Last updated: April 30th, 2025 at 12:37 pm · Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes
Extent of the Crime
Murder is the single most talked-about crime in pre-Islamic inscriptions and poetry. How heinous was the crime in the eyes of Arabs, and how anxious were they to avenge it, can be assumed from the content of a Safaitic inscription. “He found the trace of his brother so he was distraught with grief for him, so, O Allāt and Shams, may he cut off his hand for you [in promise] for vengeance against him who has committed this act.” 1 The writer vows publicly to chop his hand off in case he fails to avenge his murdered brother.
Punishment for Murder
The punishment for murder was determined by a basic legal principle – talion. This principle of blood for blood, and its substitute, blood money (paid in cattle), is known from ancient times in Arabia. The customary payment of blood money was well established among nomads as an out-of-court settlement, even in those areas where they could appeal to the state for justice. “[Written] by Ẓnn son of Grm’l son of Ẓ’n son of Bnt son of Ẓ’n son of Ḥṭst of the lineage of Kn and sat down and he remembered the death [of his companions] and so he was miserable overshadowed [with grief] and O Lt and O B’smn give him two herds of cattle from [of the lineage of] ‘mrt and blind whoever scratches out the writing,” reads a Safaitic inscription.2 This Safaetic inscription is hard to date but is estimated to be from the 1st century BCE and 1st century CE. At that time, states were present in northern Arabia if anyone wished to use their apparatus.
Blood for blood was an Arab’s first priority. Accepting blood money was a humiliating option. For example, the wife of a murdered man insults his clan members for taking cattle for her husband’s blood:
If you will not seek vengeance for your brother
Take off your weapons and fling them on the flinty ground;
Take up the eye pencil, don the camisole, dress yourselves in woman’s bodices!
What wretched kin you are to a kinsman oppressed!
You have been diverted from avenging your brother
By a bite of minced meat and a lick of meagre milk.3
In late pre-Islamic customary law, not only the murderer but every member of his kinship was subject to talion. However, talion extended to the clan and not to the whole tribe.4 Blood money during pre-Islamic times was one hundred camels.5
Delivery of Justice
Two mechanisms were available to the pre-Islamic Arabs to seek justice in case of a murder. One was appeal to a tribal assembly.
Tufail bin ‘Awf, a pre-Islamic poet boasts about the judgement of a tribal assembly:
We obtained in requital for our slain an equal number [of them];
and for every fettered and shackled one of our people there was one shackled;
and for our robbed cattle the same number;
for captive women, captive women and for every warrior, a warrior.6
Another way to seek justice, in addition to the tribal council, was to agree upon an arbiter. He was respected for his nobility, integrity, trustworthiness, leadership, seniority, glory and experience.7 Arbiter did not have any force at his disposal. His judgement was honoured due to his personal respect. Here is an ode of pre-Islamic poet Zuhayr regarding performance of an arbiter:
The two conciliators from Ghaiz bin Murra laboured for peace
after the tribe’s concord had been shattered by bloodshed;
So I swear, by the Holy House about which circumambulate men of Quraysh
and Jurhum, whose hands constructed it;
a solemn oath I swear – you have proved yourselves fine masters in all matters
be the thread single or twisted double;
You alone mended the rift between ‘Abs and Dhubyān
after long slaughter and much grinding of the perfume of Manshim;
And you declared ‘if we achieve peace broad and sure by ample giving
and fair speaking, we shall live secure’.8
Many times the people of the Tribal Zone of Arabia did not have any chance of appealing to a tribal assembly, or appointing an arbiter. It was either due to non availability or non agreement. In that case they resorted to revenge taking through tribal warfare.
Further Reading
History of Islam, Social Structure of Pre-Islamic Arabs, https://historyofislam.org/social-structure-of-pre-islamic-arabs/
Footnotes
- Ryckmans, G., Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum: Pars Quinta, Inscriptiones Saracenicae Continens: Tomus I, Fasciculus I, Inscriptiones Safaiticae, Paris: E. Reipublicae Typographeo, 1950 – 1951. (inscription C 25 on OCIANA; Dunand 1350 a).
- MCA Macdonald, Al-Mu’azzin M., and Layla Nehmé, “The Safaitic Epigraphic Inscriptions of Syria, One Hundred and Forty Years after their discovery,” Proceedings of the meetings of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres (1996): 435 – 494. (Inscription WR. A 19 on OCIANA).
- Abu Tammām, Dīwān al-Ḥamāsa ta’līf Abī Tammām, ed. Salih, A. A. (Baghdad, Dar al-shu’un al-Thaqafiyya al-‘Amma, 1987), 684.
- Warner Caskel, “The Bedouinization of Arabia,” American Anthropologist 52, no. 2, part 2, memoir no. 76 (1954): 36.
- Arthur J. Arberry. The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature (London, George Allen and Unwin Ltc., 1957), 115.
- Tufail ibn ‘Auf and Tirimmah ibn Hakim, The Poems of Ṭufail ibn ‘auf Al-Ghanawī and At-Ṭirimmāḥ ibn Ḥakīm At- Ṭāyī, ed. and trans. Fritz J. H. Krenkow (London: Lusac & Co., 1927), 9.
- Ahmad ibn Abi Ya’qub al-Ya’qubi. Tarīkh, ed. Martijn T. Houstma (Leide: Brill, 1883), 1: 299.
- Arthur J. Arberry. The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature (London, George Allen and Unwin Ltc., 1957), 115 (Zohayr’s Mualliqa).