Although the circumambulation constituted the basis of the pilgrimage, the pilgrimage also included visits to other temples in the region where other idols were located. For that reason, such places were ideal shelters for people who were victimized by tribes and who feared for their lives.
The Arabs at this time would give various presents, including perfume, to the gods in the temples, and they would make offerings and sacrifice animals for them. It is also known that the Arabs fasted like the Jews and Christians, and circumcised their sons.
Although it is known that there were practices like ghusul total ablution of the body , washing the dead and wrapping them in shrouds, it is not known how common these acts were. The polytheist Arabs would ask for help from the idols in order to accomplish important issues; they sought solutions to their problems by using divining arrows and they would make such actions religious duties. They would make prophecies based on the flight of birds or the direction taken by animals; they would use amulets and talismans to protect themselves from the evil eye.
The polytheist Arabs would make offerings for the dead who were buried with their belongings and they erected statues or stones by their tombs. Hanafiyyah Before the birth of Islam the Hanifs were notable for their resistance to the Quraishi paganism and the distance they maintained from the People of the Book, the Christians and Jews. They played a preparatory role in the spread of monotheistic belief throughout the peninsula and in the emergence of Islam.
Despite not having great numbers, and leading solitary and separate lives, which was representative of their fear of God, the Hanifs succeeded in becoming prominent components of the Age of Ignorance, both with their simple life style and the virtues they represented, racially, intellectually and culturally.
They played a great role in the spreading of the religion propounded by Abraham, which they said was based on monotheistic belief.
Judaism Judaism was one of the two Abrahamic religions in pre-Islamic Arabian society. It can be seen that Judaism was not very prevalent outside the regions of Yemen and Yathrib.
Judaism began to be prevalent in these regions when the Hejaz became an important immigration area for the Jews after the invasion of Jerusalem in the 6th century B. The tension between the Jews who settled in the regions of Medina, Khaybar, Fadaq, Tayma, and Wadi al-Qura and the Yemeni tribes of Aws and Khazraj, who immigrated to the same regions in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, prevented Judaism from having a significant effect on the Arabs of the region. Although Judaism found a way to spread with the influence of Jewish merchants, as well as the fact that the Himyari ruler, Zu Nuvas of Yemen, was Jewish, the religion did not find much of a following among the Arabs.
This was because Judaism was regarded as a religion based on race, with the Jews considering themselves to be superior to the followers of other religions; in addition, the Jewish laws were not appropriate for the Bedouin life style.
Christianity Although, as seen above, Judaism had a limited effect on pre-Islamic Arabian society, Christianity played a much greater role. Christians from Syria were composed of dissident groups who could not be accommodated in the Byzantine lands, due to sectarian conflicts within the eastern church.
These people were effective among the Ghassani and Hira Arabs in northern Arabia, causing the Christianization of many Arab tribes. The spreading of Christianity in eastern Arabia occurred with the Abyssinians. Apart from the Abyssinians who tried to make Najran one of the important centers of Christianity in the Arab lands, the support given by the Eastern Roman Empire, which wanted to dominate the Sassanians, was also effective in spreading Christianity throughout the region.
In particular, with the limited spread of Judaism, which started with the acceptance of Judaism by the Himyari King, Zu Nuvas, Christianity lost much of its influence in southern Arabia; the region was later re-Christianized with the involvement of the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Abyssinia.
Abyssinian forces even accomplished their aims in southern Arabia, marching on the Hejaz with their governor Abraha, but this campaign failed. It is stated that one of the reasons for the rapid spreading of Christianity throughout the Arabian Peninsula was the fact that it was much more attractive in appearance than the primitive and simple structure of idolatry; the Christian culture, with its rituals, religious apparel, grandiose temples, statues and icons attracted the Arabs.
The poems written to express the attraction of Christianity among Arabs are evidence of this. The intense propaganda of Christian missionaries and priests had a significant effect in the process of the spread of Christianity.
