Pre-Islamic Arabia

Pre-Islamic Arabia شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام (Arabic)
Nabataean trade routes in Pre-Islamic Arabia
Succeeded by First Islamic state

Pre-Islamic Arabia is the Arabian Peninsula and its northern extension in the Syrian Desert before the rise of Islam. This is consistent with how contemporaries used the term Arabia or where they said Arabs lived, which was not limited to the peninsula.^[1]

Pre-Islamic Arabia included both nomadic and settled populations. Several settled populations developed distinctive civilizations. From around the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE, Southern Arabia was the home to a number of kingdoms, such as the Sabaeans and the Minaeans, and Eastern Arabia was inhabited by Semitic-speaking peoples who presumably migrated from the southwest, such as the so-called Samad population.^[2] From 106 CE to 630 CE, Arabia's most northwestern areas were controlled by the Roman Empire, which governed it as Arabia Petraea.^[3] A few nodal points were controlled by the Iranian peoples, first under the Parthians and then under the Sasanians.

Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia was diverse; although polytheism was prevalent for most of its history (especially in forms related to ancient Semitic religions), monotheism came to dominate in the region in the centuries leading up to the origins of Islam. There were also large pre-Islamic Christian and Jewish communities, especially in the north and south.^[4]