The Arabs before Islam

A visionary facing the hostility of his fellow citizens, Muhammad left Mecca in 622, accompanied by a few dozen followers and their families, to settle in the nearby city of Yathrib. 

This event, known as the hijra in Arabic—rendered in English as “Hegira” and in French as "Hégire"—marks the beginning of the Islamic era. When he died ten years later, his sect had become a religion and had conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula.

By around 650, in the year 28 of the Hijra—eighteen years after the Prophet's death—Islam had absorbed the Sassanid Persian states, stretching from Mesopotamia to the Amu Darya, and had wrested the Levant and Egypt from the Byzantines. By 750, in the year 128 of the Hijra, its dominion extended from Spain to the borders of China.

A "Geopolitical Miracle"—From a Handful of Fugitives to a Universal Empire

This astonishing transformation holds a central place in Muslim apologetics: how else to explain such a vast and rapid expansion if not through faith—and its corollary, divine blessing? To reinforce this argument, theologians and preachers have further emphasized the "barbarism" (jahiliya) of pre-Islamic Arabs. "We were once an ignorant people, driven by our impulses," declared a Muslim envoy to an Ethiopian ruler during Muhammad’s lifetime. "We worshiped idols, fed on carrion, and committed shameful acts. Such was our miserable fate until Allah sent us His Apostle."

Yet history may be far more complex and nuanced. Advanced Arab civilizations had emerged long before Islam. By the 7th century, many Arabs were no longer pagans but monotheists, adhering to Christianity or Judaism. They already formed, on the periphery of ancient empires, the foundations of a new, virtual empire. Perhaps, then, the rise of Islam should be read "in reverse"—not as a movement from the religious to the geopolitical, but rather from the geopolitical to the religious.

The French historian Christian-Julien Robin—one of today's leading specialists on the Arabian Peninsula—reminds us that this region, like its African counterpart, the Sahara, "was not always a desert of sand and rock." 

Between 7000 and 4000 BCE in the south of the peninsula, and between 4000 and 1000 BCE in the north, the climate was relatively humid, with far richer and denser vegetation than today. "In the lowlands, filled with permanent or seasonal lakes, game thrived, attracting hunters... 

But as the intertropical front gradually shifted southward, the desert spread across the peninsula," sparing only the northern and eastern oases, which benefited from permanent groundwater reserves, and "the high mountains of Yemen and Oman."

The First Arabs: Merchants, Miners, and Navigators

The earliest Arabs, Semitic peoples related to the Akkadians of Mesopotamia, the Canaanites and Hebrews of the Levant, and the Abyssinians of the Horn of Africa, settled in the Arabian Peninsula—or merged with older populations—at a time when desertification was still incomplete. 

They may have first been sedentary farmers before becoming nomadic agriculturalists. Even after the full aridification of the region, they continued to combine or alternate various forms of farming with livestock herding.

From the Bronze Age (circa 3200–1300 BCE), they developed expertise in mining copper, tin, iron, and extracting semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli. A significant share of this production was exported, along with aromatic gum resins harvested in the south of the peninsula, mineral soda (natron) collected from seasonal lakes and oasis basins, and naturally occurring bitumen or crude oil seeping to the surface. 

More remarkably, the Arabs themselves managed the transportation and trade of these goods. They engaged in maritime cabotage along the Persian Gulf as early as 2500 BCE, reaching the mouth of the Indus. Later, they expanded their seaborne trade to the Red Sea and the African coast of the Indian Ocean. 

Overland caravans emerged with the domestication of camels in the 2^nd millenary BCE, while direct maritime exchanges with India, facilitated by monsoon winds, were established on the eve of the Common Era. In the Bible, "Ishmaelite"—one of the generic names for Arabs—is synonymous with "merchant."

Arabs: Tribes, Kingdoms, and the Geopolitics of the Ancient East

Arabs were organized into family lineages, tribes, and tribal confederations, often centered around a shared place of worship. But they also established states. 

The kingdom of Dilmun, which flourished around present-day Bahrain and dominated the southern shore of the Persian Gulf, emerged around 2000 BCE. The kingdom of Saba, in what is now northern Yemen—known in antiquity as Arabia Felix, or "Happy Arabia"—appeared around 1000 BCE. Over time, the Arabs became active players in the broader political landscape of the ancient Near East.

Like the Hebrews and Phoenicians, they seem to have capitalized on the dual collapse of the Egyptian and Hittite empires by the end of the 2^nd millenary BCE, during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. The Bible mentions several Bedouin principalities near the Holy Land—Hagar, Kedar, Bozrah—not to mention the Queen of Sheba, who sought an alliance with Solomon.

For centuries, Dilmun navigated between the Babylonians, Kassites, Assyrians, and Persians. The Assyrian conqueror Sargon II (8th century BCE) boasted that "Uperi, king of Dilmun, who lives like a fish in the middle of the sea," had paid him tribute. The last Neo-Babylonian ruler, Nabonidus, spent years in the oasis of Tayma, in northern Arabia—perhaps seeking, in the face of the Persian threat, to rally his Semitic kinsmen.

At the Dawn of the Christian Era

By the beginning of the Christian era, the Arabs had become major geopolitical actors. In the southern part of the peninsula, population growth and urbanization accelerated, while local rulers resisted incursions from the Romans, Byzantines, and Persians. 

They developed a national script—the first and only truly Arabic script—distinguished by its magnificent square-shaped characters.

