Pre-Islamic Arabia
Societies, Politics, Cults and Identities during Late Antiquity

Explores the composite cultural and political milieu of pre-Islamic Arabia, situating its history within the broader late antique context.

Valentina A. Grasso (Author)

9781009253000, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 April 2025

280 pages, 2 maps 5 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.458 kg

'Grasso's monograph is an original contribution to the study of late antique Arabia, with emphasis on the political function of monotheism and the building of an identity of the Arabs. … It is outstanding in its ready adaptation of historical theories, interdisciplinary approach, and abundance of material. … the work is helpful for both academic and non-academic readers in providing a comprehensive list of primary sources and indicating many meaningful theoretical developments in the scholarship of Late Antiquity and Early Islam.' Yiqing Li, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung

This book delves into the political and cultural developments of pre-Islamic Arabia, focusing on the religious attitudes of the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and its northern extension into the Syrian desert. Between the third and the seventh century, Arabia was on the edge of three great empires (Iran, Rome and Aksūm) and at the centre of a lucrative network of trade routes. Valentina Grasso offers an interpretative framework which contextualizes the choice of Arabian elites to become Jewish sympathisers and/or convert to Christianity and Islam by probing the mobilization of faith in the shaping of Arabian identities. For the first time the Arabians of the period are granted autonomy from marginalizing (mostly Western) narratives framing them as 'barbarians' inhabiting the fringes of Rome and Iran and/or deterministic analyses in which they are depicted retrospectively as exemplified by the Muslims' definition of the period as Jāhilīyah, 'ignorance'.

1. An introduction to the study of Pre-Islamic Arabia
2. North Arabia between the late third and the fifth century: borders and conversions
3. A Late Antique Kingdom's conversion: Jews and sympathizers in South Arabia
4. The shape of the sixth century I: the South
5. The shape of the sixth century II: the North
6. The Ḥijāzī Islam: narratives and frameworks re-examined.

Subject Areas: Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1], European history [HBJD]