The Pre-Islamic Arabs were not a nation. Of the sense of nationality, indeed, they had not the vaguest conception, though they were linked by community of speech. Arabia was a sum-total of loose and disconnected congeries of tribes and the tribe was the source and the limit of social and political obligation. Beyond the tribe there lay no duty and no obligation either. Political relations were moral; for morality was confined within the limits of the tribe. Political organisation was represented by the corporate feeling which found expression in the exercise of the duties of brotherhood. Within the pale of the tribe obtained the prohibition to kill, to commit adultery, to steal, &c., &c. Beyond it there was no such prohibition. Fidelity to one’s kinsman was an imperative duty, apart from any question of the justness of the cause.[1] Outside the tribe there was nothing but constant plunder and unceasing warfare. “Certain large groups were, indeed, almost continually at war with one another. Ma`add, the people of the Hijaz and Al-yamamah generally looked upon Al-yaman as their natural prey and were constantly raiding on the herds of their southern neighbours. Between Tamim and Bakr, son of Wail, there was permanent bad blood, Ghatafan and Hawazin had a standing feud. In the north the kingdom of Al-Hirah, the representative of Persian predominance was the hereditary enemy of Ghassan, the representative of the might of Rome.” (Lyall, _Ancient Arabian Poetry_, p. xxiii.) Arabia, before Islam, was thus a theatre of internecine warfare, restrained, but partially, by the introduction of blood money. There was compensation for everything for which vengeance could be exacted. All crimes were assessed as economic damage. Every loss of honor, property, or life could be appraised by agreement; all having their price in camels. We thus see that the Arabs before Islam had scarcely emerged from barbaric conditions.[2] There was no social order, no organised government. The law of sheer brute force prevailed, untempered and unrestrained, by any civilizing or controlling influence. Nor did they attain any refined idea of religion. Their religion was nothing more or less than gross fetichism; the worship of tree and stone, the veneration of certain personified divine attributes, meaningless ritual and ceremonials. The true religious spirit they never succeeded in grasping and the fear of God never exercised any real, practical influence over their conduct and actions. It was reserved for Islam to instil into them the sense of responsibility to God and to make this idea of human responsibility the guiding and controlling principle of life. To all appearance the Arabs honoured the gods, went on pilgrimage to their sanctuaries, made sacrifices in the temples, anointed with the blood of the victims gods carved out of stone or made of wood, consulted the oracles, when in difficulty, and questioned them about the future. But all this was sham and counterfeit.