The Social Conditions of Arab Civilisation before the Coming of Prophet Muhammad PBUH

Before the birth of Muhammad, Arab peninsula was not an interesting place at all. The more interesting place were Persian empire in the east and Roman empire in the west. The people in Arab were completely ignorant and amoral. They were stick on the old traditions that the nobility of a man was determined by his wealth, social status, and his offspring or from which family he was born.
They were also barbaric fighters who were easy to emotionally triggered to a death-fight because of trivial things.
Here, I provide some points of their traditions in the past before the birth of Muhammad.

read a further story of the Birth of Muhammad

WOMEN

In the past, women’s rights were not acknowledged. They were fully oppressed by the bad traditions of Arab society. When a female baby was born, her father will get depressed, frustrated, and upset. Why? It is obviously because the father had to bury the baby alive. He had to kill his own daughter by putting her face into the ground.

In marriages, women were also under pressure. When a woman got arranged for a marriage by her guardian, she had no right to give any reason. She had no choice but to follow her guardian. She was unable to refuse either. Her husband, on the other hand, could divorce her anytime, remarry her, divorce her again, remarry her again, over and over again without any condition. The woman neither had any authority or option but to give up on this sort of situation. When she was left by her husband for his death, her step children and her husband’s siblings could take the inheritance. The woman would be held by her husband’s family and would be treated like a maid.

When a woman followed her husband and his relatives in a business in a market, she could not eat nor drink together. She would get permission to eat after they left their meals. The task of women at that time was only to satisfy their husband. On the other hand, men treated them with cruelty.

SLAVERY

The practice of slavery had been practised by Roman Empire without any protest from any side. Jewish people created slavery system according to their own assumptions that were already gone astray from the teaching of Torah, while the Christians also employed their own system of slavery based on Paulus (Paul)’s letter to the people of Ufsus which told the people to obey and devote their lives sincerely to their masters without any feeling of being forced as they would do to Isa Al Masih (Jesus PBUH).

Arab people also conducted slavery with their stab of swords. Losers of any battle would always be their slaves. At that time, nobody would speak up about this system. In terms of job, sometimes a slave was forced to serve a masher (lady killer) to satisfy his sexual desire, and the fees then were given to the master. And once again, none of the slaves would speak up or protest on this system since they realised that it had been a part of their life and nature.

ARABIC CULTURE

Life between tribes and clans was split by the broad savannah of Arab peninsula. The rule of the social life that they created was vulnerable and highly potential to lead to divisions. The Arabs could not recognise the other groups except their own clan. Their movement tends to be excessive tribalism. They would make peace if the other tribe initiated it and would make war if the other tribe made war with another tribe. They were so easy to shed blood on trivial matters. If a war really happened, the situation became uncontrolled, barbaric, and unstoppable which would lead to the massive victims.

Marriage bond between a man and a woman was based on the permission of their guardians. A woman had no right to refuse her guardian’s desire. After the marriage bond, there was also another bond between a man and a woman. This bond was in the form of prostitution, adultery, and other dreadful things. In addition, adultery in Arab land was so common that they would not feel ashamed to do so. Nevertheless, there were some groups of honourable people who were not involved in such things.

There were four kinds of bond between men and women at that period of Jahiliyah (ignorant period).

1. Normal marriage as what commonly prevails until today, that is to say, the man side came to the woman’s guardian or directly to the woman, presented the dowry, and married her.
2. A man asked his wife when she had been purified from menstruation to go to another man to have sexual intercourse with him. The current husband did not let her go nor touched her until it was found out if the woman got pregnant from that another man or not.
3. A group of men less than 10 people came to have sexual intercourse with a woman. When the woman got pregnant, she would meet them and give her child to them before she chose which of them to be the father of her child. The chosen man could not refuse what the woman had decided.
4. A group of men agreed to have sexual intercourse with a woman. She could not refuse them and usually this sort of woman put a sign on her house door to show that anyone can have sex with her. When she got pregnant, they would agree to decide who to be the father of the child. This was the most common practice of prostitution in that era.

Besides the four models of male-female bond during that jahiliyah period above, there was also another model. When a battle between tribes happened, women became one of the prize moneys. The winner of the battle had privilege to take the women of the loser side and had sexual intercourse with them.

The practice of polygamy during jahiliyah period was unlimited. A man could marry more than one woman without any condition, with no limitation (in terms of number as well as the lineage). After Islam came, the regulation of marriage was based on the norms as mentioned in Quran especially in surah AnNisa verse 3, 22, and 23. A man could only marry no more than four women with the condition that the man had capacity to treat his wives fairly with full responsibility.

See also: The positive innate characters of The Arabs here