Ira M.

Lapidus
ISLAMIC SOCIETIES TO THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY

CHAPTER 3
ARABIA

On the eve of the Islamic era, Arabia stood on the periphery of the Middle
Eastern imperial societies. (See Map 1.) In Arabia, the primary communities
remained especially powerful, and urban, religious, and royal institutions were
less developed. Whereas the imperial world was predominantly agricultural,
Arabia was primarily pastoral. Whereas the imperial world was citied, Arabia was
the home of camps and oases. Whereas the imperial peoples were committed to
the monotheistic religions, Arabia was largely pagan. The imperial world was
politically organized; Arabia was politically fragmented.
At the same time, pre-Islamic Arabia was in many ways an integral part, a
provincial variant, of the larger Middle Eastern civilization. There were no
physical or political boundaries between Arabia and the larger region; no great
walls, nor rigid ethnic or demographic frontiers. Migrating Arabian peoples made
up much of the population of the desert margins of Syria and Iraq. Arabs in the
Fertile Crescent region shared political forms, religious beliefs, economic
connections, and physical space with the societies around them.
Arabia was also connected to the larger region by the interventions of the
imperial powers. The Byzantines and the Sasanians disputed control of Yemen,
and both were active in creating spheres of influence in North Arabia. They
intervened diplomatically and politically to extend their trading privileges, protect
sympathetic religious populations, and advance their strategic interests. The
Ghassanid kingdom (in southern Syria, Jordan, and northwestern Arabia) and the
Lakhmid kingdom (in southern Iraq and northeastern Arabia) were vassals of the
Byzantine and Sasanian empires, respectively. The client kingdoms, like the
empires, had systems for rapid communications by couriers. From the Romans
and the Persians, the Arabs obtained new arms and armor and learned new tactics,
often through the enrollment of Arabs as auxiliaries in the Roman or Persian
armies. As a result, Arabia was probably more politically sophisticated and
institutionally developed /31/ than scholars have recognized. The later Arab-
Muslim conquests were organized as armies and not as migrating tribes.
Furthermore, the diffusion of Judaism, Christianity, and gnosticism in
southern, west-central, and northern Arabia made these regions parts of the
Hellenistic world. In southern Arabia, Judaism was established in the fourth and
fifth centuries. Monotheistic, probably Jewish, inscriptions in Yemen date to the
fifth century, and there were many Jews in the Arabian tribes of Himyar and
Kinda. In northern Arabia, there were Jews at Khaybar and Medina. Jewish Arab
tribes in Medina were rich in land, fortresses, and weapons.
 TheMiddleEastontheeveoftheMuslimera

Map1.

In the north, Christianity was established in the fifth century. Christian

churches were active in eastern Arabia in the Sasanian sphere of influence,
especially at Al-Hira (the Lakhmid capital). Christianity was also represented by
merchants who traveled in Arabian caravans from Najran (in southern Arabia) to
Busra (in Syria). The market fair at Ukaz attracted Christian preachers. Extensive
networks of monasteries, police posts, and markets carried Miaphysite literary and
religious ideas from Edessa, Coptic culture from Egypt, and Ethiopian
Christianity to Arabia. Many names, religious terms, and historical references also
indicate Iraqi Aramaic influences in pre-Islamic Arabia. In the border regions of
northern Arabia, Syrian and Iraqi holy personages, saints, and ascetics were
venerated by pagan Arabs and Christians alike.
In the south, Christianity was established in the sixth century by intensive
Byzantine missionary activity on both the Ethiopian and the Yemeni sides of the
Red Sea. Abyssinians invaded southern Arabia in 525 and left Christian
settlements in the small oases of Yemen. Nestorians returned to Najran with the
Persian conquest of 570. Najran was also the home of Arians, Miaphysites, and
Julianites who believed that not Jesus but a substitute died on the cross. This
religious environment tended to emphasize the humanity of Christ.
Arabia included many economically developed, productive areas. Sasanians
helped develop silver and copper mining in Yemen; copper and silver were also
mined in eastern Arabia. Leather and cloth was produced in Yemen. Uman and
Bahrayn were agriculture producers; Bahrayn exported grain to Mecca. At least
one small town in north-central Arabia – al-Rabadha, on the Kufa-Medina road –
produced metal, glass, ceramics, and soapstone wares. Internal Arabian trade
linked all the regions together. Trade also linked Arabia with the wider region.
Merchants brought textiles, jewelry, weapons, grain, and wine into Arabia. Arabia
exported hides, leather, and animals. Arabian markets intersected with Indian
Ocean commerce on the east and south coasts.
Thus, by the end of the sixth century, Arabia had experience in trade,
stratified elites, royal institutions, and the capacity for large-scale political
coalitions. Many Arabians shared the religious identities and cultures of the settled
peoples. These political, economic, and religio-cultural contacts allowed for the
eventual amalgamation of the empires and the outside areas into a single society.
From one point of view, Islam was a foreign force bursting in from a peripheral
region; from another, it originated within the framework of the existing Middle
Eastern civilization.

