ABSTRACT
Muḥammadans include the whole period of Arabian history from the earliest times down to the establishment of Islam
The Age of Barbarism (al-Jáhillyya).
in the term al-Jáhiliyya, which was used by Muḥammad in four passages of the Koran and is generally translated 'the state of ignorance' or simply 'the Ignorance,' Goldziher, however, has shown conclusively that the meaning attached to jahl (whence Jáhiliyya is derived) by the Pre-islamic poets is not so much ' ignorance ' as 'wildness,' 'savagery,' and that its true antithesis is not ʿilm (knowledge), but rather ḥilm, which denotes the moral reasonableness of a civilised man, " When Muhammadans say that Islam put an end to the manners and customs of the Jáhiliyya, they have in view those barbarous practices, that savage temper, by which Arabian heathendom is distinguished from Islam and by the abolition of which Muhammad sought to work a moral reformation in his countrymen: the haughty spirit of the Jáhiltyya (ḥamiyyatu 'l-Jáhiliyya), the tribal pride and the endless tribal feuds, the cult of revenge, the implacability and all the other pagan characteristics which Islam was destined to overcome," 1