The main area in which Christianity spread was northern Arabia, but it was also influential in the coastal areas of the peninsula and Yemen. Furthermore, there were communities, though small in number, that worshipped stars and other stellar objects in the environs of Yemen and Iraq, and there were Zoroastrians who worshipped fire around Bahrain.
This classification reflects the two dominant life-styles in the region, while also demonstrating the distinctive geographical and climatic characteristics of the peninsula. The predominant life-style of northern and central Arabia was a Bedouin life-style; these people lived with limited opportunities in a region that was inhospitable geographically and climatically.
The settled people represented the southern life style, where a variety of opportunities existed. This differentiation within Arabian society was first mentioned in the Holy Quran. Although the life-style of the Arabs is depicted as that of Bedouins who have settled, they can be divided into two main groups with regard to the branch with which they were affiliated.
The first branch, the Arab-i Baida is an extinct Arab tribe that lived in the pre-Islamic centuries, mixing with other tribes and which became forgotten over time. The second branch, the Arab-i Baqiya, continued their existence during the birth of Islam and constituted the peninsula society; this group can be divided into two groups. The first group, comprising the Kahtani tribes of Yemen origin, is called Arab-i Ariba and are the descendants of Shem, the son of Prophet Noah, who was considered the second father of mankind.
These tribes had to leave their countries as a result of the Arim flood. The Huzaa tribe migrated to Mecca, whereas the Aws and Hazraj went to Medina and became resident in these locations. Some members of these tribes went to Syria and founded the State of Ghassanid, whereas others went to Iraq and formed the State of Khiral. This branch is connected to Ishmael, whose father Abraham came to Mecca and married a woman from the Jurhum tribe of the Kahtanis. They are called theAdnanis, referring to Adnan, an ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad; they are also called the Mudaris, the Meaddis, and the Nizaris.
One of its largest branches was the Quraishi tribe of which Prophet Muhammad was a member. Most of the tribes affiliated with this clan resided in Mecca and in the surrounding areas; they made up most of the society at that time.
When we consider that the location where Islam emerged was central and northern Arabia, then the predominant life-style of this region, which has a desert climate, is that of the Bedouins.
Since ancient times camels have been domesticated by the Arabs and have become indispensable components of desert life due to their resistance to hunger and thirst; over time they have become a fundamental part of the lives of the people living in this region. In Bedouin life, where there is constant migration, spurred on by climatic conditions, a herd of camels is a sign of great wealth for people.
Camels have stomachs that are large enough to store food for a week, humps that serve as a food resource, noses that have special membranes that shut out sand during a sand storm, eyes that have a double lining of eyelashes, ears with hairs on the inside, a mouth and digestive system that can withstand eating thorny plants; they can resist cold and hot weather and can drink 60 liters of water at once and distribute this water rapidly throughout their body.
In addition to all these features camels have powerful memories that help them to follow ancient routes despite sand dunes that frequently change their shape in sand storms.
There can be no doubt that the camel is the most suitable animal for this geography. The terms related to camels in Arabic are numerous enough to fill a book and in the Age of Ignorance the camel often appeared among the main subjects of poetry; from these two facts we can understand the importance of these animals in Arabic society.
Camels were able to transport water over long desert journeys. In the development of civilization the camel also played a significant role in intercontinental trade throughout the ancient world. Although horses were preferred for sudden attacks or during visits paid neighboring tribes, the camel, without a doubt, was the most common animal for transport in Arabian society during the Age of Ignorance. The camel was, and is, also used for its flesh, milk, leather, manure, wool and for providing shade.
The Bedouins, able to survive the harsh conditions of the desert with a miraculous animal like the camel, generally lived inside tents made of camelhair. The Bedouins preferred movable tents that were easy and practical to carry and their weapons, food and the fodder and harnesses of their animals were protected by their tents.