CLANS AND KINGDOMS

In many ways, Arabian societies were defined by geography. The interior of
Arabia is largely desert with scattered oases, and from the beginning of camel
domestication (in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BCE) the desert was
inhabited by peoples who migrated seasonally in search of pasturage. They passed
the winter in desert reserves, moving to spring pasturage at the first signs of rain.
In the summer they camped near villages or oases, where they exchanged animal
products for grain, dates, utensils, weapons, and cloth. They provided caravans
with animals, guides, and guards.
We know from ancient poetry, from later histories, and from anthropological
observation that the migratory peoples lived in tight-knit kinship groups –
patriarchal families formed of a father, his sons, and their families. These families
were further grouped into clans of several hundred tents, which migrated together,
owned pasturage in common, and fought as one. Each clan was fundamentally an
independent unit. All loyalties were absorbed by the group, which acted
collectively to defend its individual members and to meet their responsibilities. If
a member was harmed, the clan would avenge him. If he did harm, it would stand
responsible with him.
 As a consequence of this group solidarity (asabiyya), bedouin clans
recognized no external authority. Each clan was led by a chief (shaykh), who
was usually selected by the clan elders from one of the prominent families and
who always acted in accordance with their counsel. He settled internal disputes
according to the group’s traditions, but he could not legislate or command. The
chief had to be wealthy and show generosity to the needy and to his supporters; he
had to be a man of tact and prudence – forbearing, resolute, and practical.
Bedouin poetry expressed absolute devotion to the prestige and security of
the clan. Bedouins were probably animists and polytheists, believing that all
natural objects and events were living spirits who could be either helpful or
harmful to man. Demons (jinn) had to be propitiated or controlled and defeated by
magic. Bedouins also worshiped their ancestors, moon and star gods, and gods in
the form of stones or trees placed in protective sanctuaries. The sacred was vested
mysteriously in the plethora of forces that dominated the natural world and the
being of man.
In contrast with the desert regions, the southwest, the northwest, and the
northeast are agricultural regions. Although they were outside of the Roman and
Sasanian empires, the oases of Yemen, the borders of greater Syria, and the
borders of the Euphrates-Tigris water systems had a long history of agriculture,
peasant societies, and monarchical governments. At the points of contact between
the fertile parts of Arabia and the desert, the bedouins could be integrated into
more inclusive, often stratified, bodies. In these areas, clan confederations
organized caravans and trade. The formation of a haram, a common sanctuary,
also allowed for worship of the same gods, economic exchange, sociability, and
political bargaining. Monarchies were also established on the Arabian peripheries.
In South Arabia, royal authority was first founded about 1000 BCE and lasted
until the Muslim era. By the fifth century BCE, Yemen was organized into
kingdoms encompassing agricultural, trading, and pastoral peoples, with
monarchs, landed elites, a religious pantheon, and organized temple worship of
the gods. The political elite was drawn from aristocratic tribes and controlled
extensive landed estates. Temples also had substantial holdings, whereas the
commoners were organized into clans that were obliged to provide agricultural
and military services to the elites. South Arabian sedentary communities had a
more elaborate institutional framework than tribal groups, including a council
with a king and delegates from the principal tribes. Tributary and vassal tribes
extended the power of the Yemeni kingdoms well into the interior of Arabia.
However, in the first century BCE, the opening of sea routes for
international trade and the collapse of the overland trade routes from Yemen to the
north brought financial and political disaster. The Yemeni kingdoms were
weakened, and bedouins pushed in against agricultural areas and cut off Yemeni
influence in the Hijaz and central Arabia. In 328 CE, Imru al-Qays b. Amr seized
control of Najran. An inscription, in Arabic language and Nabatean script, refers
to him as King of the Arabs; it is the oldest surviving indication of an Arab
identity.
In the north, kingdoms were less fully institutionalized. The Nabatean
kingdom (sixth century BCE–106 CE) was ruled by a king but really depended on
a supporting coalition of clan and tribal chiefs. From 85 BCE, the Nabateans –
their capital at Petra, in modern-day Jordan – controlled much of Jordan and Syria
and traded with Yemen, Egypt, Damascus, and the coastal cities of Palestine.
The Nabatean kingdom was destroyed by the Romans in 106 CE. Palmyra,
in the desert to the east of Damascus, succeeded Petra, extending monarchical
control over the deserts and surrounding border areas. An urban capital, elaborate
temples, a strong agricultural base, wide commercial networks, and Hellenistic
culture marked Palmyran supremacy. Palmyra was destroyed in 271 CE – a
victim, as were the Nabateans, of Roman efforts to incorporate northern Arabia
directly into the empire.
Thus, from about 1000 BCE until about 300 CE, Yemen and the northern
kingdoms organized the interior of the peninsula and kept the bedouins under the
control of the agricultural and commercial economies of the settled kingdoms. By
the end of the third century, however, the peripheral kingdoms had lost control of
the center of the peninsula. Violent conflicts between clans and tribes became
more frequent. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, bedouin marauders
harassed the caravan trade, and bedouin migrations converted marginal regions in
Yemen and on the borders of Iraq and Syria to pasturage. The bedouinization of
Arabia was a gradual and cumulative process, shifting the balance between
organized polities and clan societies in favor of the latter.
From the early fourth century to the end of the sixth century, there were
several efforts to reestablish the dominance of the peripheral kingdoms and
protect trade and oasis cultivation. In Yemen, the Himyarite kingdom was
reestablished, and its influence – mediated by the tribal confederation of Kinda –
extended over the bedouins of the Hijaz and central Arabia. But in the sixth
century, after the Abyssinians invaded Yemen in 525 CE and a civil war between
Jews and Christians, South Arabian agriculture was again in ruins, and Arabian
tribes were shifting from sedentary to nomadic life.
In the north, after the destruction of Petra and Palmyra, both the Roman and
the Sasanian empires attempted to restore their spheres of influence. By the end of
the fifth century, the Romans had come to depend on the Ghassanids, an
ArabChristian clan, to defend Syria and Palestine against the bedouins and the
Persians. The Sasanian Empire also maintained a buffer state: a coalition of
Aramean and Christian tribes along the border between Iraq and the desert,
organized under the leadership of the Lakhmids, whose capital was al-Hira on the
lower reaches of the Euphrates.
For a time, the empires promoted sedentarization, trade, and the diffusion of
cultural influences (especially Christianity), but the Arabian kingdoms of this later
era were less powerful than the caravan city-kingdoms of earlier times. The early
kingdoms were based on sedentary populations that were assimilated to
GrecoRoman culture, earned a living in agriculture and trade, and sponsored art
and architecture. The later kingdoms were tribal confederations, nomadic rather
than agricultural. Then, in the late sixth century, the Romans and Persians
removed their vassals altogether and attempted to partition northern Arabia and
absorb it into their respective empires. By the early seventh century, the empires
were at war with each other; the result was a breakdown of the Arabian economy
and of political order on the Arabian frontiers of both empires.

