Seerah Series Part 2: Rulership and Religion in Pre-Islamic Arabia

Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh,

In Part 1 of this series we traced the Arabian Peninsula, the three branches of the Arab lineage, and the family line that eventually produced the prophet Muhammad ﷺ, all the way down to Qusai bin Kilab and the family of Hashim. Today we go one level deeper. Before we can understand the world the Prophet ﷺ was born into, we need to understand two things: who actually held power in Arabia, and what people believed in. Both of these had drifted very far from where they started, and both of them are essential background for everything that comes later in the Seerah.

If you have not read Part 1 yet, I would recommend starting there before this one, since some of the names here, especially Qusai bin Kilab, were introduced in that post.

Seerah Series Part 2: Rulership and Religion in Pre-Islamic Arabia

(Seerah of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ | The Sealed Nectar Summary | Rabi-ul-Awwal Special)

Rulership on the Edges of Arabia

Before we reach Makkah, it helps to understand that Arabia was never one unified kingdom. Different regions were controlled, or loosely influenced, by different powers.

In geographical Syria, branches of the Quda’ah tribe settled along the Byzantine frontier and were used by the Byzantines as a buffer against both bedouin raiders and the Persians. Eventually the Ghassanides took over this role and ruled as Byzantine proxies from Dumatul-Jandal, right up until the famous Battle of Yarmuk. Their last king, Jabalah bin Al-Aihum, actually accepted Islam during the caliphate of ‘Umar bin Al-Khattab رضي الله عنه. It is worth sitting with that fact for a moment: even the descendant of a centuries-old client-kingdom eventually found his way to the truth that Makkah was about to receive.

Rulership in Hijaz: From Ishmael to Jurhum to Khuza’ah

Now we come to Makkah itself, and this part of the story is genuinely dramatic.

Prophet Ishmael عليه السلام held custodianship of the Ka’bah throughout his life. After his death, his sons briefly held authority, but real power soon passed to their maternal relatives, the tribe of Jurhum, through Mudad bin ‘Amr Al-Jurhumi. Jurhum went on to control Makkah for close to twenty centuries.

But power, when it is not handled with humility, tends to corrupt. Over time, Jurhum began mistreating the very pilgrims who came to honor the Ka’bah and took their wealth by force. This bred deep resentment, and eventually the ‘Adnani tribes, with the help of the neighboring tribe of Khuza’ah, rose up and expelled Jurhum from Makkah entirely. Before leaving, the people of Jurhum filled in the well of zamzam and buried treasures inside it, including, it is reported, two golden deer that had been offered to the Ka’bah. Zamzam would remain hidden for centuries, until it was rediscovered much later by the Prophet’s own grandfather, ‘Abdul-Muttalib, a story we will come to later in this series.

Khuza’ah then ruled Makkah for roughly three hundred years. During this period, the Quraish, descendants of the Prophet’s ﷺ ancestral line, held no real privileges in their own sacred city. That changed with the rise of one man.

The Rise of Qusai bin Kilab

We touched on Qusai bin Kilab briefly in Part 1, but his story deserves its own spotlight, because it is genuinely one of the more fascinating political stories in pre-Islamic Arabia.

Qusai’s father died while Qusai was still an infant, and his mother remarried into a tribe near the borders of Syria, taking young Qusai with her. He grew up away from Makkah entirely. When he eventually returned as a young man, Makkah was under the rule of Hulail bin Habshah of Khuza’ah, who gave Qusai his daughter, Hubba, in marriage.

After Hulail’s death, tensions rose over who had the right to custodianship of the Ka’bah. Different narrations describe this differently, some say Hulail had personally requested that Qusai take over, others say Hulail’s daughter Hubba held the right and appointed an agent on her behalf, whom Qusai later bought out. Whatever the exact sequence, the result was conflict between Qusai’s supporters (Quraish and Kinanah) and the tribe of Khuza’ah. After a costly struggle and a negotiated arbitration, Qusai was confirmed as the rightful custodian of the Ka’bah and ruler of Makkah, a position he assumed around 440 C.E.

Who’s who

• Qusai bin Kilab — the great unifier of Quraish, direct ancestor of the Prophet ﷺ, who brought the scattered clans of Quraish together under one leadership around the Ka’bah.
• Hulail bin Habshah — the Khuza’ah leader of Makkah whose death triggered the transfer of power to Qusai.
• Hubba bint Hulail — Qusai’s wife, through whom part of his claim to the custodianship of the Ka’bah is traced.

What Qusai Actually Built

This is worth pausing on, because what Qusai established was not just a change of ruler, it was essentially the first organized civic structure in Makkah.

