Pre-Islamic Arabia The Land and the People

A Short Introduction

Dr. Ibrahim Mumayiz

Arabia, Arabic & the Arabian Character:

An outstanding institution of pre-Islamic Arabia is the Arabic language. A unique product of

untorn ethnicity, it endured - except for some terms that later became obsolete - from Biblical
times till our own day. The growth and development of the Arabic language and its poetry
reached its luxuriant flowering in the Jahiliya poetry of the sixth century - of which the
Mcuallaqat were the creme de la crme. So, if one was to ask What did pre-Islamic Arabia have
to offer? The answer would have to be Its poetry, the cream of its language; and the
preservation of those Christian heresies that were later incorporated in Islam (vide Essay
Three). Pre-Islamic Arabian poetry is highly idiosyncratic; unique amongst poetries of other
nations even Arabic poetry of later Islamic ages. It was the only surviving literature from a pre-
literate age. Though pre-Islamic poetry is immensely rich metrically, lexically and is informative
on patterns of behavior and thought, however it does not reflect all aspects of contemporary life
in pre-Islamic Arabia, of which it is our indigenous source of information on that pre-literate
age. Pre-Islamic Arabia was also known historically as the land of Christian heresies, which gave
rise to the saying that was widespread in the Christendom of the Near East of late Antiquity
Arabia Haeresium Ferax Arabia fertile in heresies. Such heresies took root among the
Christians of Arabia and later became part of Islamic doctrine. (Vide Essay Three).
Also idiosyncratic and highly autochthonous was the Arabian character. It was drastically
shaped by the geographical and climatic factors that conditioned the environment of the
Peninsula which were instrumental in forming the character of the pre-Islamic Arabian
tribesman. The dominant characteristic of the desert tribesman was the cAbiyyah; a pugnacious,
intolerant, self-sufficient, coercive, supremacist posturing which, to Islam, was the hallmark of
the Jahili era and the essence of its ignorance. Pre-Islamic cAbiyyah was the antithesis of the
Islamic virtue of .Hilm magnanimous, tolerant, perceptive, tranquil wisdom. This assertive,
pugnacious posturing was formed by the harsh, unpropitious, bleak environment; and its
immutable, unrelenting tediousness. Such a bleak environment led to constricted perceptions; a
myopic view of the world, and certain shortcomings in some of the more humane understanding
of human behavior. The bare existence of desert life bred into its sons a counterbalancing,
mindless arrogance and self-pride. The term Jahili - of the era of Ignorance - aptly describes
the pre-Islamic bedouin in both his manners and his religious orientation. Exuberant pride in
oneself and ones tribe was not only a right but universally acknowledged as a social necessity,
even a virtue. Although the pre-Islamic Arabian possessed many virtues which we consider
laudable and worthy such as courage, patience, fortitude, hospitality, giving relief and shelter to
the destitute and the oppressed, humility could not be included among them. A certain ignorance
pervaded his understanding. Religiously, if he was a pagan he was, more often than not, ignorant
jahil- of any doctrine on which his paganism is or might have been based. He was in total
contrast to the pagan Greeks and Romans whose religion rested on convictions strong enough
that it persuaded a Christian Roman emperor, Julian, to revert to paganism - and with a
vengeance. The Meccan pantheon which the pagan Arab worshipped was largely imported from
Nabataea. (vide infra). He mouthed oaths and invocations to deities including the monotheistic
God, Allah but without any deep-seated, well informed religious knowledge as to who these
deities really were and why they deserved to be worshipped. He had, admittedly like human
beings elsewhere - religious energy which he expended on pilgrimage to the Meccan pagan
sanctuary and votive offerings to his chosen deity, but this energy lacked detailed doctrinal
system. If the desert tribesman was a Christian he is often one in name only, more often
professing political, lip-service Christianity in return for his tribes much needed
Roman/Byzantine political and financial support. Such Arabian tribal, political/ mercenary
Christians, represented mainly by northern Arabian tribes allied to Rome and Byzantium largely
lacked the well-established liturgical and sacerdotal infrastructure of the well-established
Christian communities elsewhere.
The environment had a formative influence on character. The basic topography and
hydrology of Arabia has not changed significantly in the last two to three thousand years.(1) This
helped to give the desert tribesman his inflexible rigidity of character, and his language its
vigorous durability. A systematically rigid environment most probably provided a stable
incubator which nourished into steadily sustained growth the vibrant resourceful language that
was to become later in the sixth and seventh centuries the lingua franca of the Peninsula -
Arabic. Unimpeded by cataclysmic environmental change (2), as J. Stetkevych points out, the
Arabic language in its formative - and in the literary sense - archaic stages was, with unusual
rigor, circumscribed by geography, climate, flora, fauna and demography. Such rigorous
circumscription endowed the Arabic language with unusual durability. As Jaroslav Stetkevych
points out, Arabic was not a language of a race or people who in their near past had gone
through protracted periods of transcontinental migrations which would have reshaped them
drastically in every aspect of their linguistic responses.(3) The Arabs and Semites generally,
show no evidence of a dramatically torn linguistic formative history, or even prehistory with
truly major cycles of migrations. Duration itself then becomes a tightly limiting factor when it is
a duration in unchanged place."(4)
A robust sense of durability engendered by geographical circumscription and a sound,
untorn linguistic fabric, had affected the preIslamic Arab psyche, forming it into an
idiosyncratic solipsism whose principal feature was an urge for selfexpression. The earliest and
most notable manifestation of this urge was the inscription of graffiti by the Safaites a term
used by western orientalists to refer to groups of multitribal Arab herdsmen perpetually on the
move in Nabataea and the western sector of the Syrian desert in search of pasture for their flocks.
