Was the Arabian peninsula split in the countries that exist now during the time of Mohammed?

Andrew

Few of the countries that exist today existed 1,400 years ago, with the exception of very ancient countries such as Iran (formerly Persia, but essentially occupying the same territory), and China (which was considerably smaller then.) The concept of nation-states is a relatively modern one.

larry1

Arabia since at least 1000BC was tribal and clans and remained so up through modern times 1900'sAD. In Mohammed's time earlier 600'sAD the Arab tribes of Arabian peninsula had some experience with the civilizations of Rome, Judaism, Byzantine empire, Christians, and to a lesser extent Persians and Indians. But Arabia remained a 'no go zone', deserts of non farming, unsettled pastoralists (roaming herders), nomads, raiders, land pirates, blood feuds, where people still lived like they had 1000 years before. Mohammed changed all that uniting all the tribes/ clans around 1 religion, settling them as much as possible, bringing learning, reading, writing, and a united religious leadership (but not political leadership). The tribes/ clans stayed, there were no countries till after WWI (c.1920) and even today with modern countries Arabia is still divided among tribes/ clans (families).

Ludwig

No. The domination of the peninsula by the Saudi Royal Family dates from the 1920 's.

They Pelted Us With Rocks And Garbage

Neither. The areas which were naturally habitable had people in them. Those people had only vague connections to the people who live there now and the way they are organized now.

Gray Bold

Arabia was a region that hosted a number of different cultures, some of which were urban and others were the nomadic Bedouin. Arabian society was divided along tribal and clan lines with most important divisions between the "southern" and "northern" tribal associations. Both the Roman and Persian empires competed for influence in Arabia by sponsoring clients, and in turn Arabian tribes sought the patronage of the two rival empires to booster their own ambitions. The Lakhmid kingdom which covered parts of what is now southern Iraq and northern Saudi Arabia was a client of Persia, and in 602 the Persians deposed the Lakhmids to take over the defense of the southern frontier themselves. This left the Persians exposed and over-extended, helping to set the stage for the collapse of Persia later that century. Southern Arabia, especially what is now Yemen, had for thousands of years been a wealthy region that had been a center of the spice trade.

Anonymous

No, the Middle East did not look like it does now. The current map of the Middle East was essentially drawn up in the aftermath of WWI when the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled the region for the last couple hundred years, collapsed. The victorious French and English divided the land up between them. There's a persistent idea that the problems in the Middle East are largely the results of this Sykes-Picot agreement (named after the two negotiators) and that the Europeans imposed abritrary borders on the region which created countries which had little reason to stick together, thus breeding conflict. But the new colonies which were created after WWI were largely based on existing Ottoman provinces. Iraq, for example, is just a combination of three old Ottoman provinces. The only regions which was really new was Jordan, which the British cobbled together out of bits of low value desert land to create a country which their local ally Hussein could rule. At the time of Mohammed, the Arabian peninsula was divided into a bunch of different small kingdoms. The northern and eastern parts of the Middle East were largely under the rule of Byzantine Empire (or, as it's citizens thought of it, the Roman Empire). Iran and Iraq were part of the Sassanid Persian empire and much of the coastal regions of the Arabian Peninsula were ruled by Persian client states.