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The Near East in Late Antiquity (up to 7 cent. CE)

Pre-Islamic Arabia

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The Middle East into which Islam was born in the 7 century was divided between two
great empires, the Christian (Greek) Byzantine and the predominantly Zoroastrian
(Persian) Sasanian one. These two had been rivals in the area for 900 years and much of
the time they were engaged in conflict. Christianity was growing not just in areas
controlled by the Byzantines, but also in Western Asia, the Iraqi lands and certain parts
of Iran. It was also gaining ground in Arabia itself.

The Arabs

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The earliest record of the term ʿarab goes back to 9 century BC.
ʿRB is found in Akkadian, Hebrew and Aramaic, but it is not clear who such a term
would have referred to.
The etymology is confusing, because the ethnicon ʿRB is mixed up with aʿrāb
(‘nomads’): but there is no justification that all references to ʿRB meant ‘nomads’, for,
sedentary populations of ʿarab were known to classical historians:
Arabs have been settled since the circa. 500 BC onwards.

 Josephus calls Nabataeans ‘Arabs’; Herodotus mentions an Arab in III.ix.

 Aristothenes mentions ‘Arabs’ in Tyre.
 Odessa and Emessa had Arab ruling families.
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 Mentioned also in 7 century BC Assyrian Annals.

Were the Arabs important?

It is inaccurate and unreasonable to suggest that Arabs were not important because they
lived on the periphery of the great empires:

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 1. They occupied a central position between India, Africa, Mesopotamia
and the Mediterranean world, necessarily having some role in the
transient trade.
2. Frankincense, myrrh and other aromatics, luxuries of the Near Eastern
world of antiquity, all grew in South Arabia.
3. Arabs were skilled in desert terrain and must have been recruited as
guides for crossing those areas.
4. They were also recruited as allies or exploited as foes of the enemy in
areas were rival empires met: so the Ghassānids in the case of the
Byzantines (these were a confederation of tribes living a pastoral nomadic
existence), the Lakhmids in the case of the Sasanians (these had a fixed
capital at al-Ḥīra (southern Iraq) and their kings enjoyed close relations
with the Sasanian rulers of Iran, and they also managed the trade routes
of eastern and central Arabia: they had their own court cultures,
Christianised to some extent; BUT EVEN EARLIER: in Northern
Arabia, the Nabataeans had developed a civilisation at Petra (taken over
ca. 100AD); a great caravan city had developed at Palmyra (destroyed ca.
270AD). Some Arabs lived as subjects of the great empires, as in the case
of Philip the Arab who rose through the Byzantine army to become
Roman Emperor from 244-249 AD. For the most part, however, Arabs
were associated with a nomadic lifestyle throughout Arabia.

Arabic

Until about the 6th century AD, Arabic remained a spoken language, so in order to
write Arabs used a foreign script: Nabatean, Sabaean or Greek.

There are 4 blocks of Arabs mentioned in the ancient sources:

 North Arabia and Syria [Byzantine-Syrian influences]
 Southern Palestine, Sinai and Eastern Egypt [Hellenised]
 Mesopotamia [Sasanian culture permeating the fertile crescent]
 South-western Arabia [the South Arabian culture of Yemen]
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During the 7 -8 centuries BC, there were clashes between Arab tribes/confederations
and the Assyrians, who were trying to gain control of the frankincense trade.
The area, however, in general did not allow for complex social and political
organization. Ancient South Arabia was an exception: several kingdoms had developed
there from about 500BC; but then this area was overrun by Ethiopians and next
Iranians.

The Tribal Structure

Arabs, whether settled or nomadic were organised in tribes, units functioning as descent
groups. The tribe provided security for its members; a man’s life was protected by the
members of the tribe, based on ties of kinship (note the importance of maintaining
kinship so that you could be protected): the lex talionis (rule of retaliation; qiṣāṣ) and
the expected demand for compensation (diya) functioned as deterrents against general
lawlessness in the main. But these tribes were hostile among themselves and generally
speaking they boasted of minor victories against one another in their poetry: they had
never been united and that was the norm. Their ability to requite their losses and carry
off booty and spoils was something that they took great pride in boasting of. This tribal
background meant that most Arabs were accustomed or well-trained in warfare, unlike
the peasant and civilian populations which they overran during the conquests. So once
the military of the two great empires was decaying, those areas could easily be overrun.