Their original homeland was "Safat" a terrain of blackish volcanic rock lying south-east of
Damascus which appeared in a Greek text as "Safathene" and its volcanic god as "Zeus
Safathenos". (5)
Now these Safaitic inscriptions are perhaps the earliest available indications of the
primeval autochthonous Arab urge for self expression which slowly but steadily developed, in
articulation, across the following centuries into what is now known as al-carabiyyah al-fusha
classical Arabic, the largely standardized language of the Arab World today. These early
manifestations of the Arab urge for self-expression, Safaitic inscriptions, are found in the harra,
the plains of black volcanic rock which lend themselves to engravings. The Safaites were found
as far north as Palmyra and west up to Dora on the Euphrates, but they were concentrated on the
eastern slopes of Jabal Hawran. They were mainly nomads but had centers of cultivation in the
rich soil around extinct volcanoes. The Safaites left thousands of inscriptions written in south
Arabian characters and covering a period from the first to the fourth centuries C.E. Many are
personal genealogies; some merely recording the presence of a person at a location; there are
invocations to deities like the Nabataean god Dushara and to Allat which appears to be their
principal deity (vide infra, Essay Two).
The Safaitic inscriptions reflect the Arabs' primeval urge for self expression; in that they
exclusively express a variety of personal not public matters, although they are usually dated by
reference to a war, a campaign, or the reign of a king. Safaitic epigraphy was inscribed in a script
close to Thamudic or Lihyanic and from which the Arabic "Musnad" and other north Arabian
scripts evolved. (6) Apart from the intensely personal rather than the public nature of Safaitic
inscriptions; a nature which could also be found in preIslamic qasidas of the sixth century
including the Mcuallaqat, these inscriptions show the impact of Arabian geography on the
earliest development of Arabic as represented by Safaitic epigraphy. The impact of the silent,
lifeless, infinitude of the desert aroused in man the urge to declare his 'aliveness, so to speak,
by articulating epigraphically his private innermost thoughts to the mute desert rock. Rene
Dussaud suggested that the Safaitic herdsmen in their inscriptions were imitating Greek and
Roman soldiers on military service in Syria who inscribed their identities and thoughts on desert
rocks.(7)
In sum, it is suggested that the contribution made by Safaitic epigraphy to the earliest,
yet most lasting, development of the Arabic language lies in its being the earliest manifestation
of the gnawing Arab predilection for public announcement of personal grief, sorrow, or distress.
Safaitic epigraphy so far discovered is of this nature; expressive of loss of loved ones or other
similar short displays of sentiments of distress. This distinctively Arab racial characteristic
becomes clearer when contrasted to northern, western races tendency to suppress public
declamations of ravaged personal feelings. The depths into which this Arab trait of public
declamation of grief is ingrained is manifested in an Arabic work written in the Abbasid era
almost eight centuries after Safaitic epigraphy: alIsfahani's Adab alGhuraba, an extensive
anthology of graffiti inscribed by wanderers, vagrants and homesick refugees in foreign lands on
rocks, trees, walls of orchards, ruins, churches and mosques all of which are plaintive
expressions of sorrow, distress and grief.(8) Such sorrowful expressions come at the forefront of
pre-Islamic poetry, especially the Mcuallaqat, represented by al-atlal, the deserted campsite, the
semi-mandatory theme with which most pre-Islamic odes begin.

Pre-Islamic Arabia and the Old Testament:

One significant point that is often missed is that pre-Islamic northern Arabia is either Bible land,
or an extension of it outside the usual boundaries of Biblical Palestine. There is much in northern
and northwestern pre-Islamic Arabia that is Old Testament land, not only in topography, fauna
and history but also in the highly lauded biblical virtues of patience and fortitude represented by
Job. Pre-Islamic Arabs never tired of praising these two virtues as the epitome of manliness and
strength of character; thereby raising the possibility that there could well have been an ancestral
figure of antiquity who had vigorously upheld the two virtues of patience and fortitude for them
to emulate.
