Pre-Islamic Arabia

Abstract

The literary sources in Arabic dealing with pre-Islamic Arabia are copious, but rarely give direct answers to questions which are of interest to modern research. Arabian society was tribal and included nomadic, semi-nomadic and settled populations. The biography of Muhammad provides further evidence of the cooperation between the nomadic and settled populations. The Arab idol worshippers were polytheists, but they also believed in a High God called Allah whose house was in the Kaba and who had supremacy over their tribal deities. In Medina, which was in many ways different from Mecca, idols were associated with various levels of the tribal organization. The Byzantines and Sasanians conducted their Arabian affairs through their respective Arab buffer kingdoms, Ghassan and al-Hira. Caravan trade was often behind the cooperation between certain nomadic tribes and the Sasanians. In addition to trade, the entrepreneurial Qurashis invested in agriculture. Since conditions in Mecca itself were uninviting for agriculture, they looked for opportunities elsewhere.

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4
Pre-Islamic Arabia
michael lecker
Tribal historiography
The literary sources in Arabic dealing with pre-Islamic Arabia are copious, but
rarely give direct answers to questions which are of interest to modern
research. Still, the following had to be based on these sources since Arabian
archaeology is only emerging; one hopes that significant Arabian pre-Islamic
sites incur no damage before they are excavated.
Arabian society was tribal and included nomadic, semi-nomadic and settled
populations. The settled populations had genealogies similar to those of the
nomads and semi-nomads, identifying them as either ‘northern’or ‘southern’
through the identity of their presumed eponyms. Not only did genealogy
define the individual tribe, it also recorded its links with other tribes within
families of tribes or tribal federations, each including several or many tribes.
Muh
.ammad’s tribe, Quraysh, for example, was part of the Kinana, and hence
the other tribes of the Kinana were its closest relatives. The settled popula-
tions, which probably included more people than the nomadic and the semi-
nomadic populations put together, do not receive a proportionate share in the
literary sources because the limelights are typically on the nomads, more
precisely on their military activities, no matter how insignificant. Tribal
informants focused on the military activities since the performance of town
dwellers in the realms of trade and agriculture were less spectacular, and
hence less contributive to tribal solidarity.
After the Islamic conquests the tribes underwent significant changes, but
they preserved their genealogy and their rich oral heritage that was insepa-
rable from the genealogy. The amount of the materials that were transmitted
and preserved was naturally affected by the size and political influence of the
individual tribes. It stands to reason, however, that tribes that lived in or
around the main centres of intellectual endeavour, such as Bas
.ra and Kufa,
stood a better chance of having their heritage recorded when oral accounts
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became written literary history. Regarding the time of Muh
.ammad, the
coverage of individual tribes was uneven since it was also affected by their
role at that time. Tribes such as Ghifar, Muzayna, Juhayna and others roaming
around Mecca and Medina (pre-Islamic Yathrib)
**
are better known to us than
much stronger tribes such as Asad and Ghat
.afan, simply because the former
played a more central role in Muh
.ammad’s history.
The attention given in the literature to the military activities of the nomads
led to an unrealistic and unbalanced perception of pre-Islamic Arabian society.
While Mecca and Medina are described in much detail, many other settle-
ments that were perhaps larger, wealthier and more populous than these two
towns, such as H
.ajr (present-day Riyadh), which was the central settlement in
the al-Yamama area, are hardly taken into account in scholarly descriptions of
pre-Islamic Arabia.
Much of the source material regarding Arabia goes back to tribal genealo-
gists, each of whom specialised in a specific tribe or group of tribes. The tribal
genealogists also mastered the tribal history and poetry, because they were
both extensions of the genealogical information. Let us take for example the
Taghlib. Al-Akhzar ibn Suh
.ayma was an early Taghlibı¯ genealogist who
transmitted part of the information on his tribe later incorporated in the
genealogy books. Between the early genealogists and the philologists of the
second/eighth century there were intermediaries who usually remained
unidentified. But expertise in Taghlibı¯ genealogy and tribal history was not
an exclusive Taghlibı¯ domain. The most famous genealogist and philologist of
early Islam, Ibn al-Kalbı¯ (d. 204/819), learned about Taghlibı¯ matters from
AbuRaqshan Khirash ibn Ismaqı¯l of the qIjl tribe who compiled a monograph
about the tribal federation of Rabı¯qa that included both his own tribe, the qIjl
and the Taghlib. Khirash also reported about a battle that took place in early
Islam (the battle of S
.iffı¯n, 37/657), which indicates that his scholarly interests
covered both the pre- and early Islamic periods. Indeed, tribal genealogists,
and in their wake Muslim philologists whose scope was much wider, consid-
ered the pre- and early Islamic history of the tribes as an uninterrupted whole.
The members of each tribe shared a notion of common descent from the
same eponym. The eponyms in their turn were interconnected by an intricate
network of family links that defined the tribal system across Arabia; tribal
alliances were often concluded along genealogical lines. From time to time
genealogy fluctuated according to changing military, political and ecological
** Both the tribes and their territories are referred to by the Arabic term b
adiya; one speaks
of the b
adiya of such-and-such settlement.
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circumstances. There were prestigious and famous lineages beside less presti-
gious ones. For example, detailed information about the BanuZurara, a leading
family of the Tamı¯m, is included in a dialogue between a member of this family
and an old man who lived in the south-eastern corner of Arabia who never-
theless had an impressive command of the intricacies of Tamı¯mı¯ genealogy.
466
By definition, tribal informants were biased and acted in an atmosphere of
intertribal competition or even hostility. The formal state of truce that followed
the tribes’conversion to Islam generally stopped their resort to violence. But
polemics and friction, especially in the garrison cities of Iraq, were often
intensified.
The bias of tribal informants must be taken into account and lead to greater
prudence in using their reports. It can be demonstrated by the intertribal
polemics surrounding the Arab bow of Tamı¯m’s illustrious pre-Islamic leader
H
.
ajib ibn Zurara, which holds a place of honour in Tamı¯m’s pre-Islamic history.
During a severe drought H
.
ajib asked for Khusrau’s permission to graze his
tribe’s herds on the fringes of the sown land in south-western Iraq. As a
guarantee of good conduct H
.
ajib pledged his bow, an unsophisticated item
which nonetheless acquired great value through the eminence and authority of
its owner. The Tamı¯m were very proud of this pledge, which showed the
Sasanian emperor adopting their tribal values. Tamı¯m’s adversaries in their turn
attempted to belittle the importance of the gesture. ‘Had they not been in my
opinion of less value than the bow, I would not have taken it,’the emperor is
made to say,
467
as if explaining why hedid not take Tamı¯mı¯ hostages instead of a
worthless bow. Other anti-Tamı¯mı¯ informants downgraded the authority with
whom H
.
ajib had negotiated. One version mentions Iyas ibn Qabı¯s
.a al-T
.
apı¯who
was ‘Khosro’s governor in charge of H
.ı¯ra and the Arabs in its vicinity’;while
other versions mention ‘the head of the as
awira, or heavy cavalry, charged with
guardingthe border between the Arabs and the Persians’
468
and ‘one of Khosro’s
marzb
ans’, or one of his (military, but also civil) governors.
469
Obviously, tribal
polemicists were at work here, and they were anything but innocent.
466 Abu l-BaqapHibat Allah al-H
.illı¯, al-Man
aqib al-mazyadiyya, ed. S
.
alih
.Musa Daradika and
Muh
.ammad qAbd al-Qadir Khrı¯sat, 2vols. (Amman, 1404 AH [1984]), vol. I, p. 353. The
late H
.amad al-Jasir wrote a monograph entitled B
ahila al-qabı¯la l-muftar
aqalayh
a
(Riyadh,1410 AH [1989]). Tribal genealogies remain a delicate matter in contemporary
Saudi Arabia.
467 Abu Mans
.
ur al-Thaqalibı¯, Thim
ar al-qulub f ı¯ l-mud
.

