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Isāf And Nā'ila
Isāf ( ar, إساف) and Nā'ila ( ar, نائلة) were two deities worshipped as a god and a goddess in pre-Islamic Arabia. They were primarily worshipped by the Quraysh. Attestations Some Muslim scholars, including al-Azraqi, claimed that 'Amr ibn Luhayy, the patriarch of the Arab tribe Banu Khuza'a, who introduced idolatry in Mecca, was responsible for the worship of Isāf and Nā'ila. He had called on people to worship them and justified the fact that their ancestors had already done so. The Qurayshi Qusaiy ibn Kilāb had then taken the two stones to the well of Zamzam near the Kaaba. Isāf and Nā'ila were said to be particularly important to the Quraysh tribe, associated with Qurayshi sacrifices involving a ''talbiya'' specifically directed to Isāf. Various legends existed about the idols, including one that they were petrified after they committed adultery in the Kaaba. Ibn al-Kalbi handed down the legend in his Book of Idols as follows: They set out to perfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pre-Islamic Arabia
Pre-Islamic Arabia ( ar, شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام) refers to the Arabian Peninsula before the History of Islam, emergence of Islam in 610 CE. Some of the settled communities developed into distinctive civilizations. Information about these communities is limited and has been pieced together from archaeological evidence, accounts written outside of Arabia, and Arab oral traditions which were later recorded by List of Muslim historians, Islamic historians. Among the most prominent civilizations were the Thamud civilization, which arose around 3000 BCE and lasted to around 300 CE, and the earliest Semitic civilization in the eastern part was Dilmun, which arose around the end of the fourth millennium and lasted to around 600 CE. Additionally, from the second half of the second millennium BCE,Kenneth A. Kitchen The World of "Ancient Arabia" Series. Documentation for Ancient Arabia. Part I. Chronological Framework and Historical Sources p.110 Southern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Of Idols
__NOTOC__The ''Book of Idols'' ('), written by the Arab scholar Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (737–819), describes gods and rites of pre-Islamic Arab religions. The text is critical of pre-Islamic Arabian religion and decries the state of religious corruption which the Arabs had supposedly descended to since the founding of the Kaaba. The book was instrumental in identifying shirk (the sin of polytheism) with "the idolatry of the pre-Islamic Arabs". Ahmad Zaki Pasha, the Egyptian philologist, discovered the text; he bought the sole extant manuscript at auction in Damascus and the manuscript, one of many in his extensive collection, was donated to the state after his death in 1934. Zaki Pasha announced his discovery at the XIVth International Congress of Orientalists The International Congress of Orientalists, initiated in Paris in 1873, was an international conference of Orientalists (initially mostly scholars from Europe and the USA). The first thirteen meetings were held in Europe; th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arabian Goddesses
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. At , the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen, as well as the southern portions of Iraq and Jordan. The largest of these is Saudi Arabia. In the classical era, the southern portions of modern-day Syria, Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula were also considered parts of Arabia (see Arabia Petraea). The Arabian Peninsula formed as a result of the rifting of the Red Sea between 56 and 23 million years ago, and is bordered by the Red Sea to the west and southwest, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the northeast, the Levant and Mesopotamia to the north and the Arabian Sea and the Indian Oce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arabian Gods