The main link connecting pre-Islamic northern Arabia to the Old Testament and
Biblical Palestine, it is suggested, is the Book of Job and an analysis of some depth of this work
is required to elucidate pre-Islamic northern Arabia being Biblical land. This Old Testament text
indicates that monotheistic Arabs lived in northern Hijaz in the latter half of the sixth century
B.C.E. A. Musil gave evidence that the Book of Job indeed belongs to the northern Hijaz region
of northern Arabia and J. Spencer Trimingham states that the story of Job, whose homeland was
the upper Madyan region south-west of the Dead Sea, shows that there were Arabs, with a
monotheistic outlook in northern Hijaz in the latter half of the sixth century B.C.E. (9) One
interesting paradox concerning the Book of Job is that its hero, Job, was not a Jew, but a Gentile
and the author of the Book may well have been a non-Jew as well. The Book of Job tells the story
of two Jobs, not one: To introduce the Book the author retells a legend that was already an
ancient one many centuries before Job was born. Some scholars consider that The Book of Job is
based on a lost original text of which the Hebrew text is a translation. This was the opinion of
Abraham ibn Ezra, the renowned medieval rabbinic commentator. Textual indications point to
Job being a most ancient Semitic figure. The text contains so many Arabic and Aramaic terms
and forms of expression. So ancient is this story that it could be traced back to Sumerian legends
dating back to several millennia B.C.E (10). But the biblical Job is placed anywhere between 800
and 300 B.C.E. His story - that could well have been one of edification for both pre-Islamic
Arabs and later Muslims - is about a righteous man, who for no reason at all has been deprived of
all rewards for his exemplary righteousness. In the midst of great suffering he remains
steadfastly pious, displaying an astonishing fortitude, yet blessing, and thanking, the Lord for his
suffering. His patience became proverbial, cited in The Epistle of James you have heard of
the patience of Job. It was this legendary patient Job, not the desperate impatient Job of the
Book, who ironically enough, became so well known in Western culture.(11) It is the example of
this first legendary Job whose half-forgotten archetypal example lived on in north-western pre-
Islamic Arabia who - we cannot repeat often enough - hailed patience, sabr, and fortitude,
musabara, as foremost among human virtues. Following closely, and strongly endorsing, these
two pre-Islamic virtues first upheld by the legendary Job, Islam affirms that believers must not
only accept suffering and adversity as being of Gods will, but should, also like the legendary
Job, thank Him for them. Job displays a distinctively Arabian pre- Islamic trait that is also fully
endorsed by Islam: That patience will be rewarded; that those who are patient will enjoy
prosperity after hardship. The end of the Book of Job often baffles western readers. How they
ask can Job bear to enter a new life after all the agony he has been put through? And how can
he accept new children as a replacement for his murdered sons and daughter? What a
mockery!(12) But neither pagan Arabians nor later Islamic ones would find this a mockery at all.
On the contrary, it would be a comforting, reiterated vindication of their view of life: that good
times will follow bad and bad times will follow good ones; and when bad, hard times befall Man
they have to be stoically endured to ease the way for the return of the good. The eighteenth
century English mystic and poet William Blake saw the Book of Job as a spiritual
transformation.(13) It is to effect just such a spiritual transformation that pre-Islamic Arabians
and later, Islam saw the purpose of Jobs and Mans suffering: to metamorphose those who
suffer into better, stronger, wiser beings.
 That Job was not Jewish but a Gentile, and an Arabian, comes from the text itself.
Internal evidence from the Book of Job shows that he came from the town of Madyan, a short
distance from the eastern shores of the Gulf of Aqaba. Where he died, however, is a different
matter. He is reported to have been buried much further north. In her travelogue, the European
nun Egeria reports that shortly before her visit to the region (c.383 C.E) the site of Jobs tomb
was discovered near the village of Shaikh Sacad in the Hawran, in Syria, which then could still
be seen, together with that of his wife, as well as the monastery, Dayr Ayyub, dedicated to him.
Tradition relates that the name of the city of Bostra is derived from that of Jobs mother.(14) On
the language side it may be inferred that the northern Hijazi Arabs of Jobs time may have
spoken an early Arabic, thereby bringing back the history of the Arabic language to the sixth
century B.C.
Why this extended coverage of Job in this introductory first essay?
The two virtues of patience and fortitude exemplified by Job were by no means
exclusively pre-Islamic, or Islamic, but were upheld by all three monotheistic religions and other
human faiths. But in pre-Islamic Arabia they have especial significance. They are a
manifestation of character as it was affected, and formed by environment and climate. The desert
is perhaps one of the most inhospitable of human habitats. Survival requires enormous reservoirs
of stamina to be maintained by ingrained and ongoing patience and fortitude. Enduring the bleak,
bare desert was further tested by a punishing and fragmented tribal culture, with its perpetual
fratricidal raids and protracted wars that left untold numbers of dead. Grinding poverty among
the poorer tribes meant for many that there was simply nothing to eat. In no other human society
do we hear of the practice of wad - fathers burying their infant daughters alive either because
they could not feed them or because they could not endure the shame of their being carried away
as captives in tribal raids should the infant girls be allowed to live. All these punishing
circumstances augmented the harsh climate and environment in rigidifying character. To ensure
that character was firm and rigid enough to endure this harsh life the psychological, if not moral,
supports of patience and fortitude were indispensable. The Arabian Job thus becomes a motto, an
emblem, for these two virtues without which, the pre-Islamic Arabs may not have endured as
they did.
