Pre-Islam

Hunting was a favourite pastime of affluent Arabs in pre-Islamic times.  Though hunting was partly practiced to supplement food, its main purpose was to practice archery to get fame. Technique of Hunting The hunter was armed with a bow and arrow and was aided in the chase by the cheetah, the caracal lynx, or, more […]

Late pre-Islamic Arabs used to live in a variety of facilities.  They included semi permanent tents; temporary tents; houses, qasr (qaṣr قصر); and palaces Semi-Permanent Tents Nomads used to live in semi-permanent shelters.  They have not left any archaeological traces of their camps.  An account from pre-Islamic Arabic poetry demonstrates why it was almost impossible

All late antique Arabian tribes did not have equal social status.  Early Islamic sources consider some tribes to be respected and powerful, and others not that respected and rather weak.  We don’t know exactly what made a tribe respected in the eyes of fellow Arabs.  One guess is that the numerical strength of a tribe

Gambling was a favourite pastime for pre-Islamic Arabs.  Here is a piece of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry: I seemed to myself like a gambler who cleaves steadfastly to the bag in which the gaming arrows are kept; until at the day’s end, he is ruined and has lost heavily in all his wagers. Though generally gambling

The dress of the Bedouins was different from that of permanent dwellers.  The dress of the rich and poor sections of society also had differences.  Further, the pre-Islamic Arabs used different types of dress articles on specialized occasions, like war, formal occasions, industrial work, etc.  Finally, the dress of pre-Islamic Arabs changed tremendously over time.

There were three types of graves in pre-Islamic Arabia. Grave of the Commoners The grave of a common Arab was as simple as a trench covered by a pile of earth. A pre-Islamic Arab poet says: Yes sure enough, in a grave, dug where the valley is bent swathed in white I shall lie, white

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. Though the statue is ‘made in India’, its presence in the Arabian Peninsula gives a hint that

Pre-Islamic Arabs were familiar with the concept of imprisonment.  It is mentioned in pre-Islamic poetry with the background of the Lakhmids and the Ghassans.  People of Hejaz practiced it as well.  For example, Ibn Ishaq mentions that Salma bin Hisham (Hishām هِشام), an early convert, was imprisoned by his uncle in Mecca, and he could

Nature of the Crime Punishment of theft and adultery is often dealt with together in the earliest codes of law originating in the region of the Middle East. Adultery was a form of theft in the Middle Eastern mindset from the earliest times, albeit more abominable than common theft. Punishment of adultery in the Middle

An Arab tribe was composed of all those individuals who were descended from a reputed common ancestor.  Here, the keyword is ‘reputed common ancestor’. The common ancestor of a tribe could be real or legendary.  Historians have figured out how the Roman authorities created four civic tribes out of fourteen at Palmyra in the 1st