Arabian Peninsula, first half of the sixth century. The Ethiopians of the kingdom of Axum conquered and eliminated the prosperous Himyar kingdom that controlled the peninsular south. Until then, the Himys controlled the commercial routes between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, but the wealth of the kingdom was based especially on agriculture, specifically on a large and sophisticated irrigation system. Islam would take full advantage of the power vacuum left by the decline of the Himyar kingdom in the next century.

The sudden crisis of the kingdom attributed by the chronicles of the time to the drought of the early 6th century has recently been confirmed by a group of researchers from the University of Basel. If the few archaeological remains of the Himyar fail to respond, geological remains have been studied, specifically Stalagmites of the Al Hoota cave in Oman. Because the thickness of stalagmites depends on the amount of water falling on them and the progressive degradation with time of uranium atoms from stalagmites, Swiss researchers have been able to complete the exact chronology of the precipitation of the time, as explained in the journal Science.

Since the year 520, Himyar suffered violent and long droughts. The agriculture on which the State was based collapsed and hunger invaded the entire territory. The crisis of the powerful kingdom destabilized the whole of Arabia. And tribes and small kingdoms started fighting each other, and drought was added to a war. At the beginning of the seventh century, the situation of the Arabs was serious and then Mohammed offered them a hopeful alternative. The newly created Islam brought them faith and unity, as well as the possibility of conquering fertile lands outside the peninsula. The drought perfectly prepared the area to sow the seed of Islam.