Deities formed a part of the polytheistic religious beliefs in pre-Islamic Arabia, with many of the deities' names known. Up until about the fourth century AD, polytheism was the dominant form of religion in Arabia. Deities represented the forces of nature, love, death, and so on, and were interacted to by a variety of rituals. Formal pantheons are more noticeable at the level of kingdoms, of variable sizes, ranging from simple city-states to collections of tribes.Robin, Christian Julien, "South Arabia, Religions in Pre-Islamic", in The Kaaba alone was said to have contained up to 100 images of many gods and goddesses. Tribes, towns, clans, lineages and families had their own cults too. Christian Julien Robin suggests that this structure of the divine world reflected the society of the time. Many deities did not have proper names and were referred to by titles indicating a quality, a family relationship, or a locale preceded by "he who" or "she who" (''dhū'' or ''dhāt''). P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al-‘Uzzá
Al-ʻUzzā ( ar, العزى or Old Arabic l ʕuzzeː was one of the three chief goddesses of Arabian religion in pre-Islamic times and she was worshiped by the pre-Islamic Arabs along with al-Lāt and Manāt. A stone cube at Nakhla (near Mecca) was held sacred as part of her cult. She is mentioned in Qur'an 53:19 as being one of the goddesses who people worshiped. Al-ʻUzzā, like Hubal, was called upon for protection by the pre-Islamic Quraysh. "In 624 at the ' battle called Uhud', the war cry of the Qurayshites was, "O people of Uzzā, people of Hubal!". Al-‘Uzzá also later appears in Ibn Ishaq's account of the alleged Satanic Verses. The temple dedicated to al-ʻUzzā and the statue was destroyed by Khalid ibn al Walid in Nakhla in 630 AD."He sent Khali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aziz Al-Azmeh
Aziz Al-Azmeh (Arabic: عزيز العظمة) (born July 24, 1947) is a Syrian academic and professor at the Department of History, Central European University, Vienna, Austria. Among other books and papers, he published '' Islams and Modernities''. In May 1993, he received the Republican Order of Merit, for services to Arab culture, from former President of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Early life and education Aziz Al-Azmeh was born on July 24, 1947 in Damascus, Syria. He received a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies from St Antony's College, Oxford (supervised by Albert Hourani), having previously attended the University of Tübingen, and the University of Pennsylvania. Career He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses (though latterly focusing on postgraduate teaching and research) across the whole thematic range of Arab and Islamic historical studies, medieval and modern, at the Central European University, the American University of Beirut, Yale University, Colum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conquest Of Mecca
The Conquest of Mecca ( ar, فتح مكة , translit=Fatḥ Makkah) was the capture of the town of Mecca by Muslims led by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in December 629 or January 630 AD ( Julian), 10–20 Ramadan, 8 AH. The conquest marked the end of the wars between the followers of Muhammad and the Quraysh tribe. Dates Ancient sources vary as to the dates of these events. *The date Muhammad set out for Mecca is variously given as 2, 6 or 10 Ramadan 8 AH. *The date Muhammad entered Mecca is variously given as 10, 17/18, 19 or 20 Ramadan 8 AH. The conversion of these dates to the Julian calendar depends on what assumptions are made about the calendar in use in Mecca at the time. For example, 18 Ramadan 8 AH may be converted to 11 December 629 AD, 10 or 11 January 630, or 6 June 630 AD. Background In 628, the Meccan tribe of Quraysh and the Muslim community in Medina signed a 10-year truce called the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. In 630, this truce was broken when the Banu Bakr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al-Safa And Al-Marwah
Safa and Marwa ( ar, ٱلصَّفَا وَٱلْمَرْوَة, Aṣ-Ṣafā wal-Marwah) are two small hills, connected to the larger Abu Qubais and Qaiqan mountains, respectively, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, now made part of the Masjid al-Haram. Muslims travel back and forth between them seven times in what is known as Sa'ee ( ar, سَعِي, lit=seeking/searching or walking, translit=sa'iy) ritual pilgrimages of '' Ḥajj'' and ''Umrah''. Muslims walk between the two mountains (called ''Sa'ee''), which they believe was made a ritual as a tribute to Hajar's search for water in the area when she ran out of provisions after Ibrahim left her in the valley upon Allah's command. The space between the two mountains in which the pilgrims walk is called ''al-Mas'aa''. Geography Safa is a small mountain located at the bottom of the Abu Qubais Mountain, about 130 meters (430 ft) southeast of the Ka'bah, which is the beginning of the Sa'ee. As for Marwa, it is also a small mountain of w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jurhum