The negative economic and social conditions of desert life led to frequent conflicts among Bedouin tribes, generally over water and grazing rights. Although the Bedouins formed the backbone of Arabian society in the Age of Ignorance, the semi-nomadic elements who settled in the oases and valleys along different points benefited from the trade caravans; the societies settled along the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula also constituted significant social links within the Arabian Peninsula.
However, these components cannot be completely separated. There were nomads who later on adopted a settled city life and there were also city residents who were Bedouins and returned to the nomadic life. As was the case for all societies in the Arabian Peninsula, all the elements of the population within pre-Islamic Arabian society lived together on common ground. These people needed one another. On the other hand, the Bedouins acquired their various needs from the settled societies in the region.
In a sense, the nomadic people were eating the dates of the settled people and the settled people were drinking the camel milk of the Bedouins.
However, it is possible to say that southern Arabia was much more developed and urbanized in comparison to the northern and central Arabian regions. The advantages there, in terms of agricultural and trade opportunities, considerably influenced such developments.
Although the Hejaz oases had an active trade economy in the early periods of Islam, due to the fact that they acted as caravan centers organizing the relations between southern Arabia and the Mediterranean world, this can not be compared with the regional role played by southern Arabia. The residents of the coastal region had higher living standards compared to that of the nomads and their main means of living consisted of trade, shipping, fishery, pearl and sponge hunting, as well as a limited amount of agriculture.
The Bedouins, who were prevalent, did not involve themselves in the fields of art and craftsmanship, but generally made their living by means of husbandry, hunting and trade, whereas the settled people carried out lives based on agriculture and trade. Although the peninsula is surrounded by seas on three sides, fishery was only practiced within a limited area. The Bedouins, whose basic means of subsistence was animal husbandry, also considered their frequent attacks on neighboring cities and villages and on the caravans as an means of living.
The trade routes began to pass through the deserts from the earliest periods of history; as a result, the Bedouin Arabs became skilled at attacking caravans and seizing their goods. In addition to stealing camels and food during the attacks, they also abducted children and women and demanded ransom for their release.
It should be noted that trade was an important means for the Bedouins, who obtained their basic needs from the residents of the city. They acquired basic needs such as grains, dates, clothing and pots and pans by selling oil, wool, material made from camel or goat hair, carpets, water jugs and bags made of leather, sack, ropes and mats. During this period, the Bedouins delivered goods to fairs organized in various locations of the peninsula, becoming experts in the caravan trade.
Soon the Bedouins provided camels for the international trade caravans that started their journeys in India and China and went as far as Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea through Yemen and the Red Sea. In addition to this, they also maintained the safety of the caravan routes and protected them from various attacks. The city people, who constituted the settled population of Mecca, were actively involved in this trade in which the Bedouins were indirectly participating.
The most important means of income for the people of Mecca were the pilgrims who came to the region for hajj. In particular, the residents of Mecca would go to the great emporiums around Taif, and they engaged in many commercial activities in the tents pitched under the shadow of date trees.
The Meccan residents also participated in trade campaigns conducted to Yemen during the winter and Damascus in the summer. In this way, they contributed to the commercial vibrancy of Mecca, which became an important connection point on the Yemen-Damascus route. This assembly had no executive power. In the Mela, decisions were taken unanimously after discussing the matters and those decisions were regarded as effective.
Apart from this, every tribe was given the right to act independently. In this structure, which had a simple political organization, the authority was represented by the tribe leader, who was referred to with titles of sheik, reis emir, rab, or sayyid. Tribal leaders were chosen from among the elders of each tribe; the person chosen would be someone with status due to their wealth or honor.
Each leader had equal rights in the tribal gatherings. Their responsibility was to serve as a judge rather than to rule. The leader had no power of sanction. Their main responsibilities were managing the tribal meetings, representing the tribe in relations with other tribes, dealing with disagreements within the tribe, issuing declarations of war, commanding the army during war, sharing out loot, determining journeys and immigration periods and times, helping the poorer tribe members, signing treaties, welcoming guests, rescuing prisoners of war, and paying blood money.
