The above passage is from the twenty-eighth assembly by Al-Hariri, part of a series of fifty entertaining stories written in Basra in the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE. Basra at the time was the crucial port on the Gulf linking Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasids, with the Indian Ocean, Africa, even China. It had a striking, cosmopolitan ethos, as this poem suggested. Abu Zayd, the protagonist of this story, rejected any notion of rootedness or singular identity. In fact, he actively uprooted and challenged the past. He used the form of the qasida, or the classical Arabic ode, to proclaim a new and surprisingly global sentiment. Instead of the classic nasib, the nostalgic ‘weeping for the abode’ which is the opening used by almost every other Arab poet and is used to display pride in tribe and family, Abu Zayd said here in his poem to ‘weep not’ for the loss of any one particular place. Rather, he called on his listeners to consider humanity, regardless of creed or race or dwelling place, and see the world as their ‘home’. This sentiment even went beyond the well-established Islamic notion of the ‘complete person’ or the ‘perfect human’ (al-insan al-kamil) elaborated by Sufis such as ‘Abd al Karim al Jili (d. 1424 CE) and Muhyi al-Din ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240 CE). Abu Zayd's speech implored his audience to ask not simply about universalism within an Islamic context, but also about a universal notion of humanity, beyond a religious world view.

In the Gulf, as in other parts of the world that the Gulf brought together, was it so surprising that, at certain extraordinary moments, questions went beyond ‘What does it mean to be Muslim, Christian or Hindu?’ to ask what it meant to be human? On the Gulf, in the close quarters of the ship, one often simply slept outside in the elements with one's passengers from many parts of the world, speaking a Babel of tongues. The ports were filled with people from a great variety and diversity of creeds, languages and cultures, far surpassing the three main faiths of the Mediterranean.