af wa-l-mansub, ed. Muh
.ammad Abu
l-Fad
.l Ibrahı¯m (Cairo, 1965), p. 626.
468 Baladhurı¯, Ansab al-ashraf (MS Süleymanie Kütüphanesi, Reisülküttap Mustafa
Efendi, 597,598), 960a.
469 Abu l-Baqap,al-Man
aqib al-mazyadiyya, vol. I, p. 61.
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Yet another example of tribal bias relates to Muh
.ammad’s tribe, Quraysh,
which was considered ‘northern’from the genealogical point of view;
unsurprisingly, many sources reveal a pro-Qurashı¯ bias. Regarding the
takeover of the Kaqba in Mecca by Muh
.ammad’sancestor,Qus
.ayy, it is
reported that a member of the Khuzaqa tribe, which is usually considered
a‘southern’tribe, sold the Kaqba to Qus
.ayy. As usual, there are several
versions regarding the mode of the takeover. However, the specificsale
version that concerns us here did not come from an impartial party: it was
reportedly promulgated by people fanatically hostile to the ‘southern’
tribes.
470
The Khuzaqa did not remain indifferent to this hostile description
of a crucial chapter in their tribal history: the historian al-Waqidı¯(d.207/823)
concludes a variant of this version with the statement that it was denied by
the elders of the Khuzaqa.
471
Qah
.t
.a
-n/Yaqt
.un [Joktan]
southern Arabs
Arfakhshad [Arphaxad]
Sa
-m [Shem]
Fa
-laj [Peleg]
four generations
Nu
-h
. [Noah]
‘A-bar [Eber]
Sha
-lakh [Shelah]
Ibra
-hı
-m [Abraham]
various generations
Ishma
-‘ı
-l [Ishmael]
‘Adna
-n
northern Arabs
1. The ‘northern’and ‘southern’Arabs
470 Al-Wazı¯r al-Maghribı¯, al-

In
as f ı¯qilm al-ans
ab, bound with Ibn H
.abı¯b, Mukhtalif al-qab
apil
wa-muptalifuh
a, ed. H
.amad al-Jasir (Riyadh, 1980), p. 114:‘fa-yaqulu l-mutaqas
.s
.ibuna qala
l-Yamaniyya inna Qus
.ayyan shtara l-miftah
.’.
471 Taqı¯ al-Dı¯n Muh
.ammad ibn Ah
.mad al-fası¯, Shif
apal-ghar
am bi-akhb
ar al-balad al-h
.ar
am,
ed. qUmar qAbd al-Salam Tadmurı¯, 2vols. (Beirut, 1985 ), vol. II, p. 87.
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The nomadic and settled populations
Pre-Islamic Arabia was not lawless or wild since an unwritten legal code
controlled the life of its people. The law of talion and various security
arrangements protected the lives of tribesmen outside their tribal territories.
The boundaries of these territories were generally acknowledged; tribes-
men were supposed to know when they left the territories belonging to their
tribes. But just like tribal genealogies, tribal boundaries fluctuated to reflect
changing circumstances on the ground. A tribe’s territory often included
enclaves belonging to other tribes, which necessitated cooperation between
the tribes involved; indeed, such enclaves could only survive where a clear
legal code prevailed.
Although the number of literate people was limited even in the settle-
ments, resort to written documents during the conclusion of alliances and
transactions was common.
472
The so-called Constitution of Medina con-
cluded by Muh
.ammad shortly after the hijra shows that complex legal
documents and legal terminology in Arabic had existed in Arabia before
the advent of Islam.
The genealogical variegation of the settled populations was probably
greater than that of the nomads; indeed, one expects the population of a
settlement to include several or many tribes. This was the case with the
Christian tribal groups living in al-H
.ı¯ra, collectively referred to as al-qIbad,
that preserved their original tribal affiliations. Pre-Islamic Medina provides
further evidence of this: several towns in the Medina area were inhabited
by jumm
aq,orgroupsfromvarioustribes.‘ThepeopleofZuhra’(ahl Zuhra)
and ‘thepeopleofZubala’,togivebuttwoexamplesofsuchtowns,were
described as jumm
aq.
473
The crucial relationship between the nomadic and settled populations
across Arabia took many forms. Due to the size of their territory and their
millstone-like roaming around their grazing grounds and water places, the
Tamı¯m were one of the so-called ‘millstones of the Arabs’(arh
.

