Chapter Ten - The Pre-Islamic Arabs

8/3/2019 Chapter Ten - The Pre-Islamic Arabs

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/chapter-ten-the-pre-islamic-arabs 1/11

CHAPTER TEN

THE PRE-ISLAMIC ARABS

Muslim theologians and historians present a pretty dark picture of

pre-Islamic Arabia. Its people, we are told, were unrepentant

pagans and polytheists unware of the Unity of God and thesuccession of his Prophets. They believed that Allãh, the one and

only True God, stood in need of partners who could mediate

between him and his creatures. Worse still, they gave daughters to

Allãh while they preferred sons for themselves. They worshipped

stones (authãn) and statues (aSnãm) and offered sacrifices to

satans. They had had no Prophet ( Rasûl ) and possessed no

scripture ( Kitãb) of their own. Consequently, they were ignorant

of the Last Day (Qiyãmat ), as also of Heaven ( Jannat ) and Hell

( Jahannam). They revelled in blood feuds, and buried alive their

female infants. Sons married their step-mothers, and the same man

two or more uterine sisters. And so on, till the conviction grows on

the readers or listeners that the pre-Islamic Arabs were despicable

barbarians.

Christian theologians and historians follow suit. They do not

endorse Muhammad as a prophet; in fact, they call him an

impostor. All the same, they prefer him to the pagans and

polytheists whom he fought and subdued. They do not concede

that Muhammad’s message was spiritually sound or morallyadequate. Yet they hail his teachings as a marked improvement on

the mode of worship and morals which prevailed earlier. Thus they

stand solidly, though negatively, united with their Muslim

counterparts in denouncing the state of affairs in pre-Islamic

Arabia.

And there is no dearth of Hindu scholars, even Hindu saints, who

join the chorus. Even those Hindus who are by no means

enamoured of Islam and distrust or despise it as a religion, regard

it none-the-less an immense improvement over what went inArabia before its advent. They say that Islam united the “Arab

rabble” into a “nation”, and gave them at least the “rudiments of

culture”. It never occurs to these Hindus that Muslim scholars who

denounce pre-Islamic Arabia view pre-Islamic India also as an

“area of darkness” to which Islam brought “illumination” for the

first time. Though Hindus have been victims of Islamic aggression

for several centuries, few of them feel sympathy for victims of the

same aggression elsewhere.



The pre-Islamic Arabs seem to have no case simply because no

one and almost nothing has survived to tell their side of the story.

Unlike the Hindus who have survived the onslaught of Islam and

can compare what they had with what was brought in by Islam,

the pre-Islamic Arabs have passed into what is more or less a total

oblivion. The Prophet of Islam and his rightly-guided Caliphs saw

to it that no trace was left of the pre-Islamic religion and culture of

Arabia, not even in the consciousness of the converts. FranzBabinger writes vis-a-vis the pre-Islamic Sabaean civilization of

Arabia: “The new creed had the greatest interest in obliterating all

recollection of the pagan period, not only in stone monuments

which still survived the natural weathering--these were destroyed

to provide material for new buildings, or burned for lime or

sometimes out of sheer vandalism--but also in literature, and even

in consigning the ancient language to oblivion.”1 Whatever could

not be wiped out was converted so completely as to look like a

contribution of Islam. The Ka’ba and the Hajj ceremonies provide

excellent examples. So does the Arabic language which, although

it retains its old sounds and syntax, has been made to convey

meanings and concepts which were foreign to it in its pristine state.

The greatest blow which pre-Islamic Arabia has suffered is the

perversion of its history. An overwhelming majority of the Arabs

had never heard of Abraham before Muhammad started

mentioning him; those few who had, had no reason to like him in

view of the contempt which his people, the Jews settled in Arabia,

had continued to pour on the Arabs. Moreover, it was not long

before the birth of Muhammad that the king of Yemen who had

converted to the creed of Abraham had massacred thousands of

Christianised Arabs. Therefore, the Arabs who were extremely

tolerant in matters of belief could not but have looked askance at

the very name of Abraham.2 Yet the Prophet proclaimed that the

Arabs were the progeny of Abraham through his elder son,

Ismael! He went much farther. He “discovered” that the foremost

Arab temple, the Ka‘ba at Mecca, had been built by Adam,

renovated by his son, Seth, and rebuilt by Abraham! He accused

the Arabs of having usurped, for polytheistic worship, a placewhich was originally meant to be a mosque! The theologians and