It was this Jobian effect on character which probably explains the wealth of classical
scholarly interest in the Arabian origins of Job. Among such scholars was the Arabist Albert
Schultens in his Liber Jobi of 1737 supported later by D. S. Margoliouth and Charles James
Lyall. It was Albert Schultens (16801750), Professor of Oriental Languages at Leyden in 1720
who was an emphatic supporter of Arabia as the background for the Book of Job, as shown in his
Liber Jobi. Moreover he upheld the close relationship between Hebrew and Arabic, maintaining
that the true nature of the Hebrew language and the meaning of many of its words are to be
found in Arabic. Schultens made use of his profound mastery of Arabic in his exegesis of the
Scriptures, especially the Book of Job and the Proverbs. (15) Lyall, the strongest supporter of an
Arabian original for the Book of Job starts his correlation between the Old Testament in Davids
lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan I am distressed for you my brother Jonathan, greatly
beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.(16)This
Lyall describes as a poem strikingly resembling an Arab marthiyya (Lament, dirge). He then
mentions Deborahs song of triumph which she chanted on the defeat and death of the Canaanite
general Sisera .(17)
But Lyall sees more remarkable correlations with Arabia in the Book of Job. The
scene, Lyall affirms, is laid in north Arabia, and the personages are by race, Arabs. The author of
the Book of Job, says Lyall, was a Jew of the post exile period but in going to Arabia for his
scene and characters he seems to have borrowed something from the poetic art of the desert.(18)
The Arab in his odes, Lyall explains, refers to desert fauna the mountain goat; the gazelle
(doe); the oryx; the wild ass; the ostrich; the lion; the horse; and the eagle (hawk) - all of which
he describes with the skill of intimate knowledge. It we turn to Job chapter 39, Lyall says, we
find precisely the same animals mentioned there. For the writer of Job to have chosen for
description the same types of desert fauna as the Arabia of some 800 or 900 years later leads us
to conjecture that in his day, perhaps the fifth or fourth century B.C there was already some
standard of poetic art in Arabia and that it dealt with the same subjects of animal life, in the
same pictorial manner as the poetry of the sixth and seventh centuries A. D. (18) (my italics)
Biblical research largely corroborates Lyall. First: "There was a man in the land of Uz
whose name was Job.(19) Genesis defines Uz as the first of the four sons of Aram. There are two
conflicting traditions on the location of the land of Uz. The first places it in northern
Mesopotamia or the Hawran region of Syria. The second identifies it with Edom, to the southeast
of Canaan: Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, who livest in the land of Uz (20) Verses
15 and 17 of the first chapter of Job inply that Uz lay on the northern edge of the great Arabian
desert, in the land of Edom, the Biblical Idumea, (21) a land of rough hills on the east side of
Wadi Arabah, extending from the head of the Gulf of Aqaba to the foot of the Dead Sea. It
contained among other cities Selah (Petra). It's old Capital was Bozrah.(22)
Now the Southern part of Edom was known as Teman. Eliphaz, Job's friend, was a
Temanite, which was used as a synonym for Edom itself, although actually it was a town in
southern Edom. Eusebius mentions an "east Teman", a town with a Roman garrison about
fifteen miles from Petra. Johann Gottfried Westzstein (18151905), the nineteenth century
Prussian consul in Damascus places Uz and Edom in Hawran, east of the Jordan (23) From the
aforementioned Biblical account it could be safely said, and in verification of Lyall's thesis, that
the story of Job took place in the Roman administrative provinces of Arabia Petraeia and/ or
Provincia Arabia.
The Old Testament, especially in its earlier parts shows copious Arabic terms, which
supports the thesis that northern and northwestern Arabia was part, and an extension to the south-
east, of Biblical lands. George E. Mendenhall points out that the texts of the earliest portions of
the Old Testament exhibit words that have a high percentage of cognates in Arabic, though later
texts have far fewer Arabic cognates and many more cognates from Aramaic and Babylonian.
The early society of ancient Israel had quite close connections with the Arabic speaking
world.(24) This makes clear that spoken Arabic existed in early Biblical times and preceded the
Arabic script by at least eight to ten centuries, and thus further substantiating the Arabian origins
of the Book of Job. To conclude this account on Job we may well ask again the question posed
by a scholar in the 1930s:Is the Book of Job a Translation of an Arabic Original?(25).

Character & Personality in Pre Islamic Arabia:

Personal character in pre-Islamic Arabia was governed by a vigorous autochthonous awareness,

proudly self sufficient, of the separate ethnic Arab identity. This Arab selfsufficiency, as Von
Grunebaum points out, is spurred by a sense of seperateness from contiguous groups; that the
racial pride of the Arab does not seem to have suffered by the realization of his political and
civilizational backwardness in comparison with his Greek or Persianspeaking neighbors'.(26) It
was from this ground of ethnic, racial pride that the Arabic script had evolved as a means of
recording in writing the rapidly evolving Arabic language.
