لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Arabia Before Islam
In writing the history of Islam, it is customary to
begin with a survey of the political, economic, social and religious conditions of Arabia
on the eve of the Proclamation by Muhammad (may God bless him and his Ahlul-Bait) of his
mission as Messenger of God. It is the second convention of the historians (the first
being to give a geographical description of the region). I shall also abide by this
convention, and will review briefly, the general conditions in Arabia in the late sixth
and early seventh century A.D. Political Conditions in Arabia The most remarkable feature of the political life of
Arabia before Islam was the total absence of political organization in any form. With the
exception of Yemen in the south-west, no part of the Arabian peninsula had any government
at any time, and the Arabs never acknowledged any authority other than the authority of
the chiefs of their tribes. The authority of the tribal chiefs, however, rested, in most
cases, on their character and personality, and was moral rather than political. The modern student of history finds it incredible
that the Arabs lived, generation after generation, century after century, without a
government of any kind. Since there was no government, there was no law and no order. The
only law of the land was lawlessness. In the event a crime was committed, the injured
party took law in its own hands, and tried to administer "justice" to the
offender. This system led very frequently to acts of horrendous cruelty. If the Arab ever exercised any modicum of restraint,
it was not because of any susceptibility he had to questions of right or wrong but because
of the fear of provoking reprisals and vendetta. Vendetta consumed whole generations of
Arabs. Since there were no such things as police, courts or judges, the only protection a
man could find from his enemies, was in his own tribe. The tribe had an obligation to
protect its members even if they had committed crimes. Tribalism or ‘asabiyya (the
clan spirit) took precedence over ethics. A tribe that failed to protect its members from
their enemies, exposed itself to ridicule, obloquy and contempt. Ethics, of course, did
not enter the picture anywhere. Since Arabia did not have a government, and since
the Arabs were anarchists by instinct, they were locked up in ceaseless warfare. War was a
permanent institution of the Arabian society. The desert could support only a limited
number of people, and the state of inter-tribal war maintained a rigid control over the
growth of population. But the Arabs themselves did not see war in this light. To them, war
was a pastime or rather a dangerous sport, or a species of tribal drama, waged by
professionals, according to old and gallant codes, while the "audience" cheered.
Eternal peace held no appeal for them, and war provided an escape from drudgery and from
the monotony of life in the desert. They, therefore, courted the excitement of the clash
of arms. War gave them an opportunity to display their skills at archery, fencing and
horsemanship, and also, in war, they could distinguish themselves by their heroism and at
the same time win glory and honor for their tribes. In many cases, the Arabs fought for
the sake of fighting, whether or not there was a cause belli. G. E. Grunebaum "In the century before the rise of Islam the
tribes dissipated all their energies in tribal guerrilla fighting, all against all."
(Classical Islam – A History 600-1258 – 1970) The nomadic tribes ranged over the peninsula and
plundered the caravans and the small settlements. Many caravans and villages bought
immunity from these raids by paying a fixed amount of money to the nomadic freebooters. It is important to grasp the fact that on the eve of
the birth of Islam there was no government at any level in Arabia, and this fact may even
have affected the rise of Islam itself.The total absence of government, even in its most
rudimentary form, was a phenomenon so extraordinary that it has been noted and commented
upon by many orientalists, among them: D. S. Margoliouth "Arabia would have remained pagan had there
been a man in Mecca who could strike a blow; who would act. But many as were Mohammed's
ill-wishers, there was not one of them who had this sort of courage; and (as has been
seen) there was no magistracy by which he could be tried." (Mohammed and the Rise of
Islam, 1931) Maxime Rodinson "Manslaughter carried severe penalties
according to the unwritten law of the desert. In practice the free Arabs were bound by no
written code of law, and no state existed to enforce its statutes with the backing of a
police force.The only protection for a man's life was the certainty established by custom,
that it would be dearly bought. Blood for blood and a life for a life. The vendetta, tha'r
in Arabic, is one of the pillars of Bedouin society." (Mohammed, 1971) Herbert J. Muller "In Mohammed's Arabia there was no state –
there were only scattered independent tribes and towns. The Prophet formed his own state,
and he gave it a sacred law prescribed by Allah." (The Loom of History, 1958) The population of Arabia consisted of two main
divisions, sedentary and nomadic. Hijaz and South Arabia were dotted with many small and a
few large towns. The rest of the country had a floating population composed of Bedouins.
They were backward in the civil and political sense but they were also a source of anxiety
and fear for the sedentary population. They lived as pirates of the desert, and they were
notorious for their unrestrained individualism and anarchic tribal particularism. The more important tribes exercised a certain amount
of authority in their respective areas. In Makkah the dominant tribe was the Quraysh; in
Yathrib, the dominant tribes were the Arab tribes of Aus and Khazraj, and the Jewish
tribes of Nadheer, Qaynuqaa and Qurayza. The Quraysh of Makkah considered themselves
superior to the Bedouins but the latter had only contempt for the town-dwellers who for
them were only a "nation of shopkeepers." All Arabs were notorious for certain characteristics
such as arrogance, conceit, boastfulness, vindictiveness and excessive love of plunder.
