When Almighty Allah sent His last and greatest Prophet, Muhammad sallallaaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, humankind was immersed in a state of degeneration. The messages of the past prophets had been distorted and ignored, civilization was on the decline and humanity had slumped into an age of darkness, with disbelief, oppression and corruption prevalent everywhere. The condition of the world at that time presented the gloomiest picture ever of human history.

At the time of the birth of Prophet Muhammad, , there existed two great powers on earth: one in the East and another in the West. In the East there was the Persian Empire, and in the West, the Roman Empire. As it might be expected, these two powers were actively hostile and almost permanently at war with one another. As a result, they were weak and disunited, though appearing to be otherwise. Despite their disunity and weakness, they made no serious effort to eradicate the causes of their instability. 


 The Arabs were living under no better conditions. They were families and tribes comprising different attitudes and feelings; but they were all similar in one respect: they were slaves of habits and impulses. They used to take pride in invasion and plunder. Moreover, they were so low in their moral affairs that a number of them used to bury their daughters alive.


 Religiously speaking, the Arabs of that era were mostly idol worshippers. Some of them used to make their own gods from sweets, and subsequently, they would eat them when they got hungry. They had replaced the monotheism of Ibraaheem (Abraham)  with the worship of idols, stars and demons, turning the Ka'bah, which was built for the One and Only Creator, into a pantheon of idols. In addition, tribal rivalries and blood feuds ran among them like the burning desert sands of Arabia.


 The people of Makkah used to practice usury on a large scale with very high interest rates -- sometimes a hundred percent. When the debtors were not able to repay -- and that was most often the case -- they were enslaved or obliged to force their wives and daughters to commit certain sins, in order to be able to collect enough money to repay the debt.


Ignorance was not confined to the Arabs alone. On the fringes of Arabia where the desert gives way to hospitable lands, met the ever-changing borders of 'world arrogance', the two superpowers of the age: the Persian and the Roman Empires.

The fire-worshipping Persians, with their strange concept of dualism were further plagued by the still weirder Mazdakite doctrine (i.e. a socio-religious movement that flared up in the Sasanian Kavad (488-531 CE) founded by Mazdak son of Bamdad), that advocated communal ownership and even ruled that women were the common property of all men. Like Mani a few centuries earlier, who had claimed a new religion by combining the teachings of Jesus  and Zoroaster, Mazdakite's movement was also a reaction to the corruption of the traditional priestly class. Both creeds died away after the execution of their proponents, who more or less depended on royal patronage. On the other hand, the Sasanian aristocracy aligned with the Zoroastrian clergy was steeped in pleasures, burdening the oppressed masses with heavy taxes and oppression.

At the other end was the Byzantine world, which though claiming to profess a divinely revealed religion, had in fact polluted the monotheist message of Prophet Jesus  with the sediments of ancient Greek and Roman pagan thoughts, resulting in the birth of Christianity. In 381 CE, the Greco-Roman Church council rejected the doctrine of Arius of Alexandria, to which most of the eastern provinces of the empire adhered, and in its place the council had coined the belief that God and Jesus  are of one substance and therefore co-existent. Arius and his followers had held the belief in the uniqueness and majesty of God, Who Alone, they said has existed since eternity, while Jesus  was created in time.

There were colonies of Jews scattered across West Asia and North Africa to whom several Messengers had been sent by Almighty Allah. However, even these divine favors had failed to reform them. The laws sent to Prophet Moses  had been distorted and tampered with.

Further to the east lay the once flourishing cultures of China and India which were groping in darkness. Confucianism had confused the Chinese, robbing their minds of any positive thinking. On the other hand, Hinduism had no universal pretensions whatsoever, and was peculiar to the geographical confines of India or more properly Northern India and its Aryan invaders. Conversion of foreigners was difficult because one had to be born in a particular caste and it was the mystery of 'Karma' that determined one's fate.

In short, wars, bloodshed, slavery, oppression of women and the deprived held sway everywhere, might ruled over right. The world was in dire distress but no one seemed capable of delivering it from darkness. No religion, ideology, creed or cult during those times, could offer any hope to the agonies and frustrations of humankind.

None of the religions in currency had any universal outlook or even pretensions and were limited to insurmountable geographical and psychological barriers, preaching discrimination and the narrow-minded superiority of a particular race.

Thus, it was in such a chaotic state of depression that Almighty Allah sent His last great Prophet,  with the universal Message of Islam to save humankind from disbelief, oppression, corruption, ignorance and moral decadence that was dragging humanity towards self-annihilation.

