such hostile bedouins by offering carriage to them for their leather and other goods and a share of the profits on their return. Muhammad, a scion of the Banu Hashim, which specialized in settling feuds and keeping the peace around the Kaaba sanctuary, would have found himself forced to negotiate such challenges despite his youth and inexperience. If he failed, he could face raids and lose the whole value of his trading mission, ending his career as a long-distance merchant. If he did not bring back summer wheat from Syria, some of his friends might miss some meals.
