The wars of the Ridda or “apostasy” (11-12/632-33) resulted in the unification of Arabia under vigorous Muslim leadership. According to the modern scholarly consensus (e.g., Shoufani, 1973), these events weren’t actually all about apostasy, as some of the “apostates” had never converted to Islam, while the rebellion of some others consisted of refusing to pay a tax, identified (for reasons still not entirely clear) as “alms,” sadaqa or zakat. In any case, historians have focused on the nascent Islamic community and state. Here we try to view these events from an East Arabian perspective, aided by al-Askar (2002, 2012) and others. Puzzling questions remain, and we may ask in what sense we can identify an East Arabian perspective at all. We find such a perspective in a historical tradition on “the markets of the Arabs before Islam,” describing the peninsula around 600 CE. Here the Hijaz matters mainly because of the annual fair at ‘Ukaz. East Arabia, meanwhile, shows flourishing diversity in its politics and commerce. This information has been transmitted through what we may call a “tribal tradition.” Next we recall that ridda, together with futuh (conquests) and fitna (internal strife) was a “primary theme” of early historical writing (Noth, 1994, Samji, 2013). Can we relate any “tribal traditions” to this primary theme? Out of the early sources for ridda—including Waqidi, Wathima, Baladhuri, Tabari and Balansi—we focus on the famous (or infamous) Sayf b. ‘Umar, with the help of Landau-Tasseron (1990) and Cameron (2001). It emerges that Sayf didn’t show bias for his own tribe of Tamim, as Wellhausen (1899) and Brockelmann (1943) thought. Rather, he maintained a sense—however vague—of the collective outlook of a confederation that had played an important role in Arabia before Islam (Kister, 1965). The East Arabian understanding of sadaqa/zakat corresponded roughly to most monotheist thinking at the time. (Hijazi) Islam, by contrast, presented something new, in its connection between acts of generosity to the poor and the equipping of warriors, at least since the expedition to Tabuk (9/630). Furthermore, the East Arabians did not have a project of unifying Arabia or conquering other regions. They did, however, have a vivid sense of interconnection among themselves, in their markets and fairs and in their notions of generosity and justice. Finally, the notion of “tribal tradition” needs more attention in the study of early Islamic historiography.