The Arabian Peninsula is enclosed in the west by the Red Sea and Sinai, in the east by the Arabian Gulf, in the south by the Arabian Sea, which is an extension of the Indian Ocean, and in the north by old Syria and part of Iraq. The area is estimated between 1 and 1.25 million square miles.

Arab Tribes:

Arabs have been divided according to lineage into three groups:

- Perishing Arabs: The ancient Arabs whose history is little known, and of whom were ‘Ad, Thamûd, Tasam, Jadis, Emlaq and others.

- Pure Arabs: Who originated from the progeny of Ya‘rub bin Yashjub bin Qahtaan. They were also called Qahtaanian Arabs.

- Arabized Arabs: Who originated from the progeny of Ismaa'eel, may Allah exalt his mention. They were also called ‘Adnanian Arabs.

When talking about the Arabs before Islam, we deem it necessary to draw a mini-picture of the history of rulership, princeship, sectarianism, political, economic and social situations as well as the religious dominations of the Arabs, so as to facilitate the understanding of emergent circumstances when Islam appeared.

Rulership and Princeship among the Arabs

When the sun of Islam rose, rulers of Arabia were of two kinds: crowned kings, who were in fact not independent but were subservient to Persians or Romans; and heads of tribes and clans, who enjoyed the same authorities and privileges possessed by crowned kings and were mostly independent, though some of them may have shown some kind of submission to a crowned king. The crowned kings were only those of Yemen, Heerah and Ghassaan, all other rulers of Arabia were not crowned.

The tribes dwelling near Heerah were subordinate to the Arabian king of Heerah, while those dwelling in the Syrian semi-desert were under the domain of the Arabian Ghassanide king, a dependency that was in reality formal, rather than actual. However, those living in the hinder deserts enjoyed full autonomy.

In fact, these heads of these tribes were chosen by the whole tribe, which was a demi-government based on tribal solidarity and collective interests in defense of land and property.

Heads of tribes enjoyed dictatorial privileges similar to those of kings, and were rendered full obedience and subordination in both war and peace. However, rivalry among cousins for rulership often drove them to outdo one another in entertaining guests, affecting generosity, wisdom and chivalry for the sole purpose of outranking their rivals and gaining fame among people -- especially poets, who were the official spokesmen at the time.

Heads of tribes and masters had special claims to spoils of war such as a quarter of the spoils, whatever he chose for himself, that which he found on his way back or even the remaining undivided spoils.

Religions of the Arabs

Most of the Arabs had complied with the message of Ismaa'eel, may Allah exalt his mention, and professed the religion of his father Ibraaheem, may Allah exalt his mention. They had worshipped Allah, professed His Oneness and followed His religion for a long time, until a time came when they forgot part of what they had been reminded of. However, they still maintained fundamental beliefs like monotheism as well as various other aspects of Ibraaheem’s religion, may Allah exalt his mention, until the time when a chief of Khuza‘a, namely ‘Amr bin Luhai introduced them to idol-worship. ‘Amr bin Luhai was renowned for his righteousness, charity and reverence for religion, and was granted unreserved love and obedience by his tribesmen. Once, on his return from a trip to Syria where he saw people worshipping idols (a phenomenon he approved of and believed to be righteous since Syria was the locus of Messengers and Scriptures), he brought with him an idol (Hubal), which he placed in the middle of Al-Ka‘bah (the Sacred House) and summoned people to worship it. Readily enough, paganism spread all over Makkah and then to Hijaz (the region of western Saudi Arabia bordering the Red Sea). A great many idols, bearing different names, were introduced into the area.

Polytheism and worship of idols became the most prominent feature of the religion of pre-Islamic Arabs, despite the alleged profession of Ibraaheem’s religion, may Allah exalt his mention.

Traditions and idol-worship ceremonies had been mostly introduced by ‘Amr bin Luhai, and were deemed as 'good innovations' rather than deviations from Ibraaheem’s religion. Some features of their idol-worship were:

  Devoting themselves completely to the idols, seeking refuge with them, acclaiming their names, beseeching their help in hardship and supplication to them for fulfillment of wishes, hoping that the idols (i.e. pagan gods) would mediate with Allah for the fulfillment of their wishes.

   Performing pilgrimage to the idols, circumambulating around them, self-abasement and even prostrating themselves before them.

  Seeking the favor of idols through various kinds of sacrifices and immolations.