The matters related to justice were referred to arbitrators in Bedouin social life. Anyone who did not obey the decisions of the arbitrators was expelled from the tribe.
The matters of the tribes were dealt with in the Mela assemblies. Punishments and rewards were only decided by the above-mentioned assembly. Although tribe members respected the opinions of the leader and the other prominent figures in the Mela, every member had a right of say.
The structure in question undoubtedly reflects the administrative traditions of Bedouin Arabs who resided in deserts and lived in tents. As for the administrative structure of the Mecca, in which people led a settled life, there was a more organized administration tradition. In this structure, a Kaaba-centered administration was formed, as the Kaaba was considered to be the reason for the existence of city.
This administration determined the means of living for the population, shaped the religious understanding and cultural structure of the region, and was mainly composed of organizational services related to the Kaaba. There were dozens of such duties being carried out when Islam was introduced. These duties included service sectors, such as sidana the administration, caretaking and protection of the Kaaba , siqaya finding and providing water for pilgrims , rifada providing food for poor pilgrims ,uqab carrying the banner in war , qiyada commandership , ishnaq establishment and payment of debts and fines , qubba the tent where war equipment and ammunition were kept , ainna bridling, dispatching and control of battle horses , safarat serving as an emissary , isar method of divining used to assist in decision-making, in particular related to important matters like journeys and battles , government dealing with cases , mahcara the management of money and jewelry donated to the idols of the Kaaba ,imara maintenance of peace and quiet around the Kaaba , nadwa and mashwarat consultancy assembly.
Although some of the duties that were shared out between the various branches of the Quraishi tribe were not very important, they were created to keep the Quraishi happy and to prevent competition and resentment among them. The most important urban centers of Arabia were Makkah and Yathrib, both in Hijaz. The citizens of Makkah were mostly merchants, traders and money-lenders. Their caravans traveled in summer to Syria and in winter to Yemen.
They also traveled to Bahrain in the east and to Iraq in the northeast. The caravan trade was basic to the economy of Makkah, and its organization called for considerable skill, experience and ability. The arrivals and departures of caravans were important events in the lives of the Meccans. Almost everyone in Mecca had some kind of investment in the fortunes of the thousands of camels, the hundreds of men, horses, and donkeys which went out with hides, raisins, and silver bars, and came back with oils, perfumes and manufactured goods from Syria, Egypt and Persia, and with spices and gold from the south.
The Messenger, , p. In Yathrib, the Arabs made their living by farming, and the Jews made theirs as businessmen and industrialists. But the Jews were not exclusively businessmen and industrialists; among them also there were many farmers, and they had brought much waste land under cultivation. Economically, socially and politically, Hijaz was the most important province in Arabia in the early seventh century.
On the eve of Islam the most complex and advanced human aggregate of the Arabian peninsula lived in the city of the Quraysh. The hour of the south Arab kingdoms, of Petra and Palmyra, had passed for some time in the history of Arabia. The Arabs and the Jews both practiced usury. Many among them were professional usurers; they lived on the interest they charged on their loans.
The richer merchants were both traders and usurers. Money-lenders usually took a dinar for a dinar, a dirhem for a dirhem, in other words, per cent interest.
In the Koran , Allah addressing the faithful, prescribes:. This could mean that interests of or even per cent were demanded. The nets of Meccan usury caught not only fellow-citizens and tribesmen but also members of the Hijazi. Bedouin tribes active in the Meccan trade. Arabia was a male-dominated society. Women had no status of any kind other than as sex objects. The number of women a man could marry was not fixed. A savage custom of the Arabs was to bury their female infants alive.
Drunkenness was a common vice of the Arabs. With drunkenness went their gambling. They were compulsive drinkers and compulsive gamblers.