historians who followed, abolished the real forefathers of the

Arabs altogether and linked them to lineage of the Jews. Small

wonder that every comprehensive history of Arabia written by

pious Muslim chroniclers starts with Adam and Eve, and fills its

spaces with the progeny of Abraham.3

This Islamic version of Arab history would have continued to



prevail if modern scholarship had not rescued the true version by

means of painstaking research. “Our knowledge of the history,”

writes F. Hommel, “we owe partly to inscriptions found in the

country, partly in contemporary literatures and monuments of other

nations (Babylonians and Assyrians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks

and Romans) and partly also (for the centuries immediately

preceding Muhammad) to early Islamic tradition… As early as the

3rd millennium BC the old Babylonian inscriptions mention a kingManium (also in the fuller form Mannudannu) or Magan of East

Arabia; there is much to be said for the view that Magan was only

a Sumerian rendering of an Arabic Ma’ãn and that from this centre

was founded (at a date unknown to us) the South Arabian

kingdom of Ma’ãn (later vocalisation Ma’în) or the Minaean state

which perhaps in the beginning embraced the whole of South

Arabia… In addition a district named Melukh is mentioned as

lying further off, probably covering Central and North West

Arabia from which as well as from Magan the Sumerians e.g.

Gudea of Sirgulla (about 2350 BC) imported a large quantity of

products (wood, stone and metals) for their temples…”4

The same sources tell us about the Sabaeans who flourished in

Arabia from 800 BC onwards, till they were “swept away by the

wave of Muhammadan conquest.” They practised “an ancient

natural religion” in which “the sun, the moon and the planets”

figured prominently. They “believed in the migration of the soul and

in great world periods constantly renewed in an everlasting

revolutions,” which remind us of the Hindu theories of rebirth and

the yugas. They built “massive temples” and “handsome gold and

silver statues of their chief gods.”5 The Greeks and the Romans

knew “Saba and three other South Arabian kingdoms… as the

areas which produce frankincense, myrrh, cassia and

cinnarnon”6 and praised them “as brave soldiers, industrious tillers

of the soil and traders and skilful sailors” who “sent out colonies or

at least trading settlements into foreign lands, especially

India.”7 Modern archaeology has exposed “sculptures and

remains of colonnades, palaces, temples, city walls, towers, public

works, especially water-works etc., which confirm the brilliant

picture of Sabaean culture…”8

Similar is the story of the Nabataeans who arose in North Arabia

or Arabia Petraea about the same time as the Sabaeans in Arabia

Flex or South Arabia, and extended their sway upto the frontiers

of Hijaz. They were “never completely subjected either by the

Assyrians, or the Medes, Persians or the Mecedonian kings.” It

was the Romans who conquered for the first time a part of the



Nabataean kingdom in the north in AD 106 and named it

Provincia Arabia. The Nabataeans too were great traders who

“attained… the position of monopolists in Near Asia.”9 In their

pantheon, which we know “mainly from tombs and votive

inscriptions… the principal God was Dushara (Dhu’l-Sharã), the

principal goddess Allãt.”10

None of the Minaean or Sabaean or Nabataean inscriptionsmentions Abraham or Ismael or any term indicative of the Judeo-

Christian belief system which Muhammad will impose on the

Arabs in the form of Islam. It is only towards the end of the pagan

period that a South Arabian inscription dated AD 542-543

mentions for the first time “the power and grace and mercy of the

Merciful ( RaHmãnãn) and his Messiah and the Holy Spirit.”11

The inscription was set up by Abraha, the Governor of South

Arabia, on behalf of the Christian king of Abyssinia. How Abraha

became what he became is an interesting story which explains the

repugnance felt by the pagan Arabs for both Judaism and

Christianity, as also for the names and terms associated with these

creeds.

