• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabataean - Nabateans : most famous Arabs of the NW.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Yemen - Yemen : that was home to several succesive civilizations (Himrayites in pre-Islamic time, of Jewish religion and anti-Christian attitudes, later converted to Islam)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Yemen - Oman : that belonged to Persia since 563.
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bahrain - Bahrain : also Persian, with rather strong Christian Nestorian influence.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakhmids - Lakhmis and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakhmids - Ghassanids of the northern edges of the desert

intersting Points

i think Arabs are not like Iranians and other Islamic nations, its clear that we didnt and dont care about our History before Islam as much as we care about our History Before Islam.

about the religions practiced before islam are Judaisim, Christanity and those Pagan religions which almost nothing of them survived .

It isn't worth to care about.

In the period before Islam also named as "Cahiliye" Arabs were killing their own daughters and digging them although they were alive.

well not all Arabs did that, plus for 100s of years before Islam Arabs had kingdoms and long history.

i  think this is more accurate

yes

but the limits of Persia was to Iraq not the rest of the Gulf's coast.

and there werent a significant kingdoms just before the rise of islam in Arabia

Yemen was part of the Ethiopian Christan Kingdomes

and in the north the Ghassasins were Christan Arabs.

Jews didnt have a Kingdome they were like tribes living in Medina and Makkah and other parts too.

yes but not at the years when Islam rised, i think Persia became weak in the last 20 years before the Arab invation.

so they lost control of the Arabian coast on the gulf sometime in the early years of 600 AD.

from that map 600 AD, it looks like there were a persian semi-independant kingdome called Lakhmid kingdom between Persian Empire and the Arabian Peninsula.

According to what I've found in several hours of Wikipedia browsing it seemed like Oman and Bahrein (and this latter dependencies in the Arabian coast) were at that time part of the Persian empire (follow the links in my first post for references).

This is a map of that Sassanid Empire at its height:

At the time of Muhammad, the Sassanid Empire was in deep crisis and central authority was very weak.

While it seems the Himyarite dynasty of Yemen wasn't as prosperous as the earlier one of the Sabaeans, they seem the only major state in all the Arabian peninsula.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himyarite - Wikipedia :

Himyar was a state in ancient http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemen" title="Yemen - Yemen dating from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115_BCE" title="115 BCE - 115 BCE . Conquered neighbouring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheba" title="Sheba - Saba in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_BCE" title="25 BCE - 25 BCE , http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Qataban&action=edit" class="new" title="Qataban - Qataban in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50" title="50 - 50 CE and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadramaut" title="Hadramaut - Hadramaut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100" title="100 - 100 CE. It was the dominant state in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabia" title="Arabia - Arabia until the sixth century. The economy was based on the export of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankincense" title="Frankincense - frankincense and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrrh" title="Myrrh - myrrh . The last Tubba Himyarite king, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhu_Nuwas" title="Dhu Nuwas - Dhu Nuwas , converted to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism" title="Judaism - Judaism and proceeded to massacre the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian" title="Christian - Christians in his kingdom, many from neighbouring Ethiopia. This led to invasion by the Ethiopians, and the domination of the kingdom for 8 years. A coalition of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni" title="Yemeni - Yemeni & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian" title="Persian - Persian forces of http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dailam&action=edit" class="new" title="Dailam - Dailam later ousted the foreign invaders. The new http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himyarite" title="Himyarite - Himyarite rulers soon converted to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam" title="Islam - Islam .

Himyarite kings included:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabiah" title="Rabiah - Rabiah
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhu_Nuwas" title="Dhu Nuwas - Dhu Nuwas

The Ethiopian conquest happened apparently in 523 BCE (this is one century before the Hejira).

That's reflected in my map well.

Apart of the Himyarite case, the other reference I've found is about Medina being home of a very large Jewish community at that time. No references on Mecca (that was another article that started with Mohammed and the importance of that city to Islam). No references about Christians in those cities either.

The general impression is that the conflict between Byzantium and Sassanid Persia affected all the area more or less diffusely. Byzantium prosecuted Nestorian Christians and the Persians welcomed them... but neutralized Christian Axumite expansion in Yemen. Very interesting...

i've seen that map of the Sassanid empire and i think thats wasnt the largest period of the sassanids, in the 500s AD they reached Yemen.

but anyway what period is that map?