He built Dar An-Nadwah, an assembly house beside the Ka’bah where Quraish would gather to consult on serious matters and formalize agreements, functioning much like an early parliament. He then held onto, or distributed among his descendants, a set of defined responsibilities: presiding over the assembly, carrying the war standard, leading the caravans, holding the key to the Ka’bah, and providing water and food for pilgrims, the last of which he funded through an annual tax on Quraish.

Interestingly, even though ‘Abdud-Dar was his elder son, Qusai chose to give the more prestigious responsibilities to another son, ‘Abd Manaf. This did not cause conflict while Qusai was alive, since his word was considered final, but after his death, tension between the descendants of ‘Abd Manaf and the descendants of ‘Abdud-Dar nearly tore Quraish apart. A peace agreement eventually redistributed the roles: ‘Abdud-Dar’s line kept the assembly house, the standard, and the key of the Ka’bah, while the responsibility of feeding and providing water to pilgrims went to the sons of ‘Abd Manaf.

That responsibility passed to Hashim bin ‘Abd Manaf, then to his brother Al-Muttalib, then to Hashim’s son ‘Abdul-Muttalib, the Prophet’s own grandfather, and remained within that family until the era of Islam, when it was held by Al-‘Abbas bin ‘Abdul-Muttalib, the Prophet’s uncle.

Quraish also developed other civic roles: casting lots before idols was handled by Bani Jumah, settling disputes over offerings by Bani Sahm, consultation by Bani Asad, blood money and compensation by Bani Tayim, carrying the banner by Bani Umaiyah, and so on. It was, in its own tribal way, a functioning government, complete with departments and defined responsibilities, centuries before the Prophet ﷺ was even born.

The Wider Political Picture

Beyond Makkah, Arabia had no single central government. Tribes near Heerah leaned toward the Persian-backed kings there, tribes near Syria leaned toward the Ghassanides, and tribes deep in the desert interior remained fully independent, governed by tribal chiefs who held near-absolute authority within their own tribes. Leadership was often earned through generosity, wisdom, and reputation, with poets acting as the era’s spokesmen and image-makers.

The regions bordering foreign empires suffered the most, caught between the demands of powerful rulers and their own lack of real independence. Hijaz, however, occupied a unique position. Its rulers were respected less as political kings and more as religious custodians, guardians of the Ka’bah and the pilgrimage traditions inherited from Ibrahim عليه السلام. This religious authority gave Makkah an influence far beyond its actual military strength, though that same weakness would later be exposed during the Abyssinian invasion, a story we will reach in a future part of this series.

How Idol Worship Entered the Sacred House

This is, in many ways, the most important part of today’s post, because it explains exactly what the Prophet ﷺ would spend twenty-three years of his mission dismantling.

For a long time, most Arabs held onto the core of Ibrahim’s عليه السلام teaching: belief in one God. Over generations, though, that pure monotheism eroded. The turning point is traced to a man named ‘Amr bin Luhai, a chief of Khuza’ah who was, by all accounts, sincerely respected for his generosity and religious devotion. On a journey to Syria, he saw people there worshipping idols and, believing Syria to be a land of prophets and revealed scripture, mistakenly assumed this practice must be righteous. He brought an idol called Hubal back with him and placed it inside the Ka’bah itself, then invited people to worship it.

Who’s who

• ‘Amr bin Luhai — the Khuza’ah chief who introduced idol worship into Makkah, described by the Prophet ﷺ himself as the first to originate these deviations from the pure religion of Ibrahim عليه السلام.

From that single decision, idolatry spread rapidly. Manat was worshipped near the Red Sea, Al-Lat in Ta’if, Al-‘Uzza in the valley of Nakhlah, and the ancient idols once worshipped by the people of Nuh عليه السلام, Wadd, Suwa’, Yaghuth, Ya’uq and Nasr, were reportedly dug up and redistributed among the tribes. By the time the Prophet ﷺ conquered Makkah decades later, three hundred and sixty idols surrounded the Ka’bah. He had every one of them removed and destroyed.

Superstition, Divination, and Distorted Rituals

Idolatry brought a whole culture of superstition with it. People sought idols’ favor through vows, sacrifices, and dedicated portions of their crops and livestock, sometimes going so far as to reserve certain camels and sheep entirely for the idols based on odd birth patterns, practices the Qur’an later named directly: Bahirah, Sa’ibah, Wasilah and Ham.

Divination through arrows, known as Azlam, was used to decide everything from travel plans to disputed lineage. Soothsayers, diviners, and astrologers were widely trusted, and omens, from the direction a startled bird flew, to which day or month one traveled in, shaped daily decisions.