apal-
qarab).
474
472 See M. Lecker, ‘A pre-Islamic endowment deed in Arabic regarding al-Wah
.ı¯da in the
H
.ijaz’, in M. Lecker, People, tribes and society in Arabia around the time of Muh
.ammad
(Aldershot, 2005), no. IV.
473 qAlı¯ ibn Ah
.mad al-Samhudı¯, Waf 
apal-waf
a, ed. Qasim al-Samarrapı¯, 5vols. (London and
Jedda,2001), vol. I, pp. 306–8.
474 Ibn Saqı¯d al-Andalusı¯, Nashwat al-t
.arab bi-taprı¯kh j
ahiliyyat al-qarab, ed. Nas
.rat qAbd al-
Rah
.man, 2vols. (Amman, 1982), vol. I, p. 415.
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But even the powerful Tamı¯mı¯s were vulnerable to outside pressure since
they had to rely on the settlements for part of their subsistence. Their
massacre in the battle of Yawm al-Mushaqqar could only take place because
of their annual visit to Hajar on the coast of the Persian Gulf in order to receive
their provisions.
475
Sometimes the nomads roaming around a certain settlement and the
people of the settlement belonged to the same tribe. The third/ninth-
century geographer qArram al-Sulamı¯’s description of the stronghold of
Suwariqiyya south-east of Medina is generally true for pre-Islamic times
as well. He says that Suwariqiyya belonged to the Sulaym tribe alone and
that each of the Sulamı¯s had a share in it. It had fields, dates and other kinds
of fruit. The Sulamı¯s born in Suwariqiyya lived there, while the others were
b
adiya and roamed around it, supplying food along the pilgrim roads as far
as D
.ariyya seven days’journey from Suwariqiyya.
476
In other words, the
Sulamı¯farmersofSuwariqiyya tilled the land and tended the irrigation
systems, while the Sulamı¯ nomads tended the beasts –aboveallthecamels,
which require extensive grazing grounds, and hence cannot be raised in
significant numbers by farmers.
The biography of Muh
.ammad provides further evidence of the cooperation
between the nomadic and settled populations. When the Jewish Nad
.ı¯r were
expelled from Medina several years after the hijra, they hired hundreds of
camels from a nomadic tribe roaming the vicinity of Medina; in normal
circumstances these nomads would be transporting goods on behalf of the
475 AbuJaqfar Muh
.ammad ibn Jarı¯r al-T
.abarı¯, Taprı¯kh al-rusul wa-l-muluk, ed. M. de Goeje et
al., 15 vols. in 3series (Leiden, 1879–1901), series I, p. 985:‘This was close to the days of
the luq
at
.[the picking up of dates from the stumps of the branches of palm-trees after
the cutting offof the dates]. The Tamı¯m used to go at that time to Hajar to get
provisions and collect the dates left on the trees (li-l-mı¯ra wa-l-luq
at
.).’Hajar was the
largest date-producing oasis in northern Arabia. On the connection between al-mı¯ra
wa-l-kayl, or provisions, and obedience, see M. J. Kister, ‘al-H
.ı¯ra: Some notes on its
relations with Arabia’,Arabica,15 (1968), pp. 143–69,at168. The Bedouin who came to
Yamama in the holy months (in which no warfare took place) in order to get provisions
were called al-saw
aqit
.:AbuqUbayda Maqmar ibn al-Muthanna, al-Dı¯b
aj, ed. al-Jarbuq
and al-qUthaymı¯n (Cairo, 1991), p. 53:‘wa-kana l-sawaqit
.min qabapil shatta wa-summu
sawaqit
.li-annahum kanuyaptuna l-Yamama f ı¯ l-ashhuri l-h
.urum li-l-tamr wa-l-zarq.’At
the time of the Prophet, when a certain Tamı¯mı¯ came to Hajar in the holy month of
Rajab in order to get provisions for his family (yamı¯ru ahlahu min Hajar, i.e. as he used
to do every year), his wife escaped from him; see e.g. Majd al-Dı¯n Ibn al-Athı¯r, Man
al
al-t
.

alib f ı¯ sharh
.t
.iw
al al-ghar
apib, ed. Mah
.mud Muh
.ammad al-T
.an
ah
.ı¯ (Mecca, 1983), pp.
495–6.
476 qArram al-Sulamı¯, Asm
apjib
al tih
ama,inqAbd al-Salam Harun (ed.), Naw
adir al-makht
.
ut
.

at,
2nd edn, vol. II (Cairo, 1973), pp. 431–2;Yaqut al-H
.amawı¯, Muqjam al-buld
an (Beirut, 1957),
s.v. al-Suwariqiyya.
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Nad
.ı¯r. When the people of al-Khaybar cut offthe fruit of their palm trees, the
nomads would arrive with their camels and carry it for them to the villages,
one camel load after the other (qurwa bi-qurwa, literally: one loop of the camel
load after the other). The nomads would sell the fruit, keeping for themselves
half of the return.
477
In the battlefield, nomads fought against other nomads, while settled people
fought against other settled people. A verse by the Prophet’sCompanion,the
poet H
.assan ibn Thabit (who was of the Khazraj, a ‘southern’tribe) demon-
strates this:
Our settled men spare us the village dwellers,
while our bedouins spare us the bedouins of the Maqadd [i.e. the ‘northern’
tribes].
478
During the ridda wars that followed Muh
.ammad’s death there was a dispute
within the Muslim army in al-Yamama between the settled (ahl al-qur
a,includ-
ing the muh
ajirun and the ans
.

