Jāhiliyya

Jāhiliyya
Commonly known as the “age of ignorance”, jāhiliyya refers to the centuries before Muhammad arrived as a prophet. The ignorance exists in the fact that the people of this time had not yet discovered the divine truth. Originally, the term was used to describe those who had still denied Muhammad’s teachings and thus were still subscribing to the old ideas of the “age of ignorance” and were morally corrupt.

Sources: Encyclopaedia of the Quran