The History of the Arabs Before Islam
It is necessary to form at least a brief understanding of the Arabs before Islam, because they were the first people to receive this religion. Prior to Islam, the Arabs had their own religions, customs, morals, and systems of life. Islam then came with a new system and new ethical framework, directly encountering the established traditions of the pre-Islamic era.
From this point, a long conflict emerged between the old and the new, a conflict that cannot be properly understood without studying the life of the Arabs before Islam. The same principle applies when examining the arrival of Islam in other regions such as the Levant, Indonesia, or Egypt, where understanding the pre-Islamic condition is essential to understanding how Islam was received.
The Condition of the Arabs Before Islam and the Sources of Their History
The history of the Arabs before Islam is largely obscure, and the earliest reliable information we possess does not extend beyond approximately 150 years before Islam. This is due to several key factors:
First, the Arabs lived in tribal societies marked by continuous conflict and hostility, where warfare was a fundamental means of survival. The strong controlled access to water sources and grazing lands, while the weak had little opportunity for a dignified life.
Second, the constant involvement of the Bedouins in warfare consumed their energy and prevented the development of a stable civilization. Whenever some groups attempted to establish settled life or civilization, their efforts were often destroyed by rival tribes.
Third, they did not possess a developed system of writing, and therefore did not record their history. As a result, no written archives or enduring architectural monuments have survived to document their early past.
Accordingly, most of what we know about ancient Arab history comes from poetry and oral traditions transmitted by narrators, particularly concerning the period close to the advent of Islam.
The Inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula
The population of the Arabian Peninsula is generally divided into two main groups: Bedouins and urban dwellers.
Bedouins are the desert inhabitants who rely on nomadic life, herding, and tribal structures.
Urban dwellers are those who settled in cities and villages and lived in more stable, fixed communities.
Urban Arabs and the Arab Ethnic Identity
The urban Arabs include southern Arabia and the northern states such as the Nabataeans, Palmyra, the Ghassanids, and the Lakhmids. They also include, to some extent, certain cities of the Hejaz region. This group is characterized by a clearer and more well-documented history compared to the Bedouins. We will return later to discuss these groups and their historical features in greater detail.
The Arab Ethnic Identity
The Arab ethnic identity is considered one of the Semitic peoples, and arguably one of the most faithful in preserving original Semitic characteristics. The Arabic language is also one of the Semitic languages, and in fact, it is the one that best preserved the features of the ancient Semitic tongue.
This preservation is largely due to the nature of life in the Arabian Peninsula. The desert environment helped protect the Arabs and their language from external influences and from the changes that affected other Semitic peoples and branches of the Semitic languages.
The Division of Arabs According to Historians
Historians commonly divide the Arabs into two main categories:
The term extinct Arabs refers to tribes and peoples that disappeared, such as ‘Ad, Thamud, Tasm, and Jadis. Accounts of some of these groups are mentioned in religious texts and ancient sources, although their historical details remain limited and incomplete.
The surviving Arabs, on the other hand, are those who continued to exist and formed the basis of later Arab populations.
However, the strict separation between these two categories is not entirely precise from a historical perspective, as there may have been continuity and overlap between earlier and later groups, whether in lineage, culture, or geographical distribution.
The Surviving Arabs
The surviving Arabs are divided into two main branches:
1. The Qahtanites
Their original homeland is southern Arabia, and they include the kings of Yemen and the tribes of Saba and Himyar. From them emerged several groups that migrated across different parts of the Arabian Peninsula over time.
Among them:
2. The Adnanites
The Qahtanites, Adnanites, and Arab Migration
Among the Qahtanites were the tribe of Azd, from whom the two famous tribes of Aws and Khazraj branched out. These groups played a major role in the later history of Arabia, especially in Yathrib (Medina).
As for the Adnanites, they are referred to as the Arabized Arabs (Al-Arab al-Musta‘ribah)—meaning those into whom a non-Arab lineage entered, which then mixed and merged with the Arab population. As a result, Arabic became the language of this new blended community. They are considered the Arabs of northern Arabia, with their original homeland centered around Mecca.
The foreign lineage is traditionally traced to Prophet Ishmael, who was brought to Mecca as a child and grew up among its inhabitants, reportedly from the tribe of Jurhum, as will be mentioned later. He later married among them and left behind descendants who became fully Arabized.
Among the most important descendants of Ishmael was Adnan, from whom this group takes its name. After Adnan came his son Ma‘add, then Nizar ibn Ma‘add. From Nizar emerged two major branches through his sons: Rabi‘ah and Mudar.
From Rabi‘ah, the most famous tribes include: Abd al-Qays, Bakr, Taghlib, and Hanifa.
From Mudar, the most famous tribes include: Banu Hawazin, Banu Ghatafan, Tamim, and Quraysh.
Migration and Settlement of Northern Tribes
Mecca could not accommodate the growing population of the northern Arab tribes, so they began migrating in search of water sources and fertile grazing lands. As a result:
Abd al-Qays settled in Bahrain.
Banu Hanifa settled in Al-Yamamah.
Banu Hawazin settled in the region of Awtaas, east of Mecca.
South vs. North Arabs and Their Civilizations
The Arabs of the south possessed a deeper level of civilization and greater experience in political affairs compared to the Arabs of the north. When southern Arabs migrated northward, they established cities and kingdoms, and they largely formed the settled population of the Arabian Peninsula.
In contrast, the northern Arabs did not achieve significant political prominence until the advent of Islam, where their role became more central, and they largely represented the Bedouin element of Arabian society.
With the rise of Islam, these divisions were formally rejected. The Prophet Muhammad and his successors worked toward establishing a unified Islamic الأمة (community), eliminating tribal fanaticism. However, the historical tension between northern and southern Arabs did not disappear completely; it re-emerged at times, especially when central authority weakened or when Islamic principles were neglected in favor of tribal loyalties.
Languages of the North and South
Subsequent research indicates that Yemen (southern Arabia) was once the center of civilization in the Arabian Peninsula. It controlled much of the trade of the East and maintained colonies along trade routes and coastal regions.