MECCA
In the sixth century, only Mecca stood against the trend toward political and
social fragmentation. Mecca remained the center of a tribal- and trade-oriented
confederation and the most important place for Arabian cultural and religious life.
A religious sanctuary whose shrine, the Kaba, attracted pilgrims from all over
Arabia, Mecca became the repository of the various idols and tribal gods of the
peninsula, and the destination of an annual pilgrimage. The pilgrimage also
entailed a period of truce, which served not only for religious worship, but also for
trade, the arbitration of disputes, and the settlement of claims and debts. The
annual trade fair at Ukaz and the pilgrimage to Mina and Arafat (near Mecca)
were important commercial occasions.
In the fifth century, the Quraysh, an alliance of tribal groups, took control of
Mecca. The Quraysh were united in a religious cult and defensive coalition, called
the Hums, centered on the sanctuary (haram) and shrine of the Kaba. They
governed Mecca through a council of clans (mala). The Quraysh further defined
their identity by codes of diet, dress, domestic taboos, and endogamous marriages
within the Quraysh confederation. United by religion as well as by kinship, the
Quraysh had a social structure similar to that of Jews and Christians, albeit based
on polytheistic rather than monotheistic religious beliefs.
The Quraysh were active in local fairs and regional trade. In the mid-sixth
century, Mecca participated in the trade linking northeastern Arabia with Yemen
or with Abyssinia by sea. The Quraysh were also engaged in trade with bedouin
tribes on the borders of Syria and Iraq, exchanging textiles and oil for bedouin
products. They ferried goods to the Byzantine frontier and were especially
important in selling hides when demand for leather in the empires rose due to its
military uses (such as saddles, bridles, body and horse armor, shields, belts, and
straps). It is presumed that Mecca had also been engaged in the international spice
trade from Yemen to Syria; however, by the sixth century, these routes had been
severed.
Trade gave Mecca a sphere of political as well as commercial influence.
Trade required treaties with Byzantine officials and with bedouins to assure safe
passage of the caravans, protection of water and pasture rights, and guides and
scouts. In association with the Tamim tribes, such arrangements gave Mecca a
loose diplomatic hegemony in northern Arabia. With the decline of Abyssinia,
Ghassanids, and Lakhmids, Meccan influence was the main integrative force in
late sixth-century Arabia.