Nothing seems to indicate that these scattered tribesmen would one day carry a new
world religion throughout the Near East. For the Empires, the Arabs had been around
for so long, but had never staged any major conquests; they were a slight nuisance, but
they could be used to control the desert regions. The two great Empires had never been
concerned about their desert neighbours. But in the 630s these Arabs began a series of
coordinated invasions that severely disabled the Byzantine hold on the area and

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completely destroying the Sasanian one on the other side. By 800CE, the Middle East
had been completely transformed.

The Conquests

 Islam was as much or as little a continuation of Late Antique tradition as was

Western Christendom [Ponder how things might have been different had Spain
remained Islamic].
 Compared with the later Crusader and Mongol invasions, the Muslim conquests
of the Middle East were not particularly violent.
 The Muslims came as organised armies with commanders and strategic
objectives [as opposed to disorganised raids in quest of booty or spoils].

 Perhaps we can see the Muslim conquest as one stage in the long-term
penetration of the Arabic-speaking peoples into the Near East, a process that
had started about 200 AD.

 Biographical reports inform us about the social make-up of the Muslim

conquerors: the majority were from the settled populations, such as those of
South Arabia, where there had been a tradition of irrigation culture and
powerful monarchies. In fact, it was the political heads, the rulers, such as the
Umayyads who had been nomads before the conquests (Quraysh, we are told,
only began to settle around the Meccan sanctuary, shortly before the birth of
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the Prophet at the beginning of the 6 century: some five generations earlier
under an ancestor named Qusayy).

 Once, the conquests had been effected, how would things proceed? Well, the
Muslim conquerors took over the local administrative systems (whether
Byzantine or Sasanian), so that there were still individuals who could administer
the local areas that had been conquered (only the top level leadership would
have been thrown out).

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  The Arabs had two things in their favour: a common language and a common
ethnicity. The fact that the Message of the Qurʾān was in Arabic helped to
ensure that the it was understood by Arab tribes across the peninsula.

Up until the Umayyad reign of ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (d. 705), Greek had continued
to be used as the language of administration (evidence for this comes from the papyri
discovered in Egypt and at Nessana in the Negev desert).

An example to demonstrate the Arabisation of the conquered lands:

John of Damascus (writing in 730s, d. before 754) was an Arab, a priest, who was
employed in the Umayyad court (his name had been Manṣūr, his father had been
secretary for Muʿāwiya, Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya, Marwān b. al-Ḥakam and ʿAbd al-Malik),
having worked previously for the Byzantine administration. He authored a defense of
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the use of icons in Christian worship (a contribution to Greek theology in the 7 /8
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century. By the 9 century, Christian intellectuals were arguing points of Christian
doctrine in Arabic: Theodore Abū Qurra 740-820)

The Religious Background

There was a mixture of religious or spiritual tendencies, and sometimes neither. For
example, judging by the Qur’an, there may have been any of the following:

 henotheism (belief in the god of one’s tribe, without believing that he is the only
god): see Q. 43:20, where it seems that the Meccans acknowledge the supreme
God (al-Raḥmān) but attribute to him other lesser deities (usually goddesses, as
in Q. 53:19-21 (Allāt, al-ʿUzza, Manāt).
 animism (belief in the supernatural, attributing soul to plants, inanimate objects
and natural phenomenon): belief in the jinn is also Qurʾānic. In the Qurʾān, they
are considered a parallel creation to humankind and are also recipients of
revelation and will be judged like humankind.
 polytheism (possibly in the larger settled areas, where there must have been a
public cult): this may be a carry-over from interactions with the Graeco-Roman
cults that extended into the Near East.

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  Materialists/atheists: see Q. 45:24 and it is only (the passage of) Time that destroys
us, i.e. there is no such thing as God, according to this group of people.

As for monotheism: Christian Church in late antiquity is divided: Dyophysites

(Chalcedonian/Melkite: Christ had two distinct and complete natures, one human and
one divine); the Monophysites (Jacobite: Christ had a single, divine nature and only
took the appearance of humanity).
Ethiopia was Monophysite.
Jewish presence in Arabia in north-western oases, like Yathrib, Khaybar, Taymāʾ, Fadak,
but none apparently in Mecca.

The traditional account of the Prophet’s life:

Prophet Muḥammad born circa 570 (d. aged 60, 63 or 65, according to sources) into the
tribe of Quraysh in Mecca. Preaches in Mecca until 622, whereupon he emigrates to
Medina and sets up the Muslim community. After several military encounters and
treaties, he successfully recaptures Mecca in 630 and the rest of Arabia submits. He dies
in Medina in 632.