That's exactly what it seems to have been the function of Lakhmid and Ghassanid states (both of Arab or Arab-Aramean ethnicity): border realms (marks), under the influence of Persia and Byzantium, meant to contain any invasion through the desert. Actually it seems most of the time they were fighting each other. At some time the Ghassanids had also problems with Byzantium because they had Nestorians in high esteem and Byzantium was prosecuting that sect.

in the 7th century? dont think so, maybe the 6th under khosraw (spelling)

 do you have a map of it when it was at its largest size?

no i don't know much about the differences in belives that was  between the Ghassanids and the Byzantinums,

but as far as i know that the Ghassanids power were destroyed by the Persians in early 600s AD. and when Islam raised they allied with Byzantine against the Muslims.

so they fought against the Muslims and they were totally destroyed this time.

what i think Helped the Arabs early Conquests was the Persian's Invations and the sudden collapse of their colonies, the Byzantine gained more power but couldn't stope the new unexpected Islamic Expansion.

yes it seemes that difference did actully helped the Muslim Arab's expansions.

this is from Britannica:

Routing the Byzantine armies, he surrounded Damascus, which surrendered on Sept. 4, 635, and pushed northward. Early in 636 he withdrew south of the Yarmûk River before a powerful Byzantine force that advanced from the north and from the coast of Palestine. The Byzantine armies were composed mainly of Christian Arab, Armenian, and other auxiliaries, however; and when many of these deserted the Byzantines, Khâlid, reinforced from Medina and possibly fromthe Syrian Arab tribes, attacked and destroyed the remaining Byzantine forces along the ravines of the Yarmûk valley (Aug. 20, 636). Almost 50,000 Byzantine troops were slaughtered, which opened the way for many other Islâmic conquests.

In 635 Damascus surrendered, its inhabitants being promised security for their lives, property, and churches, on payment of a poll tax. A counterattack by the emperor Heraclius was defeated at the Battle of the Yarmûk River in 636; by 640 the conquest was virtually complete.

and this is some good info about the early years in Syria

The new rulers divided Syria into four districts (junds): Damascus, Ḥimṣ, Jordan, and Palestine(to which a fifth, Kinnasrin, was later added). The Arab garrisons were kept apart in camps, and life went on much as before. Conversion to Islâm had scarcely begun, apart from Arab tribes already settled in Syria; except for the tribe of Ghassân, these all became Muslim. Christians and Jews were treated with toleration, and Nestorian and Jacobite Christians had better treatment than they had under Byzantium. The Byzantine form of administration remained, but the new Muslim tax system was introduced. From 639 the governor of Syria wasMuʿawiyah of the Meccan house of the Umayyads. He used the country as a base for expeditions against the Byzantine Empire, for this purpose building the first Muslim navy in the Mediterranean. When civil war broke out in the Muslim empire, as a result of the murder ofʿUthmân and the nomination of ʿAlî as caliph, Syria stood firm behind Muʿawiyah, who extended his authority over neighbouring provinces and was proclaimed caliph in 660. He was the first of the Umayyad line, which ruled the empire, with Syria as its core and Damascusits capital, for almost a century.

and this about Conquest of Egypt.

Various explanations have been given for the speed with which the conquest was achieved, most of which stress the weakness of Byzantine resistance rather than Arab strength. Certainly the division of the Byzantine government and army into autonomous provincial units militated against the possibility of a concerted and coordinated response.Although there is only dubious evidence for the claim that the Copts welcomed the Arab invasion in thebelief that Muslim religious tolerance would be preferable to Byzantine enforced orthodoxy and repression, Coptic support for their Byzantine oppressors was probably unenthusiastic atbest.

This is the empire of Khosrow Parviz (reigned 590–628):

why these colonies in the Arabian peninsula are not connected!!

couldn't pass through the dessert?

nice topic.. thans for sharing.. I will post more later on....

vay vay...

there is more to Arabia than just that arkadas..

Maalesef.... it isn't nice to say that it is not worth talking about....not nice at all...

It is interesting that after first years of Abbasid dynasty again Arabian peninsula went in darkness and until the wahabbi  uprising in the 18th century there is so little data about this land.
Most of knowledge about Arabian peninsula are those regions that are in neighborhood of Mesopotamia and Sham (historical Syria)

The names of tribes in the advent of Islam and their structure are recorded in the Islamic texts, there were many myths about the histories of these tribes and their kinship with others, some people between Arab people had a great knowledge about these stories , there existed so much respect for these people.
Traditionally Arabs were divided in two groups :
Qa’htaanids or Yamaanids or southern Arabs or arab’ol’mota’arrebat.
Adnanies or Isma’ili Arabs or northern arabs or arab’ol’mosta’rebat.