ar) and the nomads (ahl al-b
adiya/al-baw
adı¯), with
each accusing the other of cowardice. The settled people claimed that they
knew better how to fight against their like, while the nomads said that the
settled people were not good fighters and did not know what war was.
479
The military aspect was dominant in the relationship between the settled
and the nomads, as shown by accounts dealing with Muh
.ammad and his
Companions. Friendly nomads were considered Muh
.ammad’sb
adiya, with
reference to their military role. Two tribes living near Medina once asked for
Muh
.ammad’s permission to build themselves a mosque in Medina similar to
the mosques of other tribes. But he told them that his mosque was also their
mosque, that they were his b
adiya while he was their h
.

ad
.ira, or their settled
counterpart (lit., ‘people dwelling by waters’), and that they should provide
him with succour when called upon to do so.
480
The hijra of one of the b
adiya
meant that he had to provide succour when called upon to do so (an yujı¯ba idh
a
duqiya) and to obey orders.
481
A‘good’Bedouin differed from a ‘bad’one in
that the former provided military aid. When qA
¯pisha mentioned certain
Bedouin, pejoratively calling them aqr
ab, Muh
.ammad corrected her: ‘They
477 Samhudı¯, Waf 
apal-waf
a, vol. II, p. 35.
478 H
.assan ibn Thabit, Dı¯w
an, ed. W. qArafat, 2vols. (London, 1971), vol. I, p. 462, no. 287:
‘mah
.
ad
.iruna yakfunanasakina l-qura [space———], wa-aqrabuna yakfunana man
tamaqdada.’
479 Al-T
.abarı¯, Taprı¯kh, series I, pp. 1946,1947.
480 Ibn Shabba, Taprı¯kh al-madı¯na al-munawwara, ed. Fahı¯m Muh
.ammad Shaltut, 4vols.
(n.p. [1979]; repr. Beirut, 1990), vol. I, p. 78.
481 AbuqUbayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam, Kit
ab al-amw
al, ed. Muh
.ammad Khalı¯l Harras (Cairo,
1976), p. 280, no. 538.
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are not aqr
ab but our b
adiya, while we are their h
.

ad
.ira; when summoned, they
provide us with succour.’
482
A fuller version of this tradition makes it clear that
the commitment to give succour was reciprocal.
483
With regard to the relationship between the nomadic and settled populations
the question of ascendancy arises. The conquest of settlements by nomads
484
must have been rare because the latter did not wish to become farmers. But
Muh
.ammad’s history shows that in themajor military confrontations of histime
the initiative was in the hands of his Qurashı¯ enemies, and later in those of
Muh
.ammad himself; this suggests that the ascendancy belonged to the settled
people. Let us take for example the military activity of the Sulaym at that time:
first they fought with Quraysh against Muh
.ammad, then they fought with
Muh
.ammad against Quraysh.
485
In both cases the initiative was not theirs,
and the same is true of the ridda wars and the conquests.
Closely linked to the question of ascendancy is that of the food allocations
grantedbythesettledpeopletothenomads.Atfirst glance they appear to indicate
the ascendancy of the latter, but this was not the case. The people of Medina
granted an annual share of their date produce to the strong tribal leader of
the qA
¯mir ibn S
.aqs
.aqa, AbuBarapqA
¯mir ibn Malik (nicknamed Mulaqib al-Asinna,
or ‘the one playing with spears’). He received from them annually a certain
amount (kayla)ofdatesinreturnforaguaranteeofsafeconductfortheMedinans
travelling in Najd.
486
While protecting the lives and goods of these Medinans, the
grant did not give the nomadic BanuqA
¯mirascendancyoverthesettledMedinans.
This state of affairs remains unchanged when other terms are employed in similar
contexts. In connection with the conquest (or rather temporary takeover) of
Fadak by the nomadic Kalb around 570 CE it is reported that the Kalbı¯leader
involved was entitled to a payment (jaq

ala) from the people of Fadak. A jaq

ala is a
payment for services such as the return of a missing camel or a fugitive slave. The
Tamı¯m transported Khusrau’s caravan from al-YamamatotheYemeninreturn
for a jaq

ala, and the Kalb may well have earned their jaq

ala for providing similar
services. Also, the leader of the Fazara tribe, qUyayna ibn H
.is
.n, received an annual
482 Ibid., no. 539.
483 Ibn H
.ajar al-qAsqalanı¯, al-Mat
.

alib al-q
aliya bi-zaw
apid al-mas
anı¯d al-tham
aniya, ed. H
.abı¯b
al-Rah
.man al-Aqz
.amı¯, 4vols. (Kuwait, 1973), vol. IV, p. 144, no. 4185.
484 See M. J. Kister, ‘On the wife of the goldsmith from Fadak and her progeny’,Le Mu’eon,
92 (1979), pp. 321–30; repr. in M. J. Kister, Society and religion from Dj
ahiliyya to Islam
(Aldershot, 1990), no. 5.
485 M. Lecker, The Banu Sulaym: A contribution to the study of early Islam (Jerusalem, 1989),
pp. 136–7.
486 H
.assan ibn Th
abit, Dı¯w
an, vol. II, p. 176. The term kayla is derived from the root k.y.l.,
which denotes a measure of capacity.
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grant from the date produce of Medina. The term used in his case, it
awa,
sometimes means a tribute or tax. But here it designates an annual grant in
kind to a nomadic leader, similar to those referred to by the terms kayla and jaq

