Perl had Mojolicious which was almost as good as Rails and a lumbering beast called Catalyst which was used at the BBC.
Catalyst was released in 2005 (so still after Rails), and definitely didn’t provide Rails-like productivity.
If Mojolicious had been available in ~2003 or earlier, it’s entirely possible Ruby never takes off, because developers could get similar productivity in a more “known”/“mainstream” language.