The Monophysite sect of Christianity had found refuge in Najran,

a province of South Arabia, after it was expelled by the official

Church from the Byzantine territory in the reign of Justinian I (AD

527-565). Some Arabs of Najran had also become converts to

Christianity. Around the same time, Dhû Nûwas, king of Yemen

which included Najran, had embraced Judaism. He declared war on the Christians of Najran when he found them unwilling to come

into the fold of his own creed. “Dhû Nûwas,” writes Ibn Ishãq,

“came against them with his armies and invited them to accept

Judaism, giving them the choice between that or death: they chose

death. So he dug trenches for them; burnt some in fire, slew some

with the sword, and mutilated them until he had killed nearly

twenty thousand of them.”12

The Christians of Najran appealed for help to the Negus, the

Christian king of Abyssinia. An Abyssinian army under Aryãtdescended on Yemen, defeated and killed Dhû Nûwas, and

occupied the land. Under orders from the Negus, a third of the

women and children of Yemen were captured, sent to Abyssinia,

and sold into slavery.13 The Arabs who had embraced Judaism

were massacred. In due course, Abraha succeeded Aryãt as the

Abyssinian Governor of Yemen. He set up the aforementioned

Christian inscription. Later on, he swore that he would destroy the

Ka‘ba, the foremost temple of the pagan Arabs. He led an army



to Mecca in AD 570, the same year in which Muhammad was

born. The Ka‘ba, however, escaped unhurt because of a miracle

which turned away the Abyssinian horde and which the Arabs

credited to Allãh, the presiding deity of their pantheon. Meanwhile,

the pagan Arabs had had a first hand experience of what Judaism

and Christianity stood for.

The religious strife which these alien creeds had brought to Arabia

was unknown to the pre-Islamic Arabs who, like all pagans, were

very liberal in matters of belief and modes of worship. They

witnessed how the two exclusive creeds had combined to cause

not only large-scale bloodshed but also a foreign invasion, entailing

enslavement of Arab women and children and occupation of Arab

territory by an alien army. The name of Abraham was associated

with both the creeds, as also the word “RaHmãn”. Naturally, the

Arabs could not be expected to be fond of either the name or the

word.

The historians of Islam mention Abraha’s march on Mecca, as

also his frustration and retreat in the face of a miracle. But they

conceal the fact that the Ka‘ba at that time was a place of pagan

worship crowded with numerous idols of Gods and Goddesses.

Instead, they lie and credit the miracle to the God of Abraham.

That God, however, was nowhere near the Ka‘ba during that

period. Allãh who presided over the pagan pantheon had not yet

been hijacked by Muhammad and converted into the exclusive

God of Islam. In fact, it was the pagan character of the Ka‘ba

which had invited the attack by a Christian iconoclast. And it was

the God of the pagans who had performed the miracle.

Character of Pre-Islamic Arabs

Modern scholars have not only salvaged pre-Islamic Arab history;

they have also pieced together a picture of the pagan Arabs

among whom Muhammad was born. For the latter purpose they

have had to depend solely on Islamic sources. They have done a

creditable job in view of the fact that these sources were

deliberately intended to black out or blacken whatever functioned

in Arabia before the birth of Islam. They have succeeded in

gleaning some good glimpses of people who stood up to

Muhammad and challenged his claim of monopoly over truth. The

material they have collected is meagre. Yet it does help us meet

some men and women of sterling character and heroic bearing.

The adversaries of Muhammad score over him and his

companions hands down so far as qualities of head and heart are



concerned.

This is not the occasion to go into greater detail about the shape of

pre-Islamic society and culture in Arabia. In the present context,

we have to confine ourselves to its pre-Islamic religion which

Muhammad destroyed root and branch and replaced with alien

prescriptions. So far as Muhammad’s adversaries are concerned,

let a professor from Pakistan speak, even though his views are

coloured considerably by the historical lore of Islam:

“Although religion had little influence on the lives of pre-Islamic

Arabs,14 we must not suppose them to be an altogether lawless

people. The pagan society of ancient Arabia was built on certain

moral ideas, which may be briefly described here. They had no

written code, religious or legal, except the compelling force of

traditional custom which was enforced by public opinion; but their

moral and social ideals have been faithfully preserved in their

poetry, which is the only form of literature which has come downto us from those old days.

“The virtues most highly prized by the ancient Arabs were bravery

in battle, patience in misfortune, loyalty to one’s fellow tribesmen,

generosity to the needy and the poor, hospitality to the guest and

the wayfarer, and persistence in revenge. Courage in battle and

fortitude in warfare were particularly required in a land where

might was generally right and tribes were constantly engaged in

attacking one another. It is, therefore, not a mere chance that in

the famous anthology of Arabian verse, called the Hamãsah, poems relating to inter-tribal warfare occupy more than half of the

book. These poems applaud the virtues most highly prized by the

Arabs-bravery in battle, patience in hardship, defiance of the

strong, and persistence in revenge.

