The Transition from Late Antiquity to Early Islam in Western Arabia

This chapter discusses how the history of late pre-Islamic and early Islamic western Arabia (the Hijaz) might fit into wider discussions about the periodisation of ‘late antiquity’. It offers an analysis of the ways in which the pre-Islamic Hijaz witnessed some of the key developments associated with the period of late antiquity in the Mediterranean world and then charts several important features of the region’s history as it became part of an expanding empire. It concludes that it was over the first Islamic century that the region became a fuller part of the world of late antiquity.