As will be explained in detail in Essay Two, Arabic epigraphy was first represented
by the first century B.C.E inscription at Qaryat alFaw; followed by the En Avdat inscription of
First/ Second century C.E; Raqush (267 C.E); Namarah (328 C.E); Jabal Ramm, (Fourth century
C.E); Sakakah (Fourth/ Fifth C.E); Umm alJimal (Fifth/ Sixth C.E); Zebed (512 C.E); Jabal
Usays (528 C.E); Harran (568 C.E) (27). These inscriptions, plus those that are yet to be
discovered, show that the Arabs were by the first century C.E developing, and by the sixth
century had developed, a highly articulate language and linguistic culture that enabled them to
evolve, says Von Grunebaum, into a Kulturnation in preIslamic times, and, after Islam they
progressed into a Staatsnation. Von Grunebaum draws a clarifying analogy with Greece:
Hellenic kinship and identity were based on community of blood, language and religion. A
unified Staatsnation never arose in Greece, and many of its individual staatsnationen proved to
be erratic and unstable. But the Hellenic Kulturnation was viable, durable and quite stable,
unaffected by the instability of its individual staatsnationen (28)
The sentiment of "Arabism" was primarily and overwhelmingly located in the tribes,
whose transient ephemeral alliances and their ongoing strife and skirmishes do not seem to have
curtailed this sense of identity just as perpetual warfare between Greek citystates left their
Hellenic identity and culture, untouched. (29) In preIslamic Arabia, continuous intertribal
warfare not only left the tribes' Arab identity and culture untouched and intact, it, in fact,
contributed to the cohesiveness of the tribal world; one that was strengthened by tribal rivalries
and conflicts.Victory and defeat, grandeur and misery had meaning only within the charmed
circle of disorganized communion. (30)
This turbulent tribal world of preIslamic Arabia not only facilitated the spread of
the Arabic language through inter tribal communication in postwar truce negotiations. It also led
to the formation of a pantribal code of conduct and sociobehavioral patterns to which all tribes
were committed. This code was known as din alcArab the ways of the Arabs which was the
Sunna, or the law of the land'; a universal criterion by which everyone abides. Now, preIslamic
poetry was merely a reflection of the general tenor of Arabian life: Glory in life was to lord it
over others and to have assumed an ascendancy that one can declaim, in pride, through ones
verse. And yet, it is equally glorious to resist being politically coerced by a strong leader and
suffer his real or imagined highhanded arrogance. To assume supremacy over others, and, at
the same time to resist an actual or supposed domination by an "autocratic" malik, a tribal
monarch, is fully in tune with the general tenor of tribal life which is largely atomistic,
libertarian, devoid of larger purpose and much in need of that heightening of its petty
irrelevancies by which the poets lent it dignity. The universal code, din alcArab, was another
unifying factor which facilitated the spread of the Arabic language and script. This code was the
medium through which declarations of compliance with what was universally accepted as the
law of the land was expressed and violations of this legal code were publicly indicted. The
pre-Islamic code of chivalry muruwwa was the major constituent of the Din, although a law of
exemplary moral conduct, murruwa had absolutely no religious character. (31)
Another factor which was instrumental in the rapid spread of Arabic was the
economic one. Von Grunebaum notes that Arabia's city dwellers made possible the economic
formative unity of north and central Arabia which, in turn, made possible the formation of the
region's tribes into a Kulturnation. Intertribal markets and meeting places such as cUkz played
a powerful role in the formation of that national consciousness which eventually led to the pre
Islamic northern Arabs being a Kulturnation (32). Arabia, since remote prehistory was criss
crossed with hundreds of caravan routes. The merchant caravaneers carried, by the fifth century,
their developing language together with their goods. (33)
But what acted as the cultural adhesive that linguistically cemented the northern pre
Islamic tribes together and acted as the indisputable syntactical, grammatical, and
morphological reference point to which all Arabs referred to as the supreme language arbiter was
the incorporeal term "Arab" within the phrase "qlat alcArab" the Arabs said - as the standard
norm of correct speech which every wellspoken person must comply with." cArab" could also
denote a person whose tribe was unknown: rajul min al cArab ( a man of the Arabs). A
vagabond would be described as Sclk min Scalik al cArab (One of the vagabonds of the
Arabs). In short the term. "The Arabs" denotes 'the public before which the individual and the
tribe must make good as before a court in permanent session'.(34) "The Arabs", to preIslamic
Arabs existed as a regulatory, ever present public, an orientation point, stable in spite of its
elusiveness, a concept not to be strictly defined, though sufficiently precise to allow the growth
of a sense of national character (35)
Thus, pre-Islamic Arabia was a highly idiosyncratic tribal society. The absence
of trans-continental migrations into the Peninsula; the rigidifying effects of a harsh, bleak climate
and environment; and the absence of such external cultural influences that could have mollified
such rigidities, had all contributed to the nature of the Arabian character. Moreover, the absence
of the concept of progress in our modern sense of the word - was also a contributory factor:
The pre-Islamic Arabs had a lineal view of their existence which continued, unbroken, since the
Creation. They perceived themselves, their lifestyle, and their societal and moral values as an
uninterrupted extension of those of Noah, Shem, Abraham, and specifically, Ishmael from whom
they proudly claimed descent. They did not, or could not, perceive of development also in our
modern sense of the word as being an instrumental factor of change towards a better life. This
lack of a developmental mentality accentuated, and further hardened, their idiosyncratic nature.
Also, their roots extending deep into the earliest of biblical times, represented by what had been
shown as the Arabian origins of the Book of Job, further solidified their autochthonous nature by
giving them deeper biblical dimensions. Thus pre-Islamic tribal Arabs, for all intents and
purposes, could be described as a biblical people, and northern Arabia as bible land (vide
supra). This circumscribed, highly autochthonous pre-Islamic Arabian character is clearly shown
in the only form of their culture which has been documented and had come down to us Oral
poetry and which is discussed in copious detail in the last essay in this series.