“The tribal organization of the Arabs was then, as now, based on

the principle of kinship or common blood, which served as the

bond of union and social solidarity. To defend the family and the

tribe, individually and collectively, was, therefore, regarded as a

sacred duty; and honour required that a man should stand by his

people through thick and thin. If kinsmen sought help, it was to be

given promptly, without considering the merits of the case.

Chivalrous devotion and disinterested self-sacrifice on behalf of

their Kinsmen and friends were, therefore, held up as a high ideal

of life.”15

The king of Persia had said to one of the pre-Islamic Arab princes

that the latter’s people were inferior to every other people. The



prince had replied, “What nation could be put before the Arabs

for strength or beauty or piety, courage, munificence, wisdom,

pride, or fidelity?… So liberal was he that he would slaughter the

camel which was his sole wealth to give a meal to the stranger who

came to him at night. No other nation had poetry so elaborate or a

language so expressive as theirs. Theirs were the noblest horses,

the chastest women, the finest raiment… For their camels no

distance was too far, no desert too wild to traverse. So faithfulwere they to the ordinances of their religion that if a man met his

father’s murderer unarmed in one of the sacred months he would

not harm him. A sign or look from one of them constituted an

engagement which was absolutely inviolable… If other nations

obeyed a central government and a single ruler, the Arabs required

no such institution, each of them being fit to be a king, and well

able to protect himself, and unwilling to undergo the humitiation of

paying tribute or hearing rebuke.”16 One is reminded of the

republican clans in north Uttar Pradesh and Bihar among whom

the Buddha was born, as also of those in Punjab and Sindh who

robbed Alexander of his reputation of invincibility when they

blunted his sword and turned him back. The Arabs who got

regimented as Muhammad’s mujãhids (holy warriors) lost this

sense of honour and love of freedom. Treachery towards

whomsoever the Prophet chose as his enemy, became their stock-

in-trade. On the other hand, a mere frown from the Prophet made

them cringe and crawl.

If a society and culture is to be judged by the status of its women,

the pre-Islamic Arabs come out with flying colours. The very fact

that they had many Goddesses in their pantheon, made them give a

place of pride to their women. “Institutions of paganism,” observes

Margoliouth, “were not unfavourable to the prominence of those

women who had the requisite gifts of courage or insight. And the

ensuing narrative will show examples of women acting with

originality and resolution, when there was room for the display of

these qualities.”17 Muhammad’s first wife, Khadîjah, provides an

excellent example of the independence which women enjoyed, and

the enterprise they could display in the pre-Islamic Arab society.She was not only a wealthy merchant who managed her own

business; she was also in a position to turn down proposals from

powerful suitors and marry the man of her own choice. Hind, the

wife of Muhammad’s chief adversary, Abû Sufyãn, was herself a

firebrand who opposed Muhammad, tooth and nail. She followed

her husband to the battlefield and sustained his morale in

peace. When Abû Sufyãn surrendered Mecca to Muhammad

without a fight, she caught hold of him in the market-place and



cried, “Kill this fat greasy bladder of lard! What a rotten protector

of the people!”18 She was at her best when circumstances forced

her to embrace Islam. The Prophet who baptised her asked her

not to commit adultery. “Does a free woman commit adultery, O

apostle of God?” she asked. Next, the Prophet advised her not to

“kill your children.” She said, “I brought them up when they were

little and you killed them on the day of Badr when they were

grown up, so you are the one to know about them.”19 It was Islamwhich robbed women of their high station in society and put them

behind the veil or buried them in the harem. Ever since, the

language of Islam has bracketed women ( zan) with personal

property ( zar and zamîn) of the male. Chapters on marriage

(nikãh) and divorce (talãq) in orthodox collections of Hadîs, and

other standard works such as the Hidãya and the Fatwa-i-‘Ãlamgîrî , tell the true story of what Islam has done to women.

