[By the end of the 6th century,] Meccan commerce was flourishing as never before, and the leaders in this trade [the Quraysh] had developed from mere merchants into true financiers. They were no longer interested in "buying cheap and selling dear," but also with organizing money and men to realize their commercial objectives. There was emerging, in short, a class of men with well-developed managerial and organizational skills. It was a development unheralded, and almost unique, in central Arabia.[12] In the words of Fred Donner:
There were recurrences of the plague in Syria–Palestine about every decade between 688/89 and 744/45. [35] "The Umaiyad [sic] dynasty was literally plagued by this disease ", in the words of Dols. [36] The deaths of the Umayyad caliphs Mu'awiya II ( r . 683–684 ), Marwan I ( r . 684–685 ), Abd al-Malik ( r . 685–705 ), Sulayman ( r . 715–717 ) and the Umayyad governors in Iraq al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba ( r . 661–671 ) and Ziyad ibn Abihi ( r . 685–673 ) may all possibly have been caused by the plague epidemics in Syria and Iraq. [37] [21] The caliphs routinely withdrew from the cities to their desert palaces when the plague emerged during the summer months. [36] Notable among them was Caliph Hisham ( r . 724–743 ), who preferred his palace at Rusafa over Damascus because he viewed the latter to be unhealthy. [38]
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