The paganism of pre-Islamic Arabia:

Pagan Arabia aroused the interest of western scholars since the mid seventeenth century. The
first to deal with this field was Edward Pococke in Specimen Historiae Arabum.(36). The next
major work was Julius Wellhausens Reste Arabischen Heidentums (37) in which the author draws
on Kitab al-Asnam (Book of Idols) by Ibn al Kalbi, known at that time only by quotations
scattered in Yaquts Mcujam al-Buldan (Geographical Dictionary). Reliable studies on pagan
Arabia followed the discovery of the full text of Ibn al-Kalbis Kitab al-Asnam published in
Cairo in 1913 by Ahmad Zaki Pasha and later translated into English and German (38). Arabian
pre-Islamic paganism could be described as being both syncretic and eclectic. It drew, built upon
and fused a number of religious traditions known to the Arabs. First, there was a vague form of
Abrahamic monotheism, a belief in a supreme being who begat two astral daughters Allat and
al-cUzza and a non astral daughter, Manat; and an active belief in animism; though one cannot
speak of polytheism. 38) Following are accounts on (a) Monotheism; (b) Allat, al-cUzza, and
Manat; (c) Animism.
(a) The pagan Arabian belief in a Supreme Being could be described as pre-
monotheistic. The Being was supreme but had, more or less, the character of primus inter pares.
There were other deities, and spirits, beside the Supreme Being, who were entitled, and
commanded, worshipful veneration. This was the greatest of enormities vigorously condemned
by Islam as shirk (Association). It was the obsession with genealogy that entrenched belief in this
Supreme Being: The pre-Islamic Arabs firmly believed in their descent from Ishmael, son of the
monotheistic Abraham.(39) Genealogical belief in descent from Ishmael would thus have
augmented the pagan Arabs belief in that Supreme Being which Ishmaels monotheistic father,
Abraham, worshipped. Some scholars have considered the oldest form of Semitic religion to be a
fairly pure monotheism. Legrange claims that El, was the common, original and probably the
only god of the Semites.(40) W. Schmidt endorsed and documented this view. He held that the
same belief also existed among the ancient Semitic nomads in addition to the pre-Islamic
Bedouin Arabs. (41)
(b) The goddesses Allat, al-cUzza and Manat: Allat is said to have meant the goddess as
Allah is the Supreme Being, the male god. (42) There is a widespread belief that the three
Arabian goddesses were of foreign origin. Wellhausen assumes that the pagan nomads were
basically indifferent and unoriginal in matters of religion and that their gods were borrowed from
more advanced civilizations, while Caskel regards influences within Arabia as being the more
effective in forming Arabian belief. (43) The author of this presentation agrees with both these
views, and specifies that the Nabataeans were the advanced civilization, one within Arabia
proper, from which the pagan Arabs drew most of their religious ritual and their three female
deities. (vide infra). The views of the pan-Babylonian school of the early twentieth century,
represented by H. Winckler, holding that the pagan nomad Arabs represent a most ancient,
primitive form of Semitic religion has now been abandoned.(44)
Henninger rejects the importance and influence of pan-Babylonian astral divinities on
central and northern Arabia, though he admits they dominated the religion of south Arabia. He
states that the three goddesses venerated at Mecca by Quraysh and other tribes - Allat, al-cUzza
and Manat - cannot be considered as divinities of purely bedouin character and influence. Manat
was a goddess of destiny without astral characteristics. Allat and al-cUzza represent the two
phases of Venus, evening and morning.(45) It is hereby argued that Allat and al-cUzza were of
Nabataean origin, like other constituents of pagan Arabian religion such as the Kcaba and
circumambulation, tawaf. (46)
(c) Animism: Pre- Islamic pagan religion tended to be freely imaginative. Trees, caves, wells,
springs, stones, and boulders, were imagined to be the dwelling places of spirits. Wild animals
and desolate, fearsome places in the wilderness were perceived as inhabited by djinn or
demons.(47) One field of Semitic studies holds that in the most primitive phases of the
development of religion there were no gods bearing distinct personality but only spirits, djinn,
taken to represent this primitive stage. Belief in djinn was attributed to the bedouins whereas
settled people are credited with the creation of individual gods. Wellhausen became the
champion of this theory which still has supporters today. (48) He has rightly observed that these
spirits were feared, and it was necessary to protect oneself against them, but they did not
develop, or were the object, of a true cult.(49) Henninger disagrees with the theory that the desert-
djinn originated with the Bedouin and was passed by them to village and town dwellers. He says
that the Bedouin were well used to the desert and had much less to fear from djinn than town
dwellers who regard the desert as an unknown, terrifying region inhabited by monsters and
demons. (50) This view of the desert by townspeople already existed in the ancient Near East.(51)
The word djinn is not Arabic but Aramaic, used by Aramaic Christians to refer to pagan gods
reduced to demons, and W.F. Albright concluded that the word djinn was introduced into
pagan Arabic folklore late in the pre-Islamic period. (52)
Stone-worship, litholatry, was a significant constituent of pagan Arab religious belief.