But the one great virtue for which the pre-Islamic Arabs put the

Prophet and his companions to shame, was their catholicity in

matters of religious belief and practice. The respect they showed

towards other people’s persuasions was fully in keeping with their

pagan spiritual tradition. Ibn Ishãq testifies, “When the apostle

openly displayed Islam as God ordered him, his people did not

withdraw or turn against him, so far as I have heard, until he spoke

disparagingly of their gods.”20 The Meccans made a very

reasonable offer when Abû Tãlib, Muhammad’s uncle and

protector, was on his death-bed. “You know,” they said, “the

trouble that exists between us and your nephew, so call him and letus make an agreement that he will leave us alone and we will leave

him alone; let him have his religion and we will have ours.” It was

Muhammad who remained adamant. “You must say,” he

demanded, “There is no God but Allãh and you must repudiate

what you worship beside him.”21 It cannot be held against the

Meccans that they refused to be bullied. Abû Tãlib himself stands

out as an embodiment of the pagan virtue in this respect. He

protected Muhammad to the end, without himself agreeing to

renounce the religion of his forefathers. His only fault-and that has

been the fault of all pagans-was his failure to understand that what

his nephew was selling was not religion but something else.

It is, therefore, nothing short of slanderous to say that the pre-

Islamic Arabs were barbarians devoid of religion and culture,

unless we mean by religion and culture what the Muslim

theologians mean. They were nothing of the sort. The fact that they

failed to understand the ways of Muhammad and could not match

his mailed fist in the final round, should not be held against them. It



was neither for the first nor the last time that a democratic society

succumbed in the face of determined gangsterism. We know how

Lenin, Hitler and Mao Tse-tung succeeded in our own times. Nor

should the image of what the Arabs became after they were forced

into the fold of Islam be confused with what they were before. The

crimes committed by the Islmaized Arabs should not be blamed on

the pagan Arabs. For it was Islam which brutalized the Arabs and

turned them into bloodthirsty bandits who spread fire and sword,far and wide. In the majority of mankind, the baser drives of

human nature are never far from the threshold. Islam brought them

to the fore in case of the majority of Arabs.

Footnotes:

1 First Encyclopaedia of Islam 1913-1936 , Leiden,

1987, Vol. VII, P. 15.

2 See D.S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, London, 1905, New Delhi Reprint. 1985, p. 73,

“To the Meccans,” he says, “he [Abraham] was not even a

name.”

3 Converts to Islam in every other land follow the pattern.

They disown their real forefathers and link themselves to

this or that tribe of Jews or Arabs. Muslims of Afghanistan

and Kashmir for instance regard themselves as descended

from some lost tribes of Israel. Muslims of Bangladesh have

produced learned treatises tracing their descent to Islamized

invaders. But for the labours of Firdawsî, the Muslims of

Iran would not have known that their infidel forefathers

were great and glorious.

4 First Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 377.

5 The Encyclopaedia Americana, New York, 1952, Vol.

XXIV, p. 77.

6 First Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., Vol. VII, p. 5.

7 Ibid., p. 7.

8 Ibid., p. 17.

9 Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 801.



10 Ibid., p. 802.

11 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 377.

12 Ibn Ishãq, Sîrat Rasûl Allãh, translated into English by

A. Gillaumne, OUP, Karachi, Seventh Impression, p. 17.

Ibn Ishãq (d. AD 767) was the first biographer of

Muhammad.

13 Ibid., p 19.

14 This statement has no basis, as we shall see. The pagan

Arabs fought Muhammad in defence of a religion which

they cherished. They had no other reason to quarrel with

the Prophet.

15 Shaikh Inayatullah, former Professor of Arabic in the

University of the Punjab, Lahore, ‘Pre-Islamic ArabianThought’, an article in A History of Muslim Philosophy,

edited by M.M. Sharif, Lahore, 1961, Vol. I, pp. 133-34.

The legend of Hãtim Tayy, poet and knight, is still popular

among Muslims. He represents the “ideal type of the Pre-

Muhammadan Arab” because he “displayed in a high

degree the virtues of Murûwa. particularly hospitality and

liberality in the practice of which he paid no regard to his

own needs”. His “generosity has become proverbial”

( First Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 290.

16 D.S. Margoliouth, op. cit, pp. 2-3.

17 Ibid., p. 30.

18 Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 548.

19 Ibid., p. 533. It is a despicable lie that the pre-Islamic

Arabs killed their children. Muhammad asked the Arabs not

to commit this crime simply because the Jewish prophetshad spoken against it, and not because he saw the Arabs

committing it. Hind gave a fitting reply.

20 Ibid., op. cit., p. 118. Muslim apologists may say that

abusing other people’s Gods not intolerance because that is

what Islam means. But that is a different proposition.

21 Ibid., p. 191-92.



Back to Contents Page Back to VOI Books Back to

Home

Chapter Ten - The Pre-Islamic Arabs

Documents

Transcript of Chapter Ten - The Pre-Islamic Arabs