ala.
Medina and the other settlements could afford to grant part of their huge
surplus of dates to the leaders of large nomadic tribes in order to secure their
good will. The size of the grants must have varied according to the harvest and
the changing political circumstances on the ground; but even where they
amounted to a sizeable part of the annual produce they did not indicate
nomadic ascendancy.
Idol worship
The pre-Islamic Arabs were united by their love of poetry; many of them
could probably appreciate the artistic value of the poems recited during major
tribal gatherings, for example at the qUkaz
.fair, not far from T
.
apif. In their daily
life, however, they spoke a large number of dialects. Many of them acknowl-
edged the sanctity of the Kaqba in Mecca and made pilgrimage to it, travelling
under the protection of the holy months during which all hostilities ceased.
The Arab idol worshippers were polytheists, but they also believed in a High
God called Allah whose house was in the Kaqba and who had supremacy over
their tribal deities.
Despite the diversity in the forms of idol worship, on the whole it was a
common characteristic of pre-Islamic Arabian society. In the centuries preced-
ing the advent of Islam Christianity and Judaism were competing with each
other for the hearts of the Yemenite polytheists. Medina had a large Jewish
population, while al-Yamama and eastern Arabia had a large Christian one.
Christianity, and to a lesser extent Judaism, penetrated several nomadic tribes.
The celebrated h
.anı¯fs, or ascetic seekers of true religion who abandoned idol
worship, were probably few; moreover, the identification of some of them as
h
.anı¯fs is questionable. Several early Tamı¯mı¯ converts to Islam were former
Zoroastrians. However, on the eve of Islam idol worship prevailed, with the
prominent exception of the Yemen, considered by medieval Muslim histor-
ians to have been predominantly Jewish.
Idols of every shape and material were ubiquitous, and their worship
showed no signs of decline. Many conversion stories regarding both former
custodians of idols and ordinary worshippers specifically refer to a shift from
idol worship to Islam.
The most common deity was the household idol. Several conversion
accounts that prove the proliferation of household idols in Mecca are
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associated with its conquest by Muh
.ammad (8/630). Al-Waqidı¯ adduces
legendary accounts about the destruction of household idols. While the
accounts aim at establishing the Islamic credentials of their protagonists, the
background details are credible. One account has it that after the conquest of
Mecca, Muh
.ammad’s announcer ordered the destruction of every idol found
in the houses. So whenever qIkrima ibn Abı¯ Jahl (who belonged to the Qurashı¯
branch Makhzum) heard of an idol in one of the houses of Quraysh, he went
there in order to smash it; it is specifically stated in this context that every
Qurashı¯ in Mecca had an idol in his house. In al-Waqidı¯’s account we find that
the announcer proclaimed that every idol had to be destroyed or burnt, and
that it was forbidden to sell them (i.e. to sell wooden idols to be used as
firewood). The informant himself saw the idols being carried around Mecca
(i.e. by peddlers); the Bedouin used to buy them and take them to their tents.
Every Qurashı¯, we are told, had an idol in his house. He stroked it whenever
he entered or left the house to draw a blessing from it.
Yet another account in the same source has it that when Hind bint qUtba
(the mother of the future Umayyad caliph Muqawiya) embraced Islam, she
started striking an idol in her house with an adze, cutting oblong pieces from
it.
487
She probably destroyed her wooden idol using the very tool with which
it had been carved. The authors of the legendary accounts about qIkrima and
Hind sought to emphasise the zeal of these new converts, but the background
information is accurate: idols were found in all Meccan households.
In Medina, which was in many ways different from Mecca, idols were
associated with various levels of the tribal organisation. A house idol made of
wood was an obstacle for AbuT
.alh
.a of the Khazraj when he proposed to his
future wife. She refused to marry ‘one who worshipped a stone which did
neither harm nor good and a piece of wood hewed for him by a carpenter’.
488
Several young Medinans from both of the dominant Arab tribes of Medina, the
Aws and Khazraj, smashed the idols found among their fellow tribesmen.
Here too household idols were the most common form of idol worship. We
have some evidence about the attributes of one of the Medinan household
idols. Before one of them was destroyed with an adze, it had to be brought
down, which indicates that it had been placed in an elevated place such as a
shelf; the same idol had a veil hung over it.
One level up from the household idols we find those belonging to noble-
men. Every nobleman in Medina owned an idol that had a name of its own.
487 Muh
.ammad ibn qUmar al-Waqidı¯, Kit
ab al-magh
azı¯, ed. Marsden Jones, 3vols.
(London, 1966), vol. II, pp. 870–1.
488 Ibn Saqd, al-T
.abaq
at al-kubr
a,8vols. (Beirut, 1960–8), vol. VIII, pp. 425–6.
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In addition, bat
.ns, or small tribal groups, had idols which, similarly, had names.
The bat
.n’s idol was placed in a sanctuary (bayt) and belonged to the whole bat
.n
(li-jam
aqati l-bat
.n). Sacrifices were offered to it. One level above the bat
.nsinthe
tribal system of Medina stood the major subdivisions of the Aws and Khazraj.
Evidence has so far emerged regarding the idol of one such subdivision: the Banu
al-H
.
arith ibn al-Khazraj had an idol called Huzam that was placed in their majlis,
or place of assembly, similarly called Huzam. One assumes that sacrifices were
also offered to Huzam, since sacrifices were offered to the lower-level idols of the
bat
.ns. The idol al-Khamı¯s was worshipped by the Khazraj,
489
while al-Saqı¯da,
which was located on Mount Uh
.ud north of Medina, was worshipped, among
others, by the Azd –no doubt including the Aws and Khazraj, which belonged to
the Azd.
490
At the top of the hierarchy of the idols worshipped by the Aws and
Khazraj stood Manat. A descendant of Muh
.ammad’s Companion SaqdibnqUbada
reports that Saqd’s grandfather annually donated ten slaughter camels to Manat.
Saqd’sfatherfollowedsuit,andsodidSaqd himself before his conversion to Islam.
Saqd’s son, Qays, donated the same number of camels to the Kaqba.
491
The report
is not concerned with idol worship as such but with generosity, prestige and tribal
leadership. Saqd’s donation of sacrifice camels to Manat before his conversion to
Islam shows that its cult continued to the very advent of Islam.
Household idols were ubiquitous in Medina, as in Mecca; noblemen,
bat
.ns and major Aws and Khazraj subdivisions had idols. The Khazraj as a
whole worshipped a special idol; the Aws and Khazraj were among the
worshippers of another, and they were still worshipping their main idol,
Manat, when Muh
.ammad appeared. All this does not indicate a decline in
idol worship.
Expressing his opinion about the influence of monotheism on the Arabs
before Islam, Ibn Ish
.
aq says that ‘it was merely superficial; the Arabs were
illiterate and what they heard from Jews and Christians had no effect on their
lives’. With regard to idol worship his statement is trustworthy.
Foreign powers
Pre-Islamic Arabia and its tribes were not isolated from the great empires
of Byzantium and Persia, with the latter probably playing a more significant
489 Al-T
.abarı¯, Taprı¯kh, series I, p. 1085.
490 Muh
.ammad ibn H
.abı¯b, Kit
ab al-muh
.abbar, ed. Ilse Lichtenstaedter (Hyderabad, 1361
[1942]; repr. Beirut, n.d.), pp. 316–17.
491 Ibn qAbd al-Barr, al-Istı¯q
ab f ı¯maqrifat al-as
.h
.

