I was reading the french wikipedia article regarding the historicity of the city of Mecca, and stumble upon this thesis, and I was wondering what was the actual academic POV about it.
Thanks !
Not really. There are some historians (e.g. Patricia Crone, who I’m not sure how serious she was about the point or if she was just trying to be provocative) who have argued that the rise of Islam makes more sense in a north Arabian or southern Jordanian context thenthe central Hijaz location of Mecca.
This is a pretty fringe revisionist position.
That Petra, specifically, was “Mecca” I’m not aware of any evidence for.