Patricia Crone

"As Crone puts it, “It is obvious that if the Meccans had been middlemen in a long-distance trade of the kind described in the secondary literature”—that is, works by Watt and other historians who take for granted the canonical Islamic account—“there ought to have been some mention of them in the writings of their customers. Greek and Latin authors had, after all, written extensively about the south Arabians who supplied them with aromatics in the past, offering information about their cities, tribes, political organization, and caravan trade.”"

"“The political and ecclesiastical importance of Arabia in the sixth century was such that considerable attention was paid to Arabian affairs, too; but of Quraysh and their trading center there is no mention at all, be it in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic, or other literature composed outside Arabia before the conquests. This silence is striking and significant.” Specifically, she says, “Nowhere is it stated that Quraysh, or the ‘Arab kings,’ were the people who used to supply such-and-such regions with such-and-such goods: it was only Muhammad himself who was known to have been a trader.”"