ab, ed. qAlı¯ Muh
.ammad al-Bijawı¯, 4vols.
(Cairo, n.d.), vol. II, p. 595.
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role. The Byzantine emperor, for example, is said to have been instrumental in
the takeover of Mecca from the Khuzaqa tribe by Muh
.ammad’s ancestor
Qus
.ayy.
492
The Byzantines and Sasanians conducted their Arabian affairs through their
respective Arab buffer kingdoms, Ghassan and al-H
.ı¯ra. The king of al-H
.ı¯ra
appointed governors to the frontiers from Iraq to Bah
.rayn, each of whom
ruled together with a Bedouin leader who was in fact his subordinate.
493
The same pattern was found in Oman: a treaty between the Sasanians and
the Julanda family concluded in the second half of the sixth century stipulated
that the Sasanians were entitled to station with the ‘kings’of the Azd four
thousand men including marzb
ans (military, but also civil, governors) and
as
awira (heavy cavalry), and an q

amil or official. The Sasanians were stationed
in the coastal regions, while the Azd were ‘kings’in the mountains, in the
deserts and in the other areas surrounding Oman.
494
In other words, authority
was divided between the Arabs and the Sasanians along geographical lines.
In Bah
.rayn there was an Arab governor, with a Sasanian superior.
Al-Mundhir ibn Sawa al-Tamı¯mı¯ is said to have been the governor of
Bah
.rayn. But the historian al-Baladhurı¯ (d. 279/892) draws a clear line at this
point between Sasanians and Arabs: ‘The land of Bah
.rayn is part of the Persian
kingdom and there were in it many Arabs from the tribes of qAbd al-Qays,
Bakr ibn Wapil and Tamı¯m living in its b
adiya. At the time of the Prophet,
al-Mundhir ibn Sawa was in charge of the Arabs living there on behalf of
the Persians.’
495
At the same time Bah
.rayn had a Sasanian governor who was
al-Mundhir’s superior, namely Sı¯bukht, the marzb
an of Hajar.
496
On the eve of
Islam the Yemen was under direct Sasanian control.
Roughly until the middle of the sixth century Medina was controlled by a
marzb
an whose seat was in al-Zara on the coast of the Persian Gulf. The Jewish
tribes Nad
.ı¯r and Qurayz
.a were ‘kings’, and exacted tribute from the Aws and
492 Ibn Qutayba, al-Maq
arif, ed. Tharwat qUkasha (Cairo, 1969), pp. 640–1; quoted in M. J.
Kister, ‘Mecca and the tribes of Arabia’, in M. Sharon (ed.), Studies in Islamic history and
civilization in honour of David Ayalon (Jerusalem and Leiden, 1986), p 50; repr. in Kister,
Society and religion, no. 2Cf. qUthman ibn al-H
.uwayrith’s attempt to gain control of
Mecca on behalf of the Byzantine emperor: Kister, ‘al-H
.ı¯ra’,p.154.
493 Abu l-Baqap,al-Man
aqib al-mazyadiyya, vol. II, p. 369.
494 J. C. Wilkinson, ‘Arab–Persian land relationships in late Sasanid Oman’,inProceedings
of the Seminar for Arabian Studies,3(1973), pp. 41,44–7.
495 Al-Baladhurı¯, Futuh
., ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1863 –6), p. 78:‘wa-kana qalal-qarab biha
min qibali l-furs’.
496 His name and title appear in connection with a letter allegedly sent by the Prophet to
both al-Mundhir ibn Sawa and Sı¯bukht marzb
an Hajar, calling upon them to embrace
Islam or pay the poll-tax.
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Khazraj on behalf of the Sasanians. In the last quarter of the sixth century the
king of al-H
.ı¯ra, al-Nuqman ibn al-Mundhir, declared a member of the Khazraj,
qAmr ibn al-It
.naba, king of Medina or of the H
.ijaz.
497
At that time the Jews were
no longer ‘kings’and tribute collectors, but tribute payers. qAmr’sappointment
shows that Sasanian control in western Arabia continued in the latter half of the
sixth century. Sasanian control there is also associated with al-Nuqman ibn al-
Mundhir’s father, al-Mundhir III (c.504–54): the Sasanian emperor Khusrau I
Anushirwan (r. 531–79) made him king of the Arabs living between Oman,
Bah
.rayn and al-Yamama to al-T
.
apif and the rest of the H
.ijaz.
498
Caravan trade was often behind the cooperation between certain nomadic
tribes and the Sasanians. The Sulaym and the Hawazin used to conclude pacts
with the kings of al-H
.ı¯ra, transport the kings’merchandise and sell it for them at
the fair at qUkaz
., among others.
499
With regard to the above-mentioned battle of
Yawm al-Mushaqqar it is reported that Khusrau’s caravan, having travelled from
Ctesiphon via al-H
.ı¯ra, was escorted by the Tamı¯m from al-Yamama to the Yemen.
The evidence regarding military cooperation (or indeed any other form of
cooperation) between the tribes and the courts of Ctesiphon and al-H
.ı¯ra
reveals a certain tension between the wish to praise the tribe’s military
exploits, even those carried out in the service of a foreign power, and the
claim of independence from the same power; tribal historiography attempted
to distance the tribes from the influence of the courts, while at the same time
boasting of the close contacts between them.
Many Arabs probably saw the local representatives of the great power from
behind bars: the kings of al-H
.ı¯ra practised widespread incarceration as punish-
ment and as a means of pressure. There were jails or incarceration camps at al-
Qut
.qut
.
ana in south-western Iraq and at al-H
.ı¯ra itself.
500
The Tamı¯m, the Taghlib and others took part in the institution of rid
afa
(viceroyship) to the king of al-H
.ı¯ra, which was essential in establishing al-
H
.ı¯ra’s control over the tribes. The ceremonial and material privileges asso-
ciated with it (perhaps exaggerated by the tribal informants) helped in buying
497 Kister, ‘al-H
.ı¯ra’, pp. 147–9; Lecker, People, tribes and society in Arabia, index. It would
seem that at that time Medina was no longer controlled from al-Zara but directly from
H
.ı¯ra.
498 Al-T
.abarı¯, Taprı¯kh, series I, pp. 958–9.
499 Abu l-Baqap,al-Man
aqib al-mazyadiyya, vol. II, p. 375.
500 AbuH
.
atim al-Sijistanı¯, al-Muqammaruna, bound with Al-Was
.