Stones were not venerated as material objects in themselves but rather as a dwelling place of
either a personal god or a force. Dussaud agrees with this but warns against misuse of the term
stone-worship, litholatry, which expresses a false idea and is based on a total lack of
understanding of the rites.(53) The stone was either a rock outcropping or a boulder, often a black
basaltic stone without representative sculptural detail. Deities were believed to have resided in
these stones, hence the term bet-el house of god or baetylus, used by Byzantine writers of
the fifth and sixth centuries. The most famous baetylus is the Black Stone that still survives in
the Kcaba today.(54) The reason for venerating stones was the belief that they had fallen from the
sun, moon, stars and planets and that they represent cosmic forces. So strong is this belief that it
survived paganism and became part of Islamic ritual. The Black Stone (actually its color is that
of burnt amber) in the Kcaba today is the same one the pre-Islamic pagans venerated. So strong
was this veneration that when the stone was removed and shattered in 930 by the Qarmations, an
Iraqi communist/anarchist sect, the pieces were returned, sealed together in pitch, and held in
place by silver wire.(55) Pagan Arabian stone worship was known throughout the world of Late
Antiquity. Greek writers such as Maximus of Tyre and Clement of Alexandria considered
Arabian pagan religion to be a form of fetishism; the worship of stones, and other natural
objects.(56). The Kcaba in Mecca, the central point of pagan worship, is considered to have been
an astronomical temple, dedicated to the sun, moon, and five visible planets, making seven; the
mystical number of the circumambulations, tawaf of the Kcaba. That there were also some 360-
odd idols around the Kcaba is also of astronomical significance.(57)
In the last analysis, it is proposed that pagan pre-Islamic Arabian religion was largely
autochthonous, drawing its constituents from within the northern and northwestern regions of the
Peninsula; specifically from Nabataea and those of its environs which were influenced by
Nabataean culture and religion. Nabataean influences on pagan Arabian religion are too
numerous to be ignored. Allat, al-cUzza and Manat were worshipped in Petras temples; the
aniconic shape of the Kcaba reflects that of the Nabataean God Dussares; the very name Kcaba
derives from Chaamu Dussares virgin mother; and circumambulation was practiced in the
temples of Petra (58).

Notes to Essay One The Land and the People A Short Introduction
1. Daniel T. Potts Trans-Arabian Routes of the Pre-Islamic Period in AAEI, p. 45. On pre-Islamic poetry not
reflecting all aspects of contemporary life see Levi Della Vida Le Semites et leur role dans lhistoire
religieuse (Paris, 1938) pp.81-91, 116-17 n.40; M. Gaudfroy-Demombynes Mahomet (Paris, 1957) pp.
89,90.
2. Such a change as had, for instance, overturned the ecology and subsequently the population structures of
southern Arabia through the collapse of the Marib Dam.
3. Jaroslav Stetkeyvych In Search of the Unicorn: The Onager and the Oryx in the Arabian Ode JAL
XXXIII, 2, 2002, p.85.
4. Ibid.
5. JA, Vol.3 pp142-144. Jawad Ali, however, does not identify the Greek texts he cites. See also G.
Ryckmans Inscriptions Safaitiques (Louvain, 1951) and E. Littman Safaitic Inscriptions (Leiden, 1943);
Sp. Tr. pp 91, 92.
6. The earliest Arabic inscription in Musnad script was discovered in Qaryat al-Faw, in Saudi Arabia. Vide
Infra Essay Two Nabataean Influences on northern Arabia.
7. Dussoud is cited by Jawad Ali al-Mufassal Vol.3. p. 144. The Roman soldiers were probably either
building or patrolling the Strata Diocletiana, of Diocletian (284-305), a military road with forts and watch-
towers that ran from Damascus northeast to Palmyra, and from there to the Euphrates.(BASIXC p. 211)
This area is also Safaitic country where inscriptions, Roman or Safaitic, could have been left.
8. On al-Isfahanis Adab al-Ghurabaa see Ibrahim Mumayiz Strangers Lore: Abul Faraj al-Isfahanis
Adab al-Ghurabaa (Irbid, Jordan: Dar al-Hilal, 2001) and Patricia Crone & Shmuel Moreh (trans.)The
Book of Strangers/Medieval Arabic Graffiti on the Theme of Nostalgia Attributed to Abul Faraj Al-
Isfahani (Princeton: N.J., Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000)
9. A. Musil The Northern Hijaz (New York, 1926) p.248ff.; Sp. Tr. p. 249
10. Stephen Mitchell The Book of Job (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), xxxi.
11. Ibid vii, viii.
12. Ibid xxviii, xxix
13. Ibid xxix
14. Sp. Tr. p. 241 citing J.D. Mansi Sacrorum Conciliorum (Florence: 1759-98) republished 1902 Vol.1 p. 787.
15. From William Ormes entry on Schultens in Bibliotheca Biblica: A Select List of Books on Sacred
Literature, with Notices Biographical, Critical and Bibliographical (London, 1824)
16. 2Samuel 1:26
17. Judges: 4-5.
18. Charles James Lyall The Mufaddaliyat/ An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes Vol II, Translation & Notes
(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1918) Introduction xxiv, xxv. On the desert fauna in the Book of Job cited
by Lyall: the lion (ch.39); mountain goats (ch. 39:1); does, gazelles (39:1); wild ass, wild donkey, onager
(39:5), wild ox, oryx (39:9); ostrich (39:13); horse (39:19) hawk, eagle (39:26).
