The political condition of the Arabs before Islam

Al-Rahiq al-Makhtum draws a miniature picture of the history of government and rule among the Arabs, so that the conditions at the rise of Islam may be easier to understand. ¹ When the sun of Islam rose, the rulers of the Peninsula were of two kinds: crowned kings who in reality were not independent, and tribal and clan chiefs who had the same rule and privileges as kings, most of them in full independence, though some were subject to a crowned king. ¹ The crowned kings were the kings of Yemen, the kings of the house of Ghassan, and the kings of al-Hira; the other rulers of the Peninsula had no crowns. ¹

The tribes near al-Hira were subject to the king of the Arabs at al-Hira, and those in the Syrian desert were subject to the Ghassanids, though this subjection was nominal rather than real. The tribes in the deserts inside the Peninsula were entirely free. ² Each of these tribes had chiefs who were obeyed by their people, and the tribe was a miniature government, whose political existence rested on the unity of solidarity and on mutual interests in protecting the land and repelling aggression. ² The rank of the tribal chiefs among their people was like the rank of kings: the tribe followed its lord's judgement in peace and war, and he had the authority and autocratic judgement of a dictator, so much so that some, when angered, had a thousand swords raised for them, without anyone asking what had angered them. ^{2 3} Yet the rivalry for leadership among cousins urged them to win over people by generosity, hospitality, forbearance, displays of courage, and defence of others, so as to win praise in the eyes of people, especially of the poets, who were the tongue of the tribe. ³ See asabiyya.

The lords and chiefs had special rights: they took from the booty the mirba' (a quarter), the safi (the choice portion), the nashita, and the fudul (the surplus), as in the verse the author quotes. ³ The mirba' was a quarter of the booty; the safi was what the chief selected for himself before the division; the nashita was what the chief obtained on the road before he reached the people's camp; and the fudul was what remained of the division that could not be divided evenly among the number of raiders, such as a camel or a horse. ³

The author holds that the three regions bordering the foreigners were in political decline and degeneration: people were between lords and slaves, or rulers and ruled; the lords, especially the foreigners, took all the sheep, and the slaves bore all the burdens; the subjects were like a farm delivering its produce to governments; rule was autocratic and rights were lost. ³ The tribes bordering these regions were unsteady, sometimes joining the people of Iraq and sometimes the people of Syria; the affairs of the tribes of the interior were disjointed, dominated by tribal disputes and racial and religious differences, and they had no king to support their independence or any authority to turn to in times of hardship. ^{3 4}

The Arabs regarded the government of the Hijaz with esteem and respect, and saw its people as leaders and custodians of the religious centre. In reality it was a mixture of worldly primacy and religious leadership: it ruled among the Arabs in the name of religious leadership, and in the sanctuary and its environs it acted as a government overseeing the interests of those who came to the House and carrying out the judgement of the law of Abraham. It had offices resembling those of a parliament, but it was weak and could not bear the burden, as was made clear on the day of the Abyssinian invasion. ⁴ See the emirate of the Hijaz and the offices of Quraysh.

This is the author's assessment of the political condition, and in many of its phrasings it is a value judgement. The views of modern studies of Arab tribal structures and kingdoms before Islam have not yet been added.