Jurhum ( ar, جرهم, Jurhum; also Banu Jurhum or The second Jurhum) historically referred to as Gorrhamite by the Greeks, was an old Arab tribe in the Arabian peninsula. Traditionally, they were a Qahtanite tribe whose historical abode was Yemen before they immigrated to Mecca. Kaaba According to Arabic accounts, the tribe of the Jurhum gave protection to Hagar and her son Ishmael, a relationship cemented with Ishmael's marriage to a Jurhumite woman, Rala bint Mudad ibn 'Amr ibn Jurhum ibn Himyar ibn Qahtan. The Jurhum are said to have been involved in the worship centering around the Kaaba, the holy sanctuary rebuilt by Ishmael and his father Abraham and revered as a pilgrimage site. According to one tradition, their custodianship over the Kaaba ended after they were ousted by the Khuza'a, a tribal group from the south. Well of Zamzam Islamic tradition further holds that Hagar and Ishmael found a spring in Mecca, the Zamzam well, from which the Jurhum wanted to drink, and tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al-Azraqi
Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah Al-Azraqi () was a 9th-century Islamic commentator and historian, and author of the ''Kitab Akhbar Makka'' (Book of Reports about Mecca). Al-Azraqi was from a family who lived in Mecca for hundreds of years. He gave information on the design and layout of the pre-Islamic Ka'aba at Mecca after its rebuilding following a fire in 603 AD until its possession by Mohammed in 630 AD. The contents included a statue of Hubal, the principal male deity of Mecca, and a number of other pagan items, which were destroyed in 630 as idolatrous. They also included a pair of ram’s horns said to have belonged to the ram sacrificed by the Prophet Abraham in place of his son, the Prophet Ismail, and a painting (probably a fresco) of Jesus and Mary. According to Al-Azraqi, Mohammed spared these items, which survived until the destruction by the Umayyads in 683 AD. Al-Azraqi is silent on the fate of the images of trees that are known also to have decorated the interior of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ibn Al-Kalbi
Hishām ibn al-Kalbī ( ar, هشام بن الكلبي), 737 AD – 819 AD/204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (), was an Arab historian. His full name was Abu al-Mundhir Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Sa'ib ibn Bishr al-Kalbi. Born in Kufa, he spent much of his life in Baghdad. Like his father, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs. According to the , he wrote 140 works. His account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the . Hisham established a genealogical link between Ishmael and the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and put forth the idea that all Arabs were descended from Ishmael. He relied heavily on the ancient oral traditions of the Arabs, but also quoted writers who had access to Biblical and Palmyran sources. In 1966, Werner Caskel compiled a two volume study of Ibn al-Kalbi's ("The Abundance of Kinship") entitled ''Das genealogische Werk des Hisam Ibn Muhammad al Kalbi''. It contains a prosopographic register of every ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quraysh
The Quraysh ( ar, قُرَيْشٌ) were a grouping of Arab clans that historically inhabited and controlled the city of Mecca and its Kaaba. The Islamic prophet Muhammad was born into the Hashim clan of the tribe. Despite this, many of the Quraysh staunchly opposed Muhammad, until converting to Islam ''en masse'' in CE. Afterwards, leadership of the Muslim community traditionally passed to a member of the Quraysh, as was the case with the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, and purportedly the Fatimid caliphates. Name Sources differ as to the etymology of Quraysh, with one theory holding that it was the diminutive form of ''qirsh'' (shark).Watt 1986, p. 435. The 9th-century genealogist Hisham ibn al-Kalbi asserted that there was no eponymous founder of Quraysh;Peters 1994, p. 14. rather, the name stemmed from ''taqarrush'', an Arabic word meaning "a coming together" or "association". The Quraysh gained their name when Qusayy ibn Kilab, a sixth-generation descendant of Fihr ibn Malik, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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