Even the pilgrimage itself, a practice inherited from Ibrahim عليه السلام, had been distorted. The Quraish, considering themselves too noble to mix with ordinary pilgrims, invented their own separate rituals, stopping short at Muzdalifah instead of going all the way to ‘Arafat, and imposing strange restrictions on what visiting pilgrims could wear or eat. Some of these very distortions are directly addressed and corrected in the Qur’an, including the instruction to enter houses through their proper doors rather than through holes dug in the back wall, a practice people had wrongly considered an act of piety.

Other Faiths in Pre-Islamic Arabia

Idolatry was dominant, but it was not the only religion present in Arabia.

Judaism arrived in two waves, first after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem pushed some Jewish communities into northern Hijaz, and later in much larger numbers after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple, which brought major Jewish settlement to Yathrib, Khaibar, and Taima’. By the time Islam arrived, well-known Jewish tribes such as Banu Qainuqa’, Banu An-Nadeer, and Banu Quraizah were firmly established in Madinah, names that will resurface many times later in this series.

Judaism also reached Yemen, where a king named Dhu Nawas, after converting, launched a brutal persecution of the Christian community of Najran, ordering them burned alive in a pit for refusing to abandon their faith. This is the very tragedy referenced in Surah Al-Buruj, “Cursed were the people of the ditch,” which we mentioned briefly in Part 1.

Christianity entered Arabia mainly through Abyssinian and Roman presence, and took particular root in Najran through the efforts of a devoted missionary named Fimion, and later among tribes such as Ghassan, Taghlib, and Tai’. Magianism took hold among Arabs living close to Persia, particularly in Iraq and along the Gulf coast, while Sabianism, an older tradition, held on in pockets of Iraq and Yemen even as Judaism and Christianity gradually overtook it.

None of these religions, as they existed at the time, retained their original purity. The Sealed Nectar describes Judaism as having drifted into hypocrisy and the pursuit of power, and Christianity as having become so entangled with philosophical confusion about the nature of God that it lost any real connection to the daily lives of the people who claimed to follow it. Every path available to the Arabs at that point, whether idolatry, distorted Judaism, or distorted Christianity, had moved far from the pure monotheism Ibrahim عليه السلام had once taught his son Isma’il عليه السلام on that very land.

This is the world the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born into: politically fragmented, religiously confused, and spiritually thirsty, even if it did not yet know it.

Key Takeaways for Students

• Power in Makkah passed from Ishmael’s عليه السلام own sons, to Jurhum, to Khuza’ah, and finally to Qusai bin Kilab, whose organizational structure quietly set the stage for the family of Hashim to rise to prominence.
• The responsibility of feeding and providing water to pilgrims stayed within the Prophet’s ﷺ own family line for generations, from Hashim, to Al-Muttalib, to ‘Abdul-Muttalib, to Al-‘Abbas رضي الله عنه.
• Idolatry entered the Ka’bah through one specific man, ‘Amr bin Luhai, showing how a single well-intentioned but misguided decision can reshape the beliefs of an entire people over generations.
• Even amid deep confusion, some threads of Ibrahim’s عليه السلام original teaching, such as the pilgrimage itself, survived, though heavily distorted, right up until Islam restored them to their proper form.
• By the time of the Prophet’s ﷺ birth, Arabia held a mixture of idolatry, Judaism, Christianity, Magianism, and Sabianism, none of which had preserved the pure monotheism their founders originally taught.

Let Us Discuss

• Which part of today’s post surprised you the most, the political history of Makkah or the story of how idol worship began?
• ‘Amr bin Luhai was described as sincerely religious, yet he introduced one of the greatest deviations in Arab history. What does that teach us about following practices simply because they seem popular or respected?
• Had you already known the connection between Surah Al-Buruj and the massacre at Najran?

Please share your thoughts in the comments, and if you are finding this series beneficial, please share it with your friends and family so more people can benefit, in sha’ Allah.

Coming up Part 3: In sha Allah

May Allah send His peace and blessings upon our beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, upon his pure family, and upon all his noble Companions رضي الله عنهم أجمعين. Ameen.

A small request: If you found it beneficial, kindly share the original link instead, this helps us continue our dawah work and reach more people. Jazakumullahu Khairan.

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Ustadha Fahmina holds the Alimah sanad from two prestigious institutes and is a certified Optometrist Doctor. She teaches Tafsir, Hadith, Fiqh, Seerah to Women and Kids and is passionate about spreading authentic information about the religion of Islam. Connect with her to keep updated about her recent ebooks and projects.