Pre-Islamic Arabia, referring to the Arabian Peninsula before Muhammad's first revelation in 610 CE, is referred to in Islam in the context of jahiliyyah, highlighting the prevalence of paganism throughout the region at the time.

The Thamud were an ancient tribe or tribal confederation in pre-Islamic Arabia that occupied the northwestern Arabian peninsula between the late-eighth century BCE, when they are attested in Assyrian sources, and the fifth century CE, when they served as Roman auxiliaries. The Kingdom of Thamud was the first existing kingdom on the Arabian peninsula, according to Assyrian and Roman sources. Arabian tradition holds that the Thamud kingdom was destroyed by God. It had no written law, but the tribal leader played the role of ruler. The Thamud are mentioned in contemporary Mesopotamian, Classical, and Arabian sources, including in inscriptions in a temple erected in the 160s for the god ʾlhʾ, by the Thamud themselves. It is possible that multiple unrelated groups took on the name of Thamud; they probably spoke Old Arabic. The Thamud are not specially connected to the Thamudic scripts, an aggregate term for understudied writing systems of Ancient Arabia.