Islamic societies were built on the framework of already established and ancient Middle Eastern civilizations. From the pre-Islamic Middle East, Islamic societies inherited a pattern of institutions that would shape daily life until the modern age. These institutions included small communities based on family, lineage, clientage, and ethnic ties; agricultural and urban societies, market economies, monotheistic religions, and bureaucratic empires. Along with their political and social characteristics, Islamic societies also inherited many of the religious, literary, and artistic practices of the pre-Islamic past. The civilization of Islam, although initiated in Mecca, also had its precursors in Palestine, Babylon, and Persepolis.

Islamic societies developed in an environment that since the earliest history of mankind had exhibited two fundamental and enduring qualities. The first was the organization of human societies into small, often familial groups. The earliest hunting and gathering communities lived and moved in small bands. Since the advent of agriculture and the domestication of animals, the vast majority of Middle Eastern peoples have lived in agricultural villages or in the tent camps of nomadic pastoralists. Even town peoples were bound into small groups by ties of kinship and neighborhood, with all that implies of strong affections and hatreds. These groups raised the young, arranged marriages, arbitrated disputes, and formed a common front vis-à-vis the outside world.