The relations of the sexes were extremely loose. Many women sold sex to make their living since there was little else they could do. The Shihab az-Suhri said: 'Urwah b. One was the marriage of people as it is today, where a man betroths his ward or his daughter to another man, and the latter assigns a dower bridewealth to her and then marries her. When it is clear that she is pregnant, her husband has intercourse with her if he wants.
He acts thus simply from the desire for a noble child. This type of marriage was known as nikah al-istibda, the marriage of seeking intercourse. Another type was when a group raht of less than ten men used to visit the same woman and all of them had to have intercourse with her. If she became pregnant and bore a child, when some nights had passed after the birth she sent for them, and not a man of them might refuse.
Her child is attached to him, and the man may not refuse. The fourth type is when many men frequent a woman, and she does not keep herself from any who comes to her.
These women are the baghaya prostitutes. They used to set up at their doors banners forming a sign. Whoever wanted them went in to them. If one of them conceived and bore a child, they gathered together to her and summoned the physiognomists.
When Muhammad God bless and preserve him came preaching the truth, he destroyed all the types of marriage of the Jahiliya except that which people practice today. The period in the Arabian history which preceded the birth of Islam is known as the Times of Ignorance. Judging by the beliefs and the practices of the pagan Arabs, it appears that it was a most appropriate name. Idol-worshippers or polytheists.
Most of the Arabs were idolaters. They worshipped numerous idols and each tribe had its own idol or idols and fetishes. They had turned the Kaaba in Makkah, which according to tradition, had been built by the Prophet Abraham and his son, Ismael, and was dedicated by them to the service of One God, into a heathen pantheon housing idols of stone and wood. Atheists This group was composed of the materialists and believed that the world was eternal.
Zindiqs They were influenced by the Persian doctrine of dualism in nature. They believed that there were two gods representing the twin forces of good and evil or light and darkness, and both were locked up in an unending struggle for supremacy. Jews When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in A. Under their influence, many Arabs also became converts to Judaism.
The Romans had converted the north Arabian tribe of Ghassan to Christianity. Some clans of Ghassan had migrated to and had settled in Hijaz. In the south, there were many Christians in Yemen where the creed was originally brought by the Ethiopian invaders.
Their strong center was the town of Najran. Monotheists There was a small group of monotheists present in Arabia on the eve of the rise of Islam. Its members did not worship idols, and they were the followers of the Prophet Abraham.
The members of the families of Muhammad, the future prophet, and Ali ibn Abi Talib, the future caliph, and most members of their clan — the Banu Hashim — belonged to this group. Among the Arabs there were extremely few individuals who could read and write. Most of them were not very eager to learn these arts. Some historians are of the opinion that the culture of the period was almost entirely oral.
The Jews and the Christians were the custodians of such knowledge as Arabia had. Translate PDF. Beeston Source: Arabica, T. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work.
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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For knowledge of the linguistic situation before Islam in the peninsula so defined, we must depend principally on a vast number of inscriptions both formal monumental ones and graffiti very widely scattered from the extreme north to the south in the western half, with a very much smaller number on the east coast.
Some useful information may be gained from the Muslim philologists, but such data are chronologically limited to a period of approximately a century before Islam; about the earlier linguistic facts the philologists knew nothing.
Moreover, the area roughly coinciding with the modern Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab Emirates south of Bahrayn is virtually a blank for the purposes of this study. There are a few inscriptions at Khor Rori a little east of Sallala , but these belong to a Hadramite settlement there and tell us nothing of the indigenous language; and a few rock inscriptions have been reported but not yet published from the Jabal Akhdar.
This corner of the peninsula, cut off from the rest of it by the sands of the 'Empty Quarter', remains outside the practical scope of my remarks. In pre-Islamic times nearly the whole of the area under survey was dominated by the use of a script of South Semitic type', with an alphabet comprising 27 or more letters.