ay
aby the same author,
ed. qAbd al-Munqim qA
¯mir (Cairo, 1961), pp. 20–2.qAdı¯ ibn Zayd was jailed at al-
S
.innayn: al-T
.abarı
¯, Taprı¯kh, series I, p. 1023. A poet who lived in the transition period
between j
ahiliyya and Islam (mukhad
.ram) was jailed by the Sasanians at al-Mushaqqar:
Ibn H
.ajar al-qAsqalanı¯, al-Is
.

aba f ı¯ tamyı¯z al-s
.ah
.

aba, ed. qAlı¯ Muh
.ammad al-Bijawı¯, 8vols.
(Cairo, [1970]), vol. II, p. 513.
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offpotentially dangerous tribes. Through trade, military cooperation and
diplomacy Arab tribal leaders and merchants became acquainted with the
courts of the buffer kingdoms and the great empires.
Mecca: trade and agriculture
Mecca and Medina, thanks to their association with the history of the Prophet
Muh
.ammad and the rise of Islam, are better known to us than many other
settlements in Arabia that may well have been larger, wealthier and more
populous.
Mecca and its dominant tribe, Quraysh, reveal a high degree of internal
cohesion; but Mecca’s stability was in fact based on the preservation of a
balance of power between two rival alliances of Quraysh rather than on any
sense of tribal solidarity. As one can expect, in accounts of Mecca’s pre-Islamic
history –for example, concerning the establishment of its international
caravan trade –the Prophet’s ancestors receive more credit than is due to
them. In any case, this trade was not a myth, but was Mecca’s main source of
revenue, regardless of the items and the income involved. In Arabian terms
Mecca was a major trade centre, although it is impossible to establish whether
or not it was the largest of its kind in Arabia.
Crossing evidence shows that the Prophet himself had been a merchant
before receiving his first revelation. Trade partnerships were a significant
aspect of the economic cooperation between Quraysh and the tribe control-
ling T
.
apif, the Thaqı¯f. Reportedly, the Qurashı¯Abu Sufyan and the Thaqaf ı¯
Ghaylan ibn Salama traded with Persia, accompanied by a group of people
from both tribes.
501
Both were Muh
.ammad’s contemporaries.
In addition to trade, the entrepreneurial Qurashı¯s invested in agriculture.
Since conditions in Mecca itself were uninviting for agriculture, they looked
for opportunities elsewhere. It can be argued that the Qurashı¯ expansion in
Arabia preceded the advent of Islam.
There is a legendary story about the death of H
.arb ibn Umayya, the father
of the above-mentioned Abu Sufyan and the grandfather of the caliph
Muqawiya. He was reportedly killed by the jinn at al-Qurayya north-west of
Mecca, since together with a local partner he disturbed the jinn or killed one
of them by mistake. This occurred while they were clearing a thicket in order
to prepare the land for cultivation. The story probably owes its preservation to
501 Abu Hilal al-qAskarı¯, al-Aw
apil, ed. Muh
.ammad al-Mis
.rı¯ and Walı¯d Qas
.s
.
ab, 2vols.
(Damascus, 1975), vol. II, p. 228.
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the legendary elements; but the background details are no doubt factual.
502
There is rich evidence of pre-Islamic Qurashı¯ involvement in agriculture in
T
.
apif, the town that supplied (and still supplies) most of Mecca’s demand
for fruit;
503
hence its appellation bust
an al-h
.aram, or the orchard of the sacred
territory of Mecca.
504
Side by side with the locals who cultivated small tracts
of land, Qurashı¯ entrepreneurs developed large estates in the valleys of T
.
apif
before the advent of Islam. Many Bedouin of the Qays qAylan and other tribes
earned their living by transporting T
.
apif ı¯ products to Mecca. At Nakhla north-
east of Mecca a caravan carrying wine, tanned skins and raisins
505
on its way
from T
.
apif to Mecca was attacked shortly after the hijra by the Prophet’s
Companions.
The best known and perhaps the largest Qurashı¯ property in the vicinity of
T
.
apif is al-Waht
., which is located in the valley of Wajj. The father of the
Prophet’s Companion qAmr ibn al-qA
¯s
.owned this estate before Islam. qAmr
further developed it by raising the shoots of many thousands of grape-vines on
pieces of wood made to support them.
506
Numerous other Qurashı¯s owned estates near T
.
apif. They included, among
others, Abu Sufyan, qUtba and Shayba sons of Rabı¯qa ibn qAbd Shams, the
Prophet’s uncle al-qAbbas and al-Walı¯d ibn al-Walı¯d ibn al-Mughı¯ra (the
brother of the famous general Khalid ibn al-Walı¯d).
The Muslim conquests in Palestine and elsewhere are unlikely to have
been accompanied by large-scale devastation of agricultural land and facili-
ties, since qAmr ibn al-qA
¯s
.and the other Qurashı¯ generals had previous
experience with agriculture and appreciated the economic value of culti-
vated land.
Medina: a precarious balance
The cluster of towns or villages known before Islam as Yathrib was called
after the town of Yathrib on its north-western side. Under Islam the cluster
502 After the hijra it was one of Muh
.ammad’s companions, T
.alh
.a, who introduced the
sowing of wheat in Medina, while another companion, qAbdallah ibn qA
¯mir, was
famous for his talent for discovering water sources.
503 Muh
.ammad ibn qAbd al-Munqim al-H
.imyarı¯, al-Rawd
.al-miqt
.