Religiously, traditional paganism was gradually replaced by Christianity—whether Byzantine Orthodox or Coptic—and, more significantly, by Judaism, which became the official religion of the Himyarite Kingdom for 150 years, from 380 to 523 CE. Christian-Julien Robin cites an inscription found in Zafar, the Himyarite capital:

"King Yehudah Yakkuf built, laid the foundations, and completed his palace… with the help and grace of the Lord of the living and the dead, the Lord of heaven and earth, who created all things, with the prayer of His people Israel… Amen, Shalom, Amen."

In the north, along the edges of the Negev and Transjordan, another group of Arabs, the Nabataeans, established a similar kingdom, also relying on advanced irrigation-based agriculture and extensive trade. While remaining faithful to Semitic paganism, they adopted a Greco-Roman way of life, as evidenced by the ruins of their capital, Petra.

 In 106 CE, under Emperor Trajan, Rome annexed this hybrid state, turning it into the province of Arabia. However, the Arab presence did not disappear; on the contrary, it expanded into neighboring provinces such as Palestine and Syria.

Following the devastation of the Antonine Plague (165–170 CE), the Roman Empire increasingly relied on barbarian immigration—Germans and Slavs in the West, Berbers in Africa, and Arabs in the East. These new arrivals quickly assimilated into Roman society, joining the military and later the administration. 

By the early third century, two Roman emperors of Syrian Arab descent had risen to power: Elagabalus (from the Semitic El Gabal, "Supreme Ordaining God") from 218 to 222, and Philip the Arab from 244 to 249.

The Near Rise of a Romano-Arab Empire

For a brief moment, the Romano-Arabs came close to founding their own empire. Queen Zenobia (the Latinized form of the Arabic Zenaïb, "Rose of the Desert") ruled over the oasis city of Palmyra in Syria, a Roman vassal state. In 250 CE, a new plague plunged the empire into chaos. 

Seizing the moment, Zenobia displayed extraordinary leadership, rallying the populations and soldiers of the entire eastern provinces. She had her son Valhabat (from the Arabic Wahb Allah, "He Who Forgives in the Name of God") proclaimed emperor.

For nearly two years, Zenobia reigned over the Levant, Egypt, and eastern Anatolia, relying in part on the region’s Christian communities. She minted coins in Antioch and Alexandria. But her rule came to an end when Emperor Aurelian, having just quelled a parallel rebellion in Gaul and Britain, marched east to reassert Roman control.

The Christianization of Rome and the Arab Border States

In the early fourth century, the Roman Empire officially embraced Christianity. It now faced a new geopolitical adversary: the Sassanid Persian Empire, where Zoroastrianism was the state religion. This confrontation evolved into a kind of "world war" that lasted nearly three centuries. When neither side managed to gain a decisive victory, the conflict stabilized into a "cold war"—and eventually a form of coexistence.

The Arabs played crucial roles on both sides, either as auxiliary forces or through buffer states. The Banu Ghassan (Ghassanids), Romanized and Christianized, controlled a vast territory stretching from southern Syria through Jordan to the Hejaz. Meanwhile, the Banu Lakhm (Lakhmids), who remained pagan and aligned with the Persians, dominated northeastern Arabia and the southern shores of the Persian Gulf.

The Arab Takeover of a War-Weary East

Suddenly, at the dawn of the 7th century, the "world war" reignites. In 603, the new Persian emperor, Khosrow II, seizing on a palace coup in Constantinople as a pretext, launches a full-scale invasion of the Byzantine Empire. 

For twenty-five years, a relentless back-and-forth of blitzkrieg campaigns and counteroffensives devastates Anatolia, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. By 628, both superpowers are utterly exhausted, forced to return to their pre-war borders.

But they have overlooked the Arabs. As their imperial overlords drain themselves in endless conflict, the Arabs grow stronger. Once rivals, the northern tribes of Arabia begin to unify, then call upon the southern tribes for reinforcements. They systematically advance into a war-torn East, gradually replacing the crumbling Byzantine and Persian administrations—village by village, province by province.

The classic Muslim narrative presents the Arabs as protectors of the "People of the Book," a phrase understood as religious tolerance toward Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Sabeans. However, the Arabic word dīn, commonly translated as "religion," can also mean "law," "code," or "custom." Thus, Arab "protection" may have been less about religious tolerance and more about preserving or restoring existing legal frameworks—an approach that appears to have been welcomed by weary local populations.

The empires attempt to reclaim their lost provinces. Not only do they fail, but new territories continually rally to the Arabs, who restore peace and order—and, in the process, simplify taxation. In the Byzantine sphere, the new rulers initially present themselves merely as "delegates" of the emperor. In the Persian domain, they style themselves as the rightful heirs to the Kings of Kings.

From De Facto Empire to Sovereign Caliphate

After half a century—and despite internal struggles among the victors, which Arab historiography vividly records—this de facto empire crystallized into a fully sovereign one under the Umayyads, a dynasty that established itself in Damascus and implemented a centralized administration.

Was the adoption of a new state religion a deliberate move to definitively distinguish the empire from Byzantium and the Sassanids? Notably, it was the fourth Umayyad ruler, Marwan I, who around 680 edited the Quran in the form we know today, using a script derived from Syriac, the spoken language of Syria. 

His successor, Abd al-Malik, reinforced this transformation. Around 690, he commissioned the first purely Islamic monument, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It was also Abd al-Malik who replaced Byzantine-style gold and silver coinage—once bearing the emperor’s effigy—with dinars and dirhams proclaiming: "Muhammad, the messenger of Allah."