Only in the extreme north do we find scripts of a North-west Semitic type, comprising a maximum of 22 letters, in use. Nevertheless, it is from a script of the latter type that classical Arabic script as we know it has evolved. In view of the brief and frequently enigmatic nature of the graffiti, they are in spite of being present in enormous numbers of very scanty help towards delineating the linguistic map of the peninsula.
Among the more 1 The sole present-day survivor of this is the Ethiopic script. Texts in these 'Sayhadic' languages outside the homelands are in part attributable to transients, as is the case with the Sabaic rock inscriptions at al-Him-a', Kawkab and in southern Najd, written by members of Sabaean military expeditions passing through.
In part, however, such texts may be the result of the prestige of Sabaic in particular of the language of a high culture with many centuries of tradition behind it, thus leading to its use as a medium for written records by populations for whom it was not a mother-tongue. In the same way, the Palmyrenes and Nabataeans used Aramaic, the great culture-language of the lands bordering the peninsula on the north, for their written records, although it is highly probable that this was not their language of everyday intercourse.
The Himyarite area lay to the south of the Sabaena area and remained, until the fourth century A. It will be remembered that the Periplus Maris Erythraei of the late first or possibly early second century A. It is further significant that Hamdani, though able to read South Arabian script and hence to identify proper names, cites allegedly ancient inscriptions which are so unlike, in their style and content, any authentic ancient texts, that we must conclude that all knowledge of genuine Sabaic had vanished by his time; yet he certainly knew something that his contemporaries called Himyaritic on which see below.
Even in the heart of Sabaean culture in Marib, there are some signs that by the fifth century Sabaic was becoming a 'learned' language, like Latin in the European Middle Ages, rather than a mother-tongue, since 2 Thus named by the mediaeval Arab geographers; currently Ramlat al-Sab'atayn. Such features may, no doubt, in part represent autonomouslinguisticevolution,but this does not seemto be a complete explanation,since one fifth century text consistentlyuses a form of 'relative'pronoununattestedelsewhere,eitherbeforeor after,exceptin a text from Dhelama, on the edge of the great south-facingescarpment, well outside the traditionalSabaeandomain and in the Himyaritearea [Beeston].
It should be stressed that the Sayhadic languages constitute an independentlanguage-familywithinthe Semiticfield, and are in no way classifiableas 'dialects' of Arabic.
It is true that the Arabic lexicon contains distinct traces of continuity with that of the Sayhadic lan- guages;but whenArabicdid displacethe earlierlanguagesof the south- west,it is only to be expectedthat the Yemenitedialectsof Arabicshould containmuchlexicalmaterialwhichis ultimatelySayhadic;and the vast collection of materialsin the great mediaevalArabic lexica includesa good deal that is dialectal,some of it certainlyYemenite[Garbini, ; Avanzini ,]. Sayhadicsyntax also shows many remark- able similaritiesto that of Arabic.
But both here and in the case of the lexicon,it has to be rememberedthat, beforeIslam,centralArabiawas poised betweentwo magnetsof higherand thereforeprestigiousculture the FertileCrescenton the northand Yemenon the south , exposedto influencesfrom both3.
But the crucial factor attesting the independenceof the Sayhadic language-familylies in its morphology4,which contains a numberof distinctivefeatureswholly alien to Arabic; above all, they share the uniformcharacteristicof a definitearticlein the form of an affixed -n, unattestedelsewherethroughoutSemitic5. Even in the early centuriesA. But no other Semitic language has transformed this rather randomly occuring element into a cosistent morpheme with the function of a definite article.
One inscriptionfrom Marib6 is a votive text beginning with a formulaic preamble in 'classical' Sabaic, but then switchesabruptlyto an unknownlanguage:though this containsa fair numberof lexicalitemscongruouswith Sabaic,it shows an incidenceof words ending in -k which would be wholly unnaturalin Sabaic,and it cannot in any way be interpretedas Sabaic. A preponderanceof words ending in -k is found also in an as yet indecipherabletext from the southern escapment7.
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