ar f ı¯ khabar al-aqt
.

ar, ed.
Ih
.san qAbbas (Beirut, 1975), p. 379a.
504 Muh
.ammad ibn Ish
.
aq al-fakihı¯, Akhb
ar Makka, ed. qAbd al-Malik ibn qAbdallah ibn
Duhaysh, 6vols. (Mecca, 1987), vol. III, p. 206.
505 Waqidı¯, Magh
azı¯, vol. I, p. 16.
506 fakihı¯, Akhb
ar Makka, vol. III, p. 205 (read qarrasha instead of gharasa); Yaqut, Buld
an,
s.v. al-Waht
..
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became known as al-Madı¯na. Major political and military upheavals preced-
ing the hijra contributed to Muh
.ammad’s success there in ways that are not
yet fully clear.
Medina’s large Jewish population was dispersed in both the Safila, or Lower
Medina. in the north and the qA
¯liya, or Upper Medina, in the south. The
Qurayz
.a and Nad
.ı¯r are said to have inhabited the qA
¯liya, while a third large
tribe, the Qaynuqaq, lived in the Safila. But the Nad
.ı¯r probably owned estates
outside the qA
¯liya as well: the town of Zuhra is defined as the town of the
Nad
.ı¯r (qaryat banı¯ l-nad
.ı¯r); moreover, one of their notables, Kaqb ibn al-Ashraf,
owned land in al-Jurf north-west of Medina, at the upper part of the qAqı¯q
valley.
507
The oldest stratum in the Arab population of Medina was made up of
members of the Balı¯ and of other tribes, many of whom converted to
Judaism. The Aws and Khazraj, who settled in Medina at a later stage,
became known under Islam by the honorific appellation al-ans
.

ar (the help-
ers). Unlike the earlier Arab settlers, most of the Aws and Khazraj remained
idol worshippers. When they settled in Medina, their position vis-à-vis the
Jewish tribes was weak. But gradually they gained strength, built fortresses
and planted date orchards. The ans
.

ar were ridiculed by other tribes for
their initial subjection by the Jews, particularly with regard to the Arab
Jewish king al-Fit
.yawn, ‘the owner of Zuhra’(s
.

ah
.ib Zuhra),
508
who report-
edly practised the ius prima noctis on the Arab women. No wonder that al-
Fit
.yawn figures prominently in ans
.

arı¯apologetic historiography. Admitting
their initial weakness, they claimed that it came to an end with the killing of
al-Fit
.yawn by a member of the Khazraj; from that moment onward the Jews
were at the mercy of their former clients. However, ans
.

arı¯historiography
shouldbetakenwithagrainofsalt.TheJewssuffered a setback, or the
Khazrajı¯qAmr ibn al-It
.naba would not have become the king of Yathrib in
the last quarter of the sixth century. But by the advent of Islam the main
Jewish tribes Nad
.ı¯r and Qurayz
.a had regained their power, as is shown by
their victory at the battle of Buqath (615 or 617), together with their Awsı¯
allies, over the powerful Khazraj.
qAmr ibn al-It
.naba and al-Fit
.yawn were not the only kings in Medina before
Islam. Several generations before Islam there lived there a king called Ama ibn
H
.aram of the Khazraj subdivision called Salima whose powers included the
confiscation and redistribution of agricultural land.
507 In due course Muh
.ammad himself owned agricultural land in al-Jurf.
508 Abu l-Faraj al-Is
.fahanı¯, Kit
ab al-agh
anı¯,24 vols. (Cairo, 1927 –74), vol. III, p. 40.
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[153–170] 26.10.2009 9:40PM
On the eve of Islam a member of the Khazraj, qAbd Allah ibn Ubayy, was
nearly crowned. Masqudı¯ reports: ‘The Khazraj were superior to the Aws
shortly before the advent of Islam and intended to crown qAbd Allah ibn
Ubayy ibn Salul al-Khazrajı¯. This coincided with the arrival of the Prophet and
his kingship ceased to exist.’
509
Ibn Ubayy did not fight against the Jewish–Awsı¯ coalition at Buqath,
where his tribe, the Khazraj, was defeated. After Buqathhewasthestron-
gest leader among the Khazraj, and he showed great diplomatic skill in
re-establishing the system of alliances that had existed before Buqath. In this
‘Adı
-
‘Umar ibn
al-Khat
.t
.a
-b
Niza
-r
Ma‘add
Murra
Kila
-b
‘Adna
-n
six generations
Mud
.ar
Qus
.ayy
‘Abd al-‘Uzza
-
Asad
Khadı
-ja
al-Zubayr
Fihr/Quraysh
Gha
-lib
Lu’ayy
Ka‘b
Taim
Abu
- Bakr T
.alh
.a
‘A-’isha
‘Abd al-Mut
.t
.alib
Ha
-shim
‘Abd al-Mana
-f
Muh
.ammad
‘Abd Alla
-h
‘Abd Shams
Umayya
Abu
- Sufya
-
n
‘Uthma
-n
2. The Quraysh
509 Quoted in Ibn Saqı¯d, Nashwat al-t
.arab, vol. I, p. 190.
169
Pre-Islamic Arabia

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system the Nad
.ı¯r were allied with the Khazraj,
510
while the Qurayz
.awere
allied with the Aws. At the time of the hijra the Nad
.ı¯r and Qurayz
.awere
the main owners of fortresses and weapons in Medina, which made them
the dominant power there.
510 Samhudı¯, Waf 
apal-waf
a, vol. I, pp. 387–8, provides valuable evidence on the aftermath
of Buqath.
170
The New Cambridge History of Islam