19. Job 1.1
20. Lamentations 4:21. On Uz the first born of Aram Genesis 10:23 For an exhaustive survey see E. Dhorme
Le Livre de Job (Paris, 1926)
21. Mark 3:8
22. Isaiah 63:1 Who is this who comes from Edom in crimsoned garments from Bozrah; Jeremiah 48: 24n
and Kerioth and Bozrah and all the cities of the land of Moab; Amos 1:12 So I will send a fire upon
Timan and it shall devour the strongholds of Bozrah.
23. C. Siegfried The Book of Job (Baltimore & Leipsic, 1898 pp 42 et. Seq.; Encyclopedia Judaica: Uz,
Edom
24. Methods and Approaches of Orientalists in Biblical Studies Proceedings of Conference on Orientalism,
University of Jordan, Amman, October 22-24, 2002 p. 196. George Mendenhall is Emeritus Professor of
Near Eastern Languages and Literature at the University of Michigan, and author of Ancient Israel: Faith
and History: An Introduction to the Bible in Context. (London, 2001)
25. F.H. Foster Is the Book of Job a Translation of an Arabic Original?American Journal of Semitic Studies,
October 1932, pp 21ff. See also James Montgomery Arabia and the Bible Library of Biblical Studies
(KTAV Publishing, 1969 ,no place of publication given); for further articles on Job see A. Guillaume
Studies in the Book of Job (Leiden, 1968).
26. G.E. Von Grunebaum The Nature of Arab Unity Before Islam in AAEI p.6
27. Vide infra Essay Two Nabatean Influences on Northern Arabia
28. Von Grunebaum, op.cit p.1ff. The terms Kulturnation and Staatsnation were first used and developed by
Friedrich Meinecke in his Weltburgertum und Nationalstaat first published in 1907. The sixth edition was
published in Berlin & Munich in 1922. The two terms are discussed in Meinecke Ch.1 pp.1-22
29. Von Grunebaum op.cit. p.2
30. Ibid p.8
31. Ibid p.7. On the pre-Islamic concepts of murruwa and Din al-Arab see I. Goldziher Murruwa und Din in
Muhammedanische Studien (Halle,1889) pp.1-39 translated into English under the title Muslim Studies
(London 1967) pp 11-44; and Montgomery Watt Muhammad at Mecca , 1953 ed. pp. 20-33
32. Von Grunebaum p.8
33. For full details of these numerous Arabian routes see Daniel T. Potts Trans-Arabian Routes op.cit
34. Von Grunebaum p.18
35. Ibid pp 18, 19.
36. Ch. 4. First published in Oxford in 1649, republished by the Clarendon Press in 1806.
37. First published in Berlin 1887, 2nd ed. also in 1887, republished 1927. See Joseph Henninger Pre-Islamic
Bedouin Religion in Studies in Islam Merlin L. Swartz, ed. (1981) Introduction, passim. See also
Henningers Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion in AAEI
38. Ibid. conclusion to Introduction.
39. See the following Essay Two Nabataean Influences on Northern Arabia Nabataean Genealogy
40. M.J. Le Grange Etudes sur les Religions Semitiques 2nd ed. (Paris, 1905) passim.
41. P.W. Schmidt Der Ursprung der Gottesides: Die Asiatischen Hirtenvolker (Munster, 1940- 1955) Vol. II p.
670-74.
42. Alfred Guillaume Islam (Paris, 1956) pp. 6, 7.
43. Julius Wellhausen Reste Arabischen Heidentums op.cit pp. 224-228; W. CaskelThe Bedoinisation of
Arabia in Studies in Islamic Cultural History G.E. Von Grunebaum, ed. The American Anthropological
Association, Memoir 76, April 1954 (Monasha, Wisconsin), p.39.
44. See H. Winckler Arabische- Semitische- Orientalisch Mitteilungen (1901) pp. 151-373 passim.
45. Henninger op.cit p. 3ff
46. For details on the three astral goddesses see Nabataean Religion in Essay Two.
47. Jack Finnigan Archaeology of World Religions (1952) pp. 482-485.
48. Wellhausen op.cit. pp. 211-214.
49. Ibid p. 213; pp.148-160 passim.
50. Henninger op.cit. p.33
51. A. Holder The Notion of the Desert in Sumero-Accadian and West Semitic Religions (Uppsala & Leipzig,
1950), summary in Anthropos, 46, (1951) p. 624; E. Zbinden Die Djinn der Islam und der Altorientalische
Geisterglaube (Bern & Stuttgart, 1953) pp. 101-111.
52. See W.F. Albright in JAOS, Vol. 57 (1957) pp. 319, 320.
53. Henninger op.cit; R. Dussaud Le Penetration des Arabes en Syrie avant lIslam (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1955)
p.41.
54. Arabian Religions in Encyclopedia Britannica (1979 ed.) p. 1059.
55. Peter Occhigrosso The Joy of the Sects (New York: Doubleday, 1996) p. 395; on the Qarmations see LHA
pp. 272, 274,322.
56. G.E. Von Grunebaum Medieval Islam (Chicago, 1953) 2nd ed. P.131 n. 89.
57. Malise Ruthven Islam in the World (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)
58. For fuller details see Nabataean Religion in Essay Two..