All nomadic groups in the world, Bedouins, Mongols, Tuaregs etc. were called “Arabs”.
I found this photo of three poor Bedouin men who make the Kabyles laugh.
Here is my comment.
Yet it is these people that you present to your children as being great warriors who had brought your forefathers to their knees.
Your children are ashamed of their identity when they listen to you recount the exploits of these Bedouins, Oqba in your imagination is a superman and they want to look like the winners.
This picture is from our time. We see three people with quite presentable clothes that were not yet produced in the Middle Ages. I don’t dare to imagine their condition in the Middle Ages.
The writing above these people was not known in the Hijaz desert. Not a single writing from before the fable of Islam was found.
These people in the 6th century were called “Bedouins”, like the North Africans were called Numidians, Moors, Libyans etc. Like the North Africans someone arabized them. Of course, in the Middle Ages, if by some miracle they all gathered in one place, they would not fill a basketball stadium, men, women, children and goats included. The Hijaz desert was barren. The mosque, masjid al haram, the only building we see from this region, was built well after the 6th century.
The word “Arab” in that century did not refer to a people but to groups of nomadic raiders. All nomadic groups in the world, Bedouins, Mongols, Tuaregs etc. were called “Arabs”. Often the term was used to insult the lower class, despicable people or political and religious opponents. …It was as an insult against a religious competitor, Arianism, that the word entered the history of religions.
When you have understood your history, nothing can stop you in your march to independence. The Arab world will collapse like the sand castle it is.
On the subject of Mecca, here is what a “specialist” in Islamic history says.
Alfred-Louis de Prémare is professor emeritus, historian of
Arab-Islamic world and teacher-researcher at the Institute for Research and Studies on the Arab and Muslim World (IREMAM) in Aix-en-Provence, France. He has also taught at the Islamic universities of Constantine (Algeria) and Rabat (Morocco).
Here is an excerpt from his study entitled “the foundations of Islam, between history and writing”.
8. Lack of epigraphic and archaeological data
It is possible to subject traditional historical material to rigorous criticism. But the result is often uncertain. Compared to Hebrew history and the history of early Christianity, the history of the origins of Islam suffers from a clear disadvantage at the outset: we have almost no epigraphic and archaeological data for this period that we can compare with Islamic sources.
The epigraphic data that predates the 7th century is mainly from Yemen, and there is a lot of it. But in this field we have nothing on the Hijaz, the cradle of Islam, or even on central Arabia. The oldest inscriptions we have from the Hijaz, which are very rare, are dated according to the Muslim era, and do not appear before the first caliphs of the Umayyad family.
In Inner Arabia, we have no archaeological data at present that is remotely prior to, or contemporary with, Muhammad and his early successors.
It would be wise to make known the study of the renowned and esteemed Islamic scholar and professor of Islamic history in the Arab-Muslim world, Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Les fondations de l’islam entre histoire et littérature.
Here is the passage from the study that joins the article. 8. Manque de données épigraphiques et archéologiques
Il est possible de soumettre le matériel traditionnel en matière historique à une critique rigoureuse. Mais le résultat en est souvent aléatoire. En comparaison de l’histoire hébraïque et l’histoire du christianisme primitif, l’histoire des origines de l’islam, en effet, subit un net désavantage au départ : nous n’avons, pour cette période, presque pas de données épigraphiques et archéologiques que nous puissions confronter avec les sources islamiques.
Les données épigraphiques qui précèdent de peu le 7e siècle concernent essentiellement le Yémen, et elles sont nombreuses. Mais en ce domaine nous n’avons rien sur le Hedjâz, berceau de l’islam, ni même sur l’Arabie centrale. Les plus anciennes inscriptions que nous ayons du Hedjâz, qui sont très rares, sont datées selon l’ère musulmane, et n’apparaissent pas avant les premiers califes de la famille omeyyade 28.
En Arabie intérieure, nous ne disposons pour le moment d’aucune donnée archéologique qui soit de peu antérieure à, ou contemporaine de, Muhammad et de ses premiers successeurs.
Thank you for your post which will help to better understand the subject. I would add the passage from the study of this French Islamophile.
You have to be crazy to dare such an idea. But you’d have to be a complete idiot to believe that the desert in the Middle Ages had a population as large as the grains of sand on a dune. Even worse in stupidity is to believe that two cats wandering in a desert could be the origin of a civilization with a high level of mastery of science, technology and poetry, they who did not even have enough to pitch a tent.