SAUDI ARABIA BEFORE ISLAM
Before Islam most of the
inhabitants of Arabia belonged to the nomadic tribes. They had no
permanent home and they
moved about constantly in search of food and pasture for their
herd. The Arabs inhabited a large area of the Middle
East comprising the Arabian Peninsula and
its northern extension in
the Syrian Desert. The area was marginal
(limited) because of its
aridity (lacking enough water for things to grow)
so they had to continue to move around.
Their life consisted of
pasturing camels and other animals and finding food but it was according
to the geographical
conditions. They had to move around to
where vegetation and food and
water were. Their life style was not complex in a social
or political sense because they were
very simple people and
because of this their way of life slowly disappeared and fell under the
rule of foreigners and
Muhammad was one of them in the near future.
“The Muslims believe that Muhammad came from the lineage of
Ishmael. According to the
historians, the roots of the native Arabs can be traced back to
the Tribe of Joktan, who lived in
the southern part of Arabia (Genesis
10:26-29). One of Abraham’s wives,
Keturah, was from
(another tribe in) the central part of the Arabian peninsula, north
of Al-Hejaz; her sons are listed
in (Genesis 25:1-6).
The scattered Ishmaelites (a
tribe) from Havilah to Shur intermarried with the first two tribes
over the years and eventually the descendents of the three
tribes dominated other tribes in all of
the Middle East. This is
how the Arab race came into existence.” [Mirage-The
Love Language of
Islam! By: David Ibrahim]
You had Arabs that settled
and you had the nomadic Arabs that didn’t settle but all were
organized in tribes (units) which consisted of descent
groups of people. They got their
security
from these tribes (units) not from a state. A man’s life was protected by his
kinsmen. He was
to protect him when he was
in trouble and needed help. And if
someone killed him he would
be avenged and the kinsmen
had to seek compensation for that man or his family if he was
killed. It made others think twice. A woman’s life was protected by her kinsmen
too but she
had no reciprocal
obligation so she was considered a dependant.
These tribes also had slaves,
freedmen, craftsmen, and
itinerant (traveling) traders who
depended on them because they
were non-Arabs and they
needed their protection.
Each tribesman had great
pride in their ability to defend themselves and their dependants.
They boasted through their
poetry warning potential predators of their strength. At some point
to show their strength
they would take the camels, abduct the women, kill the men, slit the
noses of the defenseless
slaves of other tribes, enemy tribes.
This was highly prized among
their own tribes when they
did that. But to be dominate over and
bring the worst evil upon a
people was for their necks
to be bent. If you have people who
obeyed instead of standing up
for themselves they were dismissed as “’slaves’. It does not matter if there were unfree
persons, weak members of a
tribal society or civilian subjects of states.
You have to be strong
and defend yourself.
“During the time in pre Islamic Arabia, gods or goddesses were
viewed as protectors of
individual tribes, their spirits being associated with sacred
trees, stones, springs and wells.
Aside from these gods, the Arabs shared a common belief in a
supreme deity called Allah
(literally “the god”), who was remote from their everyday
concerns and thus not the object of
cult or ritual. Three
goddesses were associated with Allah as his daughters: Allat,
Manat, and
al-Uzza. Monotheistic communities existed in Arabia,
including Christians and Jews. Hanif’s-
native pre-Islamic Arab monotheists-are also sometimes listed
alongside Jews and Christians in
pre-Islamic Arabs.
According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad himself was a hanif and one of
the descendents of Ishmael, son of Abraham.” [Mirage – The Love Language of Islam!,
By:
David Abrahim]
The nomadic Arabs had many
gods they worshipped but they really had no effect on them. It
was just something they
did. They did believe that the most
important thing that happened in
a person’s life was the
result of an impersonal force called Time
or Fate. This is what the
nomads believed in that
can be found in the Qur’an, ‘They say,
there is nought but this present
life; we die and we live, and only Time destroy us’ (45.24).
The most important belief
they had was tribal humanism (humanity is
capable of self-
fulfillment, ethical conduct), which was fostered (to help to grow; stimulate) by the strong
tradition of poetry. To them the poets celebrated the profits of
individual heroes. You could
see this in the high
qualities present in the tribal stock rather than to their person needs. To
the Arabs this is what
made life meaningful to them, having a large herd.
You also had this code of
ethics that went along with the tribal system.
Each tribe was
responsible for the minor
offense or breaking of the law of its members.
They believed in the
principle ‘a life for a life.’ This of cause presented long-lasting
blood feuds and when
Muhammad came on the scene
this was one of the problems he had to deal with.
You see the Arabian
camel-rearers first in the Bible c. 1,000B.C.
They are considered Arabs in
Assyrian records from the
eighth century B.C. onwards. “They came with their cattle and their
tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude; for both
they and their camels were
without numbers.” This is a summary of the Saudi Arabs before Islam.
REFERENCES
Islam – A Short History, By: William Montgomery Watt, Copyright under
Berne Convention, published by Oneworld Publications
Cambridge Illustrated History – Islamic World,
By: Francis Robinson, Copyright
Cambridge University Press 1996, Published by the Press Syndicate of the
University of Cambridge
Mirage – The Love Language of Islam!,
By: David Ibrahim, Copyright 2010 by
David Abrahim, published by ANM Publishers
THE HOLY BIBLE
The Quran
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