Last updated: April 30th, 2025 at 12:19 pm · Est. Reading Time: < 1 minute
Pre-Islamic Arabia was predominantly rural. Urban centers did exist, but were tiny as compared to the towns and cities in contemporary Sasanian Iran, Byzantine Rome, or Ethiopia.
The tiny urban centers of Arabia existed to fulfill specific needs of the nomadic population, like their need to exchange the produce, seek tradesmen’s services, or get treatment for sickness. These tiny urban centers were in total contrast to big cosmopolitan cities of the non-Arab world, like Madain or Damascus. The cosmopolitan cities were administrative centers. Soldiers, military officers, bureaucrats, and their service providers lived there. People engaged in the housing construction industry formed a great portion of the population of such cities. Entertainers, cultural practitioners, clergy, teachers of higher levels, all swelled the populations. Further, the great cities attracted migrant workers from the neighbourhood and far-off regions.
Despite being predominantly rural with a few urban centers, Arabia had at least two big cities. One was Najran and the other was Hira.
Archaeology and surviving texts demonstrate that the biggest urban center in late antique Arabia was Najran.
Reference
Whitcomb, “Urbanism in Arabia,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 7 (1996), 38 – 51.
Further Reading
History of Islam, Social Structure of Pre-Islamic Arabs, https://historyofislam.org/social-structure-of-pre-islamic-arabs/