Arabia

Abstract

The period of time called late antiquity has recently become the center of a lively debate about Arabia in the period leading up to Muhammad and the Qur’an. The scholar, Aziz al-Azmeh states: Islam forms an integral part of late antiquity in the sense that it instantiated, under the signature of a new universal calendar, two salient features which over-determine – rather than constitute the “essence” of – this period. The varieties of Judaisms and Christianities found in pre-Islamic Arabia were usually associated with the imperial ambitions of the two major empires, Rome and Persia. Indigenous polytheism appears to have been in decline, but it was still a strong social force in the Arabia of Muhammad’s birth. Pre-Islamic poetry, which glorified the active, marauding life, viewed death as having to live in a house, and this does not appear contradictory to the many tombs found in centers around Arabia.