Concept of Imprisonment Among Pre-Islamic Arabs

Last updated: April 30th, 2025 at 12:45 pm · Est. Reading Time: < 1 minute

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.¹  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 not migrate to Medina along with other Muslims.²

However, the Arabs of the Tribal Zone used imprisonment just to detain people.  Imprisonment was not a punishment for any crime in their customary system.

Further reading

Anthony Sean W., “The domestic origins of imprisonment: an Inquiry into an Early Islamic Institution, ” Journal of American Oriental Society 129 (2009): 571 – 96.

History of Islam, Social Structure of Pre-Islamic Arabs, https://historyofislam.org/social-structure-of-pre-islamic-arabs/

Footnotes

1. See ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Ḥalafī, Udabā’ al-sujūn (Beirut: Dār al-Kātib al-‘Arabī, 1963), 14.
2. Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, The life of Muhammad, ed. and trans. Alfred Guillaume (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 169.