كيف كان العرب يُحكمون قبل الإسلام؟

The Arabs had no single king. There were crowned kings who were subject to Persia or Rome, in Yemen, al-Hira and Syria; chiefs of independent tribes in the desert; and a religious government in Mecca, based on offices shared among the clans of Quraysh ^{1 2}.

Al-Raheeq al-Makhtum divides the rulers of the Arabian Peninsula at the rise of Islam into two groups. The first are crowned kings who in fact were not independent: the kings of Yemen, the Ghassanids and the kings of al-Hira. The second are chiefs of tribes and clans, who had the same rule and privileges as kings, and most of whom were fully independent ¹.

The king of al-Hira guarded the Persian frontier against the desert Arabs and kept a unit of their fighters with him. The Ghassanids were agents of the Roman kings over the Arabs of Syria. The subordination of the neighbouring tribes to them was nominal rather than real. The tribes of the interior were free and unrestricted. The tribe was a small government, based on group solidarity, in which the people followed their chief's view in peace and in war ^{3 4 5}. Details are in the political condition of the Arabs before Islam.

In Mecca there was a government that the Arabs regarded with esteem and respect, because it served the religious centre. It combined worldly leadership with religious authority, and it rested on offices that Qusayy ibn Kilab gathered and the clans of Quraysh then divided among themselves. But it was weak and could not bear the burden, as became clear on the day of the Abyssinian invasion ^{6 2}. Details are in the offices of Quraysh and the emirate in the Hijaz.

This is the judgement of one author. The views of modern studies on the Arab kingdoms before Islam and on tribal structures have not yet been added.