Last updated: April 30th, 2025 at 12:45 pm · Est. Reading Time: < 1 minute
The pre-Islamic Arabs did have a dancing tradition, though the evidence about it is thin.
Khor Rory in modern Oman has yielded a statue of a semi-nude female dancer. The discoverers date it to the 2nd century CE.1 Though the statue is ‘made in India’, its presence in the Arabian Peninsula gives a hint that pre-Islamic Arabs had a dancing tradition.
We don’t know how far and wide dancing was practiced. Saint Gregentius, archbishop of Zafar in the 6th century CE, prescribes in his Nomoi, “We do not want to have any singer, anyone that claps his hands, any dancer and any kind of abominable and shameful play in the country of our majesty. The transgressors shall be caught, flogged and scorched, their property shall be confiscated, and they shall be condemned to serve in the working house for a whole year.”2 Though the text is a fictitious code of the Himyars, it certainly documents aversion towards the art of dancing and singing from certain segments of the society.
From the available evidence, a hypothesis develops that a dancer was usually a woman who could be scantily clothed. The spectators were generally men of means. The society as a whole had an aversion towards this activity.
Further Reading
History of Islam, Social Structure of Pre-Islamic Arabs, https://historyofislam.org/social-structure-of-pre-islamic-arabs/