The Religious Landscape of Arabia

Pre-Islamic Arabia is usually imagined as an empty desert dotted with idols. By the sixth century it was one of the most religiously diverse regions of the ancient world.

This film maps that landscape across three centuries: the astral gods of the south, the sacred stones of the Hijaz, the Jewish communities of the oases, the monotheism the kings of Himyar adopted, two rival Christian traditions tied to rival empires, Zoroastrianism on the Gulf, and the independent seekers known as the ḥanīfs. Not an empty desert, but a peninsula alive with competing beliefs, and bound into the empires and trade routes of Late Antiquity.