Islam: A Short History and Basic Tenets

Pre-Islamic Arabia

Arabia before the time of Islam was at the fringes of the major empires of the time: Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire. These two rivals both had a history that went back for centuries: Byzantium was a successor state to the Roman Empire, but consisted of the parts of that empire that had belonged to Alexander the Great’s Empire before that and was thoroughly Greek in culture and Christian in religion.

The Sassanid Empire was built on the ruins of Parthia which in turn had risen from the ruins of the old Persian Empire that was defeated by Alexander. Its culture was Persian and its religion was Zoroastrianism. These two ancient rivals had been at war for a long time and at the start of the 7th Century CE the ‘civilized’ parts of the Middle East (Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia) had been ravaged by the conflict.

Arabia itself had not been involved in the war and was considered a backward place, a tribal society outside of civilization. Only Yemen at the south of the Arabian peninsula was a part of the Sassanid Empire. In the heart of the Arabian peninsula there were a number of towns along the trade routes, amongst them Mecca and Yathrib.

Most of the inhabitants worshiped local gods, but there were also small numbers of Christians and especially Jews living amongst them. Mecca was also a center for the local religions because of the presence of the Ka’aba, which contains a black rock that is most likely a meteorite.