This article studies the status of case in pre-Islamic Arabic. It brings together different previously unrelated sets of phonological and morphological data to show that all dialects had some sort of a case system, some dialects were more innovative in the use of case than others, such as the Hijazi dialects, and some Najdi dialects retained an earlier and more productive case system. The article also shows that the case system in the conservative dialects started to show signs of decay in the early days of Islam.