Their arrogance was partly responsible for their failure to establish a state of their
own. They lacked political discipline, and until the rise of Islam, never acknowledged any
authority as paramount in Arabia. They acknowledged the authority of a man who led
them into a foray but he could command their obedience only if they had an assurance of
receiving a fair share of the booty, and his authority lapsed as soon as the expedition
was over. Economic Conditions Economically, the Jews were the leaders of Arabia.
They were the owners of the best arable lands in Hijaz, and they were the best farmers in
the country. They were also the entrepreneurs of such industries as existed in Arabia in
those days, and they enjoyed a monopoly of the armaments industry. Slavery was an economic institution of the Arabs.
Male and female slaves were sold and bought like animals, and they formed the most
depressed class of the Arabian society. The most powerful class of the Arabs was made up by
the capitalists and money-lenders. The rates of interest which they charged on loans were
exorbitant, and were especially designed to make them richer and richer, and the borrowers
poorer and poorer. 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. R. V. C. Bodley 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, 1946, p. 31) 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. Francesco Gabrieli 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. Now the future was being prepared there, in Hijaz (The Arabs – A Compact
History, 1963) The Arabs and the Jews both practiced usury. Many
among them were professional usurers; they lived on the interest they charged on their
loans. E. A. Belyaev "Usury (riba) was widely practiced in Mecca,
for in order to participate in the profitable caravan trade many a Meccan who had only a
modest income had to resort to usurers; despite the high interest, he could hope to
benefit after the safe return of the caravan. 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, 100 per cent interest. In the Koran 3:125, Allah
addressing the faithful, prescribes: ‘Do not practice usury doubled twofold.' This
could mean that interests of 200 or even 400 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. As in ancient Athens, ‘the principal means of
oppressing the people's freedom were money and usury." (Arabs, Islam and the Arab
Caliphate in the Early Middle Ages, 1969) Social Conditions 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. When a man died, his son "inherited" all his wives except his own mother.
A savage custom of the Arabs was to bury their female infants alive. Even if an Arab did
not wish to bury his daughter alive, he still had to uphold this "honorable"
tradition, being unable to resist social pressures. 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. These women flew flags on their houses, and
were called "ladies of the flags" (dhat-er-rayyat). Sayyid Qutb of Egypt in his book, Milestones,
published by the International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, Salimiah,
Kuwait in 1978 (pp. 48, 49), has quoted the famous traditionalist, Imam Bukhari, on the
institution of marriage in Arabia before Islam as follows: The Shihab (az-Suhri) said: 'Urwah b. az-Zubayr
informed him that Aishah, the wife of the Prophet (God bless and preserve him), informed
him that marriage in the Jahiliyah was of four types: 1. 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. 2. Another type was where a man said to his wife
when she was purified from her menses, ‘Send to N and ask to have intercourse with
him;' her husband then stays away from her and does not touch her at all until it is clear
that she is pregnant from that (other) man with whom she sought intercourse. 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. 3. 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. When they had come together in her presence,
she would say to them, ‘You (pl.) know the result of your acts; I have borne a child
and he is your (sing.) child, N.' – naming whoever she will by his name. Her child is
attached to him, and the man may not refuse. 4. 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. Then they attached her child to the man
whom they thought (the father), and the child remained attached to him and was called his
son, no objection to this course being possible. 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 State of Religion in Pre-Islamic Arabia 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. The Arabs
were the devotees of a variety of "religions" which can be classified into the
following categories. 1. 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 360 idols of stone and wood. 2. Atheists This group was composed of the
materialists and believed that the world was eternal. 3. 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. 4. Sabines. They worshipped the stars. 5. Jews When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in A.D.
