There is also growing consensus that Muḥammad was preaching to a society that was experiencing acute economic contraction as a result of the Perso-Roman Wars. 50 The confrontation and the effective militarisation of Rome and Persia had an important impact on trade originating in or passing through the Ḥijāz. With government expenditure funnelled into the army and chronic pressure on the domestic economies to support the war effort, demand for luxury items must have fallen considerably. The fact that the traditional markets, above all the cities in the Levant and in Persia, were caught up in
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