The Qurʾān
Biblical prophets are still recognisable, but there is a shift in emphasis to rejection of
crucifixion and the Trinity. Jews rejected Jesus; Christians deified him; Islam rejected
both.
 Arabia acquires a monotheist past: Ṣāliḥ had been sent to the Thamūd
(unknown to Jewish or Christian tradition).
 The religion of Abraham: Arabs are the sons of Ishmael, gives them their
monotheistic birth-right.
 Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian, but a ḥanīf and a muslim.
 Much legal content: rites of pilgrimage; inheritance; status of women and
slaves; dietary stipulations

Content of the Qurʾān:

 God, His attributes and names, praise of Him

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  End of the world, resurrection, judgement, paradise and hell
 Angels, other scriptures, prophets and messengers, creation, cosmos
 Laws, morals, social regulations

Summary
Pre-Islamic Arabia

 Geography The Arabian Peninsula lay between the great Byzantine and Sassanian
empires of the north and the kingdoms of the Red Sea (Yemen and Ethiopia). The
greater part of the peninsula was desert, with scant water resources and agriculture in
isolated oases.
 Occupations The inhabitants followed different ways of life. There were nomads (we
know them as bedouins) who pastured camels, sheep and goats in the desert,
cultivators of grain and date palms, merchants, traders and craftsmen in the cities.
 Social organisation Tribal. The tribesmen were known for their loyalty to family,
pride in ancestry, and ethos of courage and hospitality. Tribal leaders held power,
maintained close links with the merchants and organised trade through their
territories, an important source of revenue and influence.
 Religion Mainly polytheism and henotheism. There were also Jews and Christians in
Northern Arabia. In Mecca, there was the Ka‘ba, which had existed since the time of
Abraham. In 7th C Arabia, this Ka‘ba housed the 360 idols of the Arab tribes and was
the site of annual pilgrimage. While these deities were primary objects of worship,
there was also shared belief in a common God called “Allah” (henotheism). “Allah”
was the supreme high God but remote from the concerns and issues of everyday life
and thus not an object of cult or worship. Associated with Allah were three female
deities whom the pre-Islamic Meccans took to be intermediaries/intercessors: al-Lat,
Manat and al-Uzza.
 Language Various dialects of Arabic. There also emerged a common poetic language
out of these dialects, more formal and refined. The poems, longer and most valued
one ones of which were the odes or qasidas, were composed to be recited in public
and transmitted orally.
 There was little leisure time or propensity among the Arab tribesmen to pursue
“civilization” or “high culture”, characteristic of settled societies that are typically
self-sufficient in agriculture. However the Arabian Peninsula was open to influences
from the kingdoms and states around it; the Chritsian centre Hira and the kingdom of
Yemen, and also the passage of traders along the trade routes.

Having read the above, imagine now the rise of a Prophet from among the Arabs who
proclaimed a new vision of life and what followed after death. Born in the powerful tribe
of Quraysh in Mecca, an influential centre of trade, pilgrimage and worship, Muhammad
(570-632 A.D.) brought a message that was at once religious and social. He condemned
the practices of female infanticide, slavery, usury, bloodshed, fornication, adultery and
theft that plagued Arab society at the time, preaching instead for example, the values of
social justice, honesty and kindness to women and orphans.

The questions about the meaning of life and how it should be lived that had characterized
settled societies of the great religions were suddenly being pondered in the deserts and
oases of Arabia, directed repeatedly at the Prophet by the (often incredulous) Meccans.
Most Meccans, certainly the wealthy ones, seem to have believed in a kind of materialism
and that it was simply the passage of Time (dahr) that ultimately brought death and
nothing came after. The Prophet introduced to them the idea of an afterlife and the
existence of a paradise (described in the metaphors of beautiful shaded gardens and rivers
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as well as an abundance of food and wine) and a hell (described in the metaphors of fire
and heat), either of which an individual could end up in depending on his obedience to
the divine law as a guide to all spheres of his life. Can we say that the Arab spiritual
imagination at this time was just about ready to start embracing these ideas, albeit not
without strong resistance as we know from the early years of the Prophet’s preaching?

The Qur’an, as a text spoke to the Arabs in the language of their poetry with similar
cadence, rhythm and formality. Moreover, it spoke to them about their society. Imagine
the resonance and impact it must have had. While the Qur’an consciously placed itself
and Islam in the line of the Judeo-Christian tradition, it proclaimed itself to be the final
word of God and Muhammad to be the last messenger. Thus the emergence of an Arabian
Prophet and an Arabic Qur’an that was to provide a universal message were key moments
in the formulation of a strong Arab-Muslim identity that was at once political and
religious.