Why Allah Chose the Arabs

If Arabia was so harsh and unlettered, why did Allah send the final Prophet ﷺ there, and not among the mighty Romans or the ancient Persians? The scholars draw out several wisdoms.

Arabia lay between the two superpowers of the age, the Byzantines to the north-west and the Sassanid Persians to the east, connected to both yet belonging to neither. Within a generation of the Prophet ﷺ the Arabs would overrun both empires; had they been in some far corner of the earth, they could not have. And because they had no history of conquest or empire, Rome and Persia never saw them coming: when the Muslim armies first marched, the emperors laughed at the bedouin who dared approach them.

Nor did the Arabs have an entrenched civilization to overthrow, no unified state, no written literature, no monumental architecture. This was a blessing in disguise: into that vacuum Islam brought a wholly new civilization, with its own language, script, law and coinage, without first having to tear down a rival order. The Qurʾan reminded them:

لَقَدْ أَنزَلْنَا إِلَيْكُمْ كِتَابًا فِيهِ ذِكْرُكُمْ

"We have sent down to you a Book in which is your honour" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21:10), their legacy would come through revelation.

And the Arabs themselves had qualities fitting the trust: a purity and simplicity of spirit unclouded by philosophy, so that truth, when it came, was accepted plainly; a hardiness bred of the desert, which carried the early armies across vast distances on little food and water; bravery and a deep sense of honour; a hatred of lying, even Abu Sufyan, then an enemy, would not lie before Heraclius for fear of being branded a liar; and a faithfulness to oaths so strong that no written contracts were needed among them. They were the finest horsemen of the age, and theirs was a Semitic tongue of rare power, deriving from a single root a wealth of meaning.

Above all, Mecca was the site of the first House built for the worship of Allah, raised by Ibrahim and Isma'il; it was fitting that the first universal call go forth from it. And it was there, as he raised its foundations, that Ibrahim made his prayer:

رَبَّنَا وَٱبْعَثْ فِيهِمْ رَسُولًا مِّنْهُمْ يَتْلُو عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِكَ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ ٱلْكِتَابَ وَٱلْحِكْمَةَ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ

"Our Lord, raise up among them a Messenger from themselves, who will recite to them Your verses, and teach them the Book and wisdom, and purify them" (al-Baqarah 2:129). And so the Prophet ﷺ said:

أَنَا دَعْوَةُ أَبِي إِبْرَاهِيمَ، وَبُشْرَىٰ عِيسَى ٱبْنِ مَرْيَمَ

"I am the answer to the prayer of my father Ibrahim, and the glad tidings of ʿĪsā son of Maryam."