70, and drove the Jews out of Palestine and Syria, many of them found new homes in Hijaz
in Arabia. Under their influence, many Arabs also became converts to Judaism. Their strong
centers were the towns of Yathrib, Khayber, Fadak and Umm-ul-Qura. 6. Christians. 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. 7. 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. Education Among the Arabs Before Islam 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. The greatest
intellectual accomplishment of the pagan Arabs was their poetry. They claimed that God had
bestowed the most remarkable qualities of the head upon the Greeks (its proof is their
science and philosophy); of hand upon the Chinese (its proof is their craftsmanship); and
of the tongue upon the Arabs (its proof is their eloquence). Their greatest pride, both
before and after Islam, was their eloquence and poetry. The importance of poetry to them
can be gauged by the following testimony: D. S. Margoliouth In nomad Arabia, the poets were part of the war
equipment of the tribe; they defended their own, and damaged hostile tribes by the
employment of a force which was supposed indeed to work mysteriously, but which in fact
consisted in composing dexterous phrases of a sort that would attract notice, and would
consequently be diffused and remembered widely. (Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, 1931) E. A. Belyaev Most of the information on the economic conditions,
social regime and mores of the Arabs in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., comes from
ancient Arabic or pre-Islamic poetry, known for its ‘photographic faithfulness' to
all phases of Arabian tribal life and its environment. Specialists, therefore, accept this
poetry as the ‘most important and authoritative source for describing the Arab people
and their customs' in this period (Arabs, Islam and the Arab Caliphatein the Early Middle
Ages, 1969) Arabic poetry was rich in eloquence and imagery but
it was limited in range, and was lacking in profundity. Its content might be interesting
but it was stereotyped. The masterpieces of their poetry follow almost exactly the same
sequence of ideas and images. It was, nevertheless, a faithful mirror of life in ancient
Arabia. Also, in cultivating the art of poetry, the Arab poets were, unconsciously,
developing one of the greatest artifacts of mankind, the Arabic language. The greatest compositions of the pagan Arabs were
the so-called "Golden Odes," a collection of seven poems, supposedly of
unsurpassed excellence in spontaneity, power and eloquence. They were suspended in Kaaba
as a challenge to any aspiring genius to excel or to match them. Sir William Muir writes
about these poems as follows: The Seven Suspended Poems still survive from a
period anterior even to Mohammed, a wondrous specimen of artless eloquence. The beauty of
the language and wild richness of the imagery are acknowledged by the European reader; but
the subject of the poet was limited, and the beaten track seldom deviated from. The charm
of his mistress, the envied spot marked by the still fresh traces of her encampment, the
solitude of her deserted haunts, his generosity and prowess, the unrivaled glory of his
tribe, the noble qualities of his camel - these were the themes which, with little
variation of treatment, and with no contrivance whatever of plot or story, occupied the
Arab muse – and some of them only added fuel to the besetting vices of the people,
vainglory, envy, vindictiveness and pride (The Life of Mohammed, 1877) With the rise of Islam the emphasis shifted,
temporarily, from poetry to prose, and poetry lost its prestigious position as the
"queen" of the arts of Arabia. The greatest "composition" of Islam was
Al-Qur’an al-Majid, the Scripture of Islam, and it was in prose. Muslims believe that
Qur’an was "composed" in Heaven before it was revealed to Muhammad, the
Messenger of God. They believe that human genius can never produce anything that can match
its style or contents. For the last fifty generations, it has been, for them, a model of
literary, philosophical, theological, legal, metaphysical and mystical thought. An attempt has been made in the foregoing pages to
portray the general state of Arabia and the lifestyle of the Arabs before Islam. This
"portrait" is authentic as it has been drawn from the "archives" of
the pre-Islamic Arabs themselves. Judging by this portrait, it appears that Arabia
before Islam was without social amenity or historical depth, and the Arabs lived in moral
bankruptcy and spiritual servitude. Life for them was devoid of meaning, purpose and
direction. The human spirit was in chains, and was awaiting, as it were, a signal, to make
a titanic struggle, to break loose and to become free. The signal was given in A.D. 610 by Muhammad, the
son of Abdullah, in the city of Makkah, when he proclaimed his mission of prophethood, and
launched the movement called Islam on its world-girdling career. Islam was the greatest blessing for mankind ever. It
set men and women free, through obedience to their Creator, from slavery in all its
manifestations. Muhammad, the Messenger of God, was the supreme emancipator of mankind. He
extricated man from the "pits of life." The Arabian peninsula was geographically peripheral
and politically terra incognito until the early seventh century A.D. It was then that
Muhammad put it on the political map of the world by making it the theater of momentous
events of history. Before Islam, the Arabs had played only a marginal
role in the history of the Middle East, and they would have remained forever a nation of
animists and shepherds if Muhammad (may God bless him and his Ahlul-Bait) had not provided
them the focus and the stimulus that welded their scattered nomadic tribes into a
purposeful driving force. He molded a "nation" out of a rough mass without basic
structure. He invested the Arabs with a new dynamism, idealism and explosive creativity,
and they changed the course of history. He created an entirely new mental and
psychological ecology, and his work placed an emphatic period in world history; it was the
end of one era and the beginning of another. Writing about this watershed in history, Francesco
Gabrieli says in his book, The Arabs – A Compact History, (1963): Thus terminated the pagan prelude in the history of
the Arabian people. Whoever compares it with what followed, which gave the Arabs a primary
role on the stage of world, and inspired high thoughts and high works, not only to an
exceptional man emerged from their bosom, but to an entire elite which for several
generations gathered and promoted his word, cannot but notice the leap that the destinies
of this people assume here. The rhythm of its life, until then, weak and dispersed, was to
find a unity, a propulsive center, a goal; and all this under the sign of religious faith.
No romantic love for the primitive can make us fail to recognize that without Mohammed and
Islam they would have probably remained vegetating for centuries in the desert, destroying
themselves in the bloodletting of their internecine wars, looking at Byzantium, at
Ctesiphon and even at Axum as distant beacons of civilization completely out of their
reach.
