JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA UNIVERSITY

SOCIO-
LEGAL
CONDITIO ASSIGNMENT

N OF PRE
ISLAMIC
ARABIA
SUBMITTED BY – SANDEEP CHAWDA ISLAMIC
B.A LLB (HONS.) JURISPUDENC
2ND YEAR (3RD SEMESTER)
E

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PREFACE
This assignment is shows up the condition of Arabia before the advent of Islam. The
assignment talks about different aspects of social conditions of Arabia. Assignment primarily
focuses on the social, political, economic conditions and additionally contains the education
among the inhabitants of Arabia. This assignment talks about the injustices in the Arabic
society which implied that legal condition was very weak. However, these shortcomings in the
society changed after the advent of Islam.

Grateful acknowledgment is here made to those who helped this researcher gather data for this
assignment. This work would not have reached its present form without their invaluable help.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my teacher Prof. Gulam Yazdani as
well as our Dean Prof. Dr. Nuzhat Parveen who gave me the golden opportunity to do this
wonderful project on the topic Socio-legal condition of Arabia before Islam, which also helped
me in doing a lot of Research and i came to know about so many new things I am really
thankful to them.
Secondly I would also like to thank my parents and friends who helped me a lot in finalizing
this project within the limited time frame.

SANDEEP CHAWDA

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TABLE OF CONTENT

1. ARABIA BEFORE ISLAM –

AN INTRODUCTION…..........................……………..............5

2. POLITICAL CONDITIONS……….......................................6-9

3. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS…………..............................10-12

4. SOCIAL CONDITIONS…………….................................13-19

5. CONCLUSION……………………….....................................20

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Arabia before Islam-An Introduction

the rise of Islam in the 630s. The study of Pre-Islamic Arabia is important to Islamic studies as

it provides the context for the development of Islam.

Pre-Islamic era, known as the age of Jahiliya, meaning the age of barbarism,darkness, and

ignorance of God’s guidance. No legal system was there, women’s were not well treated.

Women’s status in pre-Islamic Arabia was poor, citing practices of female infanticide,

unlimited polygamy and other was practised.

The pre-Islamic Arabs possessed certain natural virtues that marked them out

in their contemporary world. They were superb horseman. But centuries of isolation in the

peninsula and morbid insistence on the faith of their forefathers had severely undermined their

moral and spiritual health. The six century AD had them plunged in depravity, perversion and

dark idolatry and indulging in all the other characteristics of primitive life. The social habits of

the Arabs were quite outrageous. Drink was so common that even their literature stunk with it.

Gambling was a matter of pride with them. Usury was most callously indulged

in. Adultery was not considered much of a vice. Prostitution was rampant and brothels were

frequently maintained.  The lot of Women was extremely lamentable in pre-Islamic Arabia.

The Right of Inheritance was denied to them.

Tribal Prejudice was very strong. Everyone imagined that he came from the noblest stock. The

Advent of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allāh be upon him) and the coming of

Islam would change the Arabs way of life and thinking.

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Political Conditions in Arabia

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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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 3:130, Allah addressing the faithful, prescribes:

'Do not practice usury doubled twofold.'

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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.”

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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

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internecine wars, looking at Byzantium, at Ctesiphon and even at Axum as distant beacons of

civilization completely out of their reach.

Conclusion
Therefore the Pre-Islamic era, known as the age of Jahiliya, meaning the age of barbarism,

darkness, and ignorance of God’s guidance. No legal system was prevalent, women’s were not

well treated. Women’s status in pre-Islamic Arabia was poor, citing practices of female

infanticide, unlimited polygamy and other was practised. However, the condition changes after

the advent of Islam in Arabia. Prophet Muhammad improved every aspect of society through

his teachings. Hence, Arabia changed from barbaric society to well disciplined and cultured

society with entry of Islam.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

 KHALID RASHID MOHAMADDAN LAW

STATUTES

 SHARIAT ACT,1937

WEBSITES

 www.legalservicesindia.com

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