Born ‎± 395 at Mecca, Arabia, died ‎
According to Muslim tradition, Mecca had at one time been in the hands of Jurhum, a people living on the central west coast recorded in Greco-Latin sources as Gorrhamites. But sometime about AD 500 ("five generations before the Prophet Muhammad") Qusayy ibn Kilab, called al-Mujammi' ("The Unifier"), is credited with having brought together scattered groups of Bedouin and installed them in Mecca. They took over a role that had long before been played by Minaeans and Nabataeans, controlling the west coast trade routes; they sent annual caravans to Syria and Yemen. Authority in Quraysh was not royal but was vested in a mercantile aristocracy, not unlike the Venetian Republic. Their trading contracts ensured them considerable influence, and, when in the opening years of the 7th century the collapse of the Himyarites, Lakhmids, and Ghassanids had left a power vacuum in the peninsula, Quraysh remained the only effective influence. There is, however, little doubt that the ancient traditions of Yemenite civilization contributed substantially to the consolidation of the Islamic empire. [Encyclopedia Britannica]

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After the death of Zaid's father, when he was an infant, his mother married a man from the highlands of south Syria and she took Zaid there. In adulthood, Zaid returned to Mecca and reunited with his family. By about 440, the government of Mecca passed into his family.

Born ‎± 400, died ‎