LANGUAGE, POETRY, AND THE GODS

The political, social, religious, and economic complexity of the several
Arabian societies implied a rich and sophisticated cultural environment. Arabia
was multilingual. Although Aramaic was probably the most widely spoken
language in pre-Islamic Arabia, by the sixth century Arabic was both written and
spoken in the region. Arabic script appeared about a century before the Islamic
era; it was derived from earlier writing in Aramean, influenced by Nabatean
script, and then reshaped in al-Hira by Syriac-writing Christians or Aramean Jews.
Arabic writing may have been stimulated by the patronage of the Arab client
kings. There was also an Arabic poetic koine (a common dialect used by reciters
of poems throughout Arabia) that fostered a collective identity transcending the
individual clans.
Pre-Islamic poetry cultivated an Arab identity manifest in the virtues of
muruwwa – bravery, loyalty to kin, and generosity.
Arabic was also a language of religion. Iraqi and Himyarite Christians had
Arabic translations of the Old and New Testaments as early as the fourth century.
There were Christian liturgies and prayer books in Arabic. Arabs in Medina may
also have studied Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew in Jewish schools.
The Meccan Kaba expressed this diversity in religious form. It was the
sanctuary of numerous gods. Al-Ilah was the highest deity in the Meccan
pantheon. Sacrifices of livestock and produce were made; individuals “called” on
their god for help. The gods, then, were not simply identified with nature but were
defined as distinct persons separate from the natural forces that, as willful beings,
they controlled. Such gods had to be propitiated by sacrifices; one could
communicate with them as persons. The formation of a haram, a shared
sanctuary, allowed for worship of the same gods. The very concept of the worship
of numerous gods at festivals or fairs indicates a Hellenistic connection and a
parallel with religious practices in Syria.
In the shared sanctuaries, new conceptions of collective identity could
emerge. The haram focused the worship of tribal peoples on common cults,
allowed them to observe one another’s mores, and helped standardize their
language and customs. Furthermore, Mecca was also one of the few places in
Arabia to have a floating, nontribal population of individual exiles, refugees,
outlaws, and foreign merchants. Arabian-wide commercial contacts and the very
presence of different peoples and clans – people belonging to no clan, foreigners,
people with diverse religious convictions – set some individuals free from the
traditions of their clans, fostering new conceptions of personal worth and status
and new social relationships. In Medina, the beginnings of a new society were
based on geographical proximity rather than tribal ties. Individuals or groups from
tribes living adjacent to one another began to coalesce into political groups, the
“people of a locality.”
Commerce, however, also brought economic competition, social conflict,
and moral confusion. Commercial activities intensified social stratification on the
basis of wealth and morally inassimilable discrepancies between individual
interests and clan loyalty. The Quran would condemn the displacement of tribal
virtues by the ambition, greed, arrogance, and hedonism of the new rich. Mecca,
which had begun to give Arabia some measure of political and commercial order,
was changing its moral and social identity.
Thus, Arabia was in ferment: a society touched by imperial influences but
without a central government; marked by the monotheistic religions but with
competing polytheistic and henotheistic beliefs; a prospering society caught in
social and moral conflicts. Here Muhammad was born, was entrusted with the
Quran, and here he became the Prophet of Islam. /38/

Ira M. Lapidus, Islamic Societies to The Nineteenth

Century: A Global History. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2012.