Some considered these two as unoriginal Arabs and some considered Qa’htaanids as original Arabs and ‘Adnaanies as unoriginal, their names also show that : mosta’rebat means Arabified.

Qa’htanids claimed that they are descendants of Qah’taan ibn ‘Amer and it was said that he was ruler and founder of San’aa (in Yaman).
Qa’htanids were considered more civilized and usually they lived in cities.they classified as ‘Hamir and Ka’hlan.Us and Khazraj two famous tribe of  Madineh in time of Islam are both from Qa’htanids.
‘Adnanies claimed that they are descendant from Ismael son of Ibraahim.They classified as Mazar and Rabi’eh. They were mostly nomads and many famous tribes like Howazuns and Qoreysh said that they are descendant of Ismael.
Language and culture of these two people differed with each other and there was great rivalry between these two people.
In Umayyad time war and conflicts between these two people was on of the main problem of central government.

Religious in pre Islamic Arabia is one of the fields that very little work have been done on it. There were many Jewish communities around Arabia which three of them were located in Medina, Jews lived in separate communities and didn’t mix with others .there was some Christian arabs and they had lived with others , names of many of these Christian has been recorded in Islam. There were some monasteries that follow very old Christian beliefs that were outlawed In other part of world. Two other religion is mentioned: Sa’ebiaan  and Hanifian first were considered followers of Ya’hyaa and second were considered follower of Ibrahim.
Pagans were not totally idol worshippers , they belived that there is a god who named It Allaah  and it is above the all of other gods, there exists many other gods but because they can not directly communicate with people , idols do that job and they were medium of gods with ordinary people, as time passed idols themselves became as gods, there were many idols but four of them were considered as the biggest :
‘Azaa, Laat, hobal and Manaat. In Mecca there exist Ka’beh a square building that there were 360 idols  in it, it is claimed that each idol is referred to a day of a year, it is also claimed that every tribe has its own idol in Ka’beh . Qoraysh tribe ruled Mecca and so they so much influence in Arabia.

And in the middle of 6th century Persians defeated Ethiopia and conquered the Yaman.

Christian existed but lived between other arabs and there was no separate Christian communities.

There is no doubt that Syria and Egypt had very loose connection with Byzanthian empire that In a very short period of time two times Byzanthian lost these lands and I think Monophisites played an active role in this problem. Just look that in a very short period of time Egypt and Syria became on of the most powerful center of Chaliphate and they even completely will assimilate in Arab culture.

There is no doubt that Byzanthians never had any help from local population when Muslims attacked. Of course long wars with Iran and also Lombards in Italy heavily weakened the Empire.

And just consider that with this fact how Islam and Arabic language  easily spreaded in Syria and Egypt.

This map is heavily exaggerated.
Sassanid never succeeded to conquer Khwarazm and also Soghdia.It is unlikely that they could reach their control until the Indus river.In Cacausia it is again exaggeration , the northest part that Sassanid had control is Derbent, (Darband) in border of Republic of Azerbaijan and Daghistan.It was also called Iron gate . There were some more castles and fortification around the southern branch of great Cacausus mountain that constitute the northern fortifications of Iran. Remain of some of them still can be found in Republics of Azerbaijan.

Sorry Cyrus there is no evidence that sassanids ever conquered Transxosania.

Originally posted by Maju I just found this map of the Near East in the 6th century and thought it would be a nice adition to this topic.  The interior of Arabia is a little better defined than we were able to reconstruct so far.

I’m still have doubt that Sassanids could control until the Indus valley.

But Sassanid were good flyers, you know Shapur I flew over Transoxania to conquer Kashgar in modern Xinjiang Province of China!  History of Kashgar -> http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A645392 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A645392

Pre-Islamic arabia is also an interest of mine, although i know just a bit of it.

If you ever could find books on Antarah (Antar bin Shadad) or Zeer Salem (Ayam al Arab) they provide a very indepth look at society and culture.

The Pagan arab gods have all been wiped out, there were about 600 of these, each one governs some form of aspect (trade, health, war, wealth.. etc) some of them were taken from other cultures as well, and they all served as form of medium to Allah, which islam rejects.