Birth in Arab Civilisation: From Jahiliyyah to Islam

Few ideas reveal a civilisation as sharply as what it makes of a newborn. In the Arabian Peninsula, that idea underwent one of the most complete reversals in its history — and the record of it survives in poetry, in law, and in scripture.

Jahiliyyah: birth as a tribal ledger entry

In pre-Islamic Arabia, a birth was first of all an accounting question. A son was a future spear, a defender of the tribe's honour and a claimant to its inheritance. His arrival was announced, celebrated, sometimes marked with poetry.

A daughter was counted differently. She was read as a liability: a mouth to feed, and worse, a potential humiliation should she be captured in a raid. The Qur'an describes the reaction with unusual precision — the father's face darkening, his hiding from his people, his weighing whether to keep the child "in humiliation or bury her in the dust" (al-Nahl 58–59). The practice of female infanticide, wa'd al-banat, was real, though never universal.

The Islamic reversal: every child is honoured

Islam did not merely prohibit the practice; it inverted the premise beneath it. The Qur'an addresses the buried infant directly, and in the language of a court: "when the buried girl is asked, for what sin was she killed" (al-Takwir 8–9). The question is not put to her killer but to her — she is the one with standing.

The wider principle came with it: "We have certainly honoured the children of Adam" (al-Isra 70). Honour, in that verse, attaches to the human being as such — not to lineage, not to sex, not to tribe. A child born to the poorest family carried the same dignity as one born to a chieftain.

The adhan: a first declaration of belonging

A custom emerged that captures the shift in miniature. The call to prayer is whispered into the ear of the newborn — the same words that summon a whole community to worship, spoken to a person who cannot yet see clearly.

The symbolism is deliberate. The first sound organised into meaning that reaches the child is not the tribe's name and not the father's lineage, but a statement about God. Belonging is declared before biography begins.

The poetry, before and after

Pre-Islamic verse celebrates sons as warriors and mourns them as losses to the tribe's strength. The register is martial. Read forward two centuries and the vocabulary has changed: children appear as a trust, a test, an adornment of worldly life. The Arabic language did not lose its love of lineage — but it acquired a second vocabulary in which a child is owed something rather than owing.

The child in Islamic law

The change hardened into jurisprudence. Classical fiqh grants the child rights enforceable against the parent: a good name, lineage established and acknowledged, maintenance, nursing, education, and equitable treatment among siblings — with an explicit prohibition on favouring one child over another in gifts. These are framed as the child's rights, not the parent's discretion.

A civilisation can be measured by what it does with those who cannot yet argue for themselves. On that measure, the Arabian Peninsula changed more in one generation than most societies change in ten.

Sources: Qur'an, al-Nahl 58–59, al-Takwir 8–9, al-Isra 70; Shawqi Dayf, "The Jahili Age"; al-Tabari and al-Qurtubi, Qur'anic commentaries; Muhammad al-Zuhayli, "Rulings on the Child in Islamic Jurisprudence"