Word: mecca
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Mohammed and his birthplace owe a lot to each other. In his day - the 7th Century A.D. - Mecca was the main transfer point between southern Arabia and Syria. Mohammed, an or phan member of a major Meccan clan, entered the city's chief industry, cross-desert transport, and did well. He married his boss, Khadija, a widow some years older than he. He was devoted to her as long as she lived, and she was his first convert when he began going out into the desert and coming back with strange ideas about religion. The caravans to Mecca brought...
...Mecca, this was a far more revolutionary proposal than it would have been elsewhere in the pagan world. Polytheism was at the heart of Mecca's economic and social life. If Mecca took a strong stand for a particular god, Mecca's pilgrim business would die. The practical choice for Mecca was polytheism or, if it elected monotheism, the political conquest of all Arabia and the imposition of its one-God religion. To a man, the Mec can leaders rejected Mohammed. But he persisted even after he gradually came to realize that his spiritual kingdom did not have...
...years Mohammed, with a handful of followers, struggled vainly in Mecca to convince the town leaders that there was no God but Allah. During these years he began to produce the Koran, which he said was not written by him but by God, and transmitted to him by the Angel Gabriel...
From Tent io Palace. In 1921, as a reward for the Hashemites' services, Britain's Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, made Abdullah Emir of Trans-Jordan and made his brother Feisal King of Iraq. The boys had their troubles. Their father, Hussein, Sherif of Mecca, was attacked by his old rival, Ibn Saud. In the end, Ibn Saud drove the Sherif out of his domain, annexed Mecca and the surrounding district to his holdings in Arabia...
SAUDI ARABIA (estimated pop. 3,500,000): desert domain of KING IBN SAUD, 71, who took parts of it by force in 1925 from Hussein, the Sherif of Mecca and Abdullah's father; in theory, a theocracy; in fact, an absolute monarchy. Member of the Arab League. Ibn Saud's main income: $100 million yearly in royalties for oil concessions to Aramco. Army: 15,000, plus tribal irregulars. At Dhahran: important U.S. air base...