Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

684 22c. the arabs
idols in their homes, and made similar observances at that level. To offend
the idol was an offence against the honour of the head of the house and a
matter for retaliation, and there is some evidence that these idols were
intended to be figures of ancestors. There was thus a hierarchy of idols,
corresponding to the social status of their owners. 38
There is good evidence of star-worship and astral divinities as well. The
widely venerated al-Lāt (a sky goddess) and al-�Uzza (possibly the morning
star) may have been representations of Venus, and Byzantine polemics
against Islam claim that the Islamic slogan Allāhu akbar, ‘God is great’, has
as its origin a cry of devotion in astral religion. 39 The worship of astral
divinities has also been connected with the veneration of idols.
The attitude of the ancient Arabs toward their gods was entirely empirical
and pragmatic. Though they did consider problems of human existence
and the meaning of life, 40 they did not look to their deities for the
answers. They regarded their gods as the ultimate sources of worldly phenomena
beyond human control, such as disease, rain, fertility, and personal
and communal adversities of various kinds; they worshipped the gods in
expectation of their assistance, but they did not revere them or consider
that they owed unwavering commitment to them. 41
Monotheistic religion was also known in Arabia from an early date. The
influx of Jews into Arabia is difficult to trace, but probably had much to do
with the failure of the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Temple in
a.d. 70, and the gradual spread of Christianity over the next three centuries.
In south Arabia, Judaism enjoyed considerable success in the fifth and
early sixth century, and to the north there were important Jewish communities
at various places, primarily Yathrib. There Judaism seems to have had
deep and powerful roots, if one may judge from reports that in pre-Islamic
times the Jews there had three times as many fortified compounds (qus · ūr)
as all the other non-Jewish clans combined, 42 and that in the latter half of
the sixth century the Jewish clans of Qurayz · a and al-Nad · īr collected taxes
from the other tribes. 43 The question of Jewish influences in Arabia and on
Islam has become highly sensitive in modern scholarship, but there can be
no doubt that such influences were profoundly important; the Qur�ān itself
contains many tales and accounts of Jewish origin, as also do early Islamic
religious lore and scholarship. 44
38 39 Lecker (1993). On this see Rotter (1993); Hoyland (1997) 105–7.
40 E.g. the ephemeral joys of youth and the ultimate fate of either death or senility: Zuhayr, Dīwān
29; al-�Askarī, Awā�il i.57.
41 Wellhausen (1897) 213–14; Crone (1987) 237–41.
42 Ibn al-Najjār, Al-Durra al-thamīna 325. Cf. Conrad (1981) 22.
43 Ibn Khurradādhbih, Al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik 128; Yāqūt, Mu�jam al-buldān, iv.460. Cf. Kister
(1968) 145–7.
44 On the Jews of pre-Islamic Arabia, see Newby (1988) 14–77; and on influences, Geiger (1833);
Rosenthal (1961) 3–46; Nagel (1967); Rubin (1995) esp. 32, 217–25.
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