#10: Background of Muhammad

What is a monotheistic prophet?

Single, personal God

Throughout history what is a religious response to defeat by an enemy?

Their distinctive reaction to this history was to develop an exclusive cult of their national god, eventually proclaimed as the only god in existence – in a word, as God. Throughout which empire do we see the original spread of Christianity?

Roman Empire

What is the ancestral faith of Persia?

Zoroastrianism What do you find on either side of the Red Sea?

The Sahara Desert

What geographical feature is a main characteristic of Arabia?

The Arabian peninsula is a vast rectangle, some 1,300 miles long and 750 wide, stretching south-east from the Fertile Crescent (i.e. Syria and Mesopotamia).Its predominant feature is its aridity. What is nomadic pastoralism?

Land of deprivation confined to the Oases Identify two or three geographic conditions that contributed to the shaping of the Arabian character.

Homogeneity and Tribal

How many different peoples lived in the early Arabian society?

Only one, the Arabs.

How many groups controlled the early Arabian desert?

2

What was the great Arabian export of antiquity?

Frankincense What does it mean to say that the early Arabs were polytheistic?

The Arabs were polytheists. The pattern of their religion was simple – the Arabs did not, for example, provide their gods with expensive housing such as was standard in the Fertile Crescent, and so far as we know they developed little in the way of a religious mythology.