Last updated: May 17th, 2025 at 1:03 pm · Est. Reading Time: < 1 minute
The period of about two centuries before the advent of Islam is called Jahiliyyah.
Early Islamic historians coined the term Jahiliyyah (Jāhiliyyah جاهِليه). Nobody doubts that the text basically conveys the spiritual ignorance of the Arabs just before the advent of Islam. However, if we take it in a broader sense, the term also describes the social and political chaos that existed in the Tribal Zone during the 5th and 6th centuries. Historians unanimously agree that during the fifty or so years before the advent of Islam, the Tribal Zone underwent political and economic deterioration. Archaeological evidence supports this assertion.1 2 Yet, historians disagree widely when looking for the factors that made Arabia a ruined and devastated land. Do the roots of the crisis extend back several centuries, or were it caused by a sudden collapse following wars, massacres, and epidemics (like the famous ‘plague of Justinian’) a few decades ago, is still a paradox.3
Further Reading
www.historyorislam.org. politics page of pre-Islam
Footnotes
- Derek Kennet, “On the Eve of Islam: Archaeological Evidence from Eastern Arabia,” Antiquity 79 (2005): 107 – 118.
- Derek Kennet, “The Decline of Eastern Arabia in the Sasanian Period,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 18 (2007): 86 – 122.
- Christian Julien Robin, “Antiquity,” in Roads of Arabia, ed. ‘Ali ibn Ibrāhīm Ghabbān, Beatrice Andre-Salvini Francoise Demange, Carine Juvin and Marianne Cotty, (Paris: Louvre, 2010), 92.