 Holland looks at the earliest evidence for Muhammad, Mecca and Islam in the first century of the Arab Empire, pointing to a lack of evidence in the historical record to support the traditional account. Highlighting that very little Muslim testimony from the 7th century exists, he considers it suspicious that 30 years after Muhammad's death, Muawiyah I became leader of the Arab Empire in Jerusalem despite showing little sign of being Muslim, and that no mention of Muhammad or Islam can be found in any of Muawiyah's inscriptions, coins, or documents. Holland proceeds to note that with the exception of a single ambiguous reference in the Qur 'an, there is no mention of Mecca in any datable text for a century after Muhammed's death. He points out that in the Qur 'an, the Prophet appears to address farmers and agriculturalists while his opponents are described as keeping cattle and growing olives and vines. This appears to describe an environment foreign to Mecca, where there was no agriculture; thus Holland posits that the location attributed to Mecca in the Qur'an more closely fits a city in the Negev desert, in what is now southern Israel.
