The Jahiliyyah: Arabia before Islam

What was the Jahiliyyah? It is the Arabic name for the age before Islam. The word comes from jahl, ignorance, ignorance of Allah’s guidance. In Arabia it meant tribes that honoured the Kaaba yet prayed to idols, with no shared creed beyond the belief that these idols could bring them closer to Allah.

We appreciate Islam better when we understand what came before it, the way we understand day by understanding night. The general picture, with the trade roads and the Quraysh, is in the chapter Arabia before Islam. This page is about belief.

The Arabs did not have a written creed the way Muslims do. What nearly all of them shared was this: Allah made the heavens and the earth, and the idols were a way to come near Him. The Quran reports both halves.

If you asked them, “Who created the heavens and earth and subjected the sun and the moon?” they would surely say, “Allah.” Then how are they deluded?Quran 29:61, Sahih International

Unquestionably, for Allah is the pure religion. And those who take protectors besides Him [say], “We only worship them that they may bring us nearer to Allah in position.”Quran 39:3, Sahih International

Some also said the angels were Allah’s daughters. The Quran answers that in 43:19, and it asks in 53:19 to 22 about al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat, the three goddesses the Quraysh honoured.

Every nation had a messenger, as the Quran says in 16:36, and the Arabs’ messenger was Ibrahim, who taught the worship of Allah alone. So where did the idols come from? There are two answers, one very old and one nearer to the Prophet’s ﷺ time.

The first idols. Ibn Abbas said that the idols the Arabs later worshipped were the names of pious men among the people of Nuh. When those men died, Shaytan inspired their people to set up statues at the places where they used to sit and to call them by their names. The statues were not worshipped until the people who set them up had died and the reason for them was forgotten. Bukhari 4920, sahih (al-Bukhari) The Quran names the five.

And said, ‘Never leave your gods and never leave Wadd or Suwa’ or Yaghuth and Ya’uq and Nasr.Quran 71:23, Sahih International

The step is a small one. A statue made to remind people of a good man’s piety became, over generations, the thing itself.

Amr ibn Luhayy. The Prophet ﷺ said that he saw Amr ibn Luhayy of the Khuza’ah tribe dragging his intestines in the Fire, because he was the first to start the custom of setting animals free for false gods. Bukhari 3521, sahih (al-Bukhari); the vision is also in Muslim 2856a, sahih (Muslim) The early biographies add that on a trip to Syria he saw a people worshipping idols, asked for one, and brought it back to Makkah. That idol was Hubal, and he set it up by the Kaaba. This detail comes from the early historians, not from a hadith.

Abu Raja al-Utaridi, who grew up in that age, described how plain it could be. They worshipped stones. If they found a better-looking stone, they threw away the first and took the new one. If they had no stone at all, they gathered a heap of earth, brought a sheep, milked it over the heap, and walked around it. They also stopped fighting in the month of Rajab and called it the month that removes the iron, since they took the iron heads off their spears. Bukhari 4376, sahih (al-Bukhari)

That is what a faith with no creed looks like. The stone could be changed for a better one the next morning.

The Kaaba had been raised for the worship of one God, and it was the heart of the idolatry as well. When the Prophet ﷺ entered Makkah at the Conquest, Abdullah ibn Mas’ud said there were 360 idols around it. He began to strike them with the stick in his hand, saying that truth had come and falsehood had gone. Bukhari 4287, sahih (al-Bukhari); also Muslim 1781a, sahih (Muslim)

And say, “Truth has come, and falsehood has departed. Indeed is falsehood, [by nature], ever bound to depart.”Quran 17:81, Sahih International

The day itself is told in the Conquest of Makkah.

The idolatry reached the pilgrimage itself. After Islam came, the Companions hesitated to walk between Safa and Marwa, because it had been done in the Jahiliyyah. Anas said so, and the verse Quran 2:158 then made clear that there is no blame in it. Bukhari 1648, sahih (al-Bukhari)

The rite itself goes back to Hajar, running between those hills in search of water. The story is told in Arabia before Islam.

Not everyone in Arabia was an idolater. A small number of people, the hanifs, refused the idols and held to the faith of Ibrahim, such as Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl. Others had turned to Christianity, such as Waraqah ibn Nawfal. And the Prophet ﷺ described the whole world of that time in one sentence: Allah looked at the people of the earth and showed hatred for Arabs and non-Arabs alike, except for some remnants of the People of the Book. Muslim 2865a, sahih (Muslim)

Into this the Prophet ﷺ was sent. The Quran describes what he found and what he did.

It is He who has sent among the unlettered a Messenger from themselves reciting to them His verses and purifying them and teaching them the Book and wisdom - although they were before in clear error -Quran 62:2, Sahih International

1. Guidance comes from Allah. The world went for centuries between Isa and Muhammad ﷺ without a messenger, and no philosopher, theologian or thinker found the truth alone. When revelation came, even the Prophet ﷺ was told that he had not known the Book or faith before it. So the measure for believers is revelation, not what each generation finds comfortable.

And thus We have revealed to you an inspiration of Our command. You did not know what is the Book or [what is] faith, but We have made it a light by which We guide whom We will of Our servants.Quran 42:52, Sahih International

The long gap is mentioned in Quran 5:19, which speaks of a period of suspension of messengers.

2. The crowd is not a proof. The idols were everywhere, and it is hard to break away from a whole society. The Quran warns against going with the majority when it leads away from Allah.

And if you obey most of those upon the earth, they will mislead you from the way of Allah. They follow not except assumption, and they are not but falsifying.Quran 6:116, Sahih International

3. Whoever is sincere will be guided. Salman al-Farisi was born in Persia into a family that tended a Zoroastrian fire temple, and he searched from teacher to teacher until Allah brought him to the Prophet ﷺ. If the heart is pure and wants the truth, then even a pagan land or a house of idols is no barrier. His life is told on his profile.