Culture and Religion in Pre-Islamic Arabia - Essay Example

The tribes cultivated rivalries in the course of their competition to secure the scarce resources, and warfare was common. Polytheism mostly in the form of animism was rampant among the Bedouin tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia (“Culture and Religion”). Their tribes or families sold women in pre-Islamic Arabia to their husbands in exchange for a dowry. Pre-Islamic Arabia had unlimited polygamy. Divorce among the Arabs of the pre-Islamic peninsula was a totally unregulated male prerogative. Women were granted no rights with respect to divorce. Women were not given anything from inheritance. People would bury their daughters alive. Despite the gender discrimination, forces of cultural unity in the tribal structure existed in pre-Islamic Arabia. Qasidah was a special style of Arabic poetry that celebrated the ethos of honor and bravery of the Bedouins. It is the very existence of Qasidah, recited at tribal gatherings and market fairs that “has convinced historians that the Arabs of the seventh century possessed a common poetic language that could be understood in different regions of the peninsula” (Cleveland and Bunton 6).