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Monotheism in pre-Islamic Arabia

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This article is about monotheism in pre-Islamic Arabia. For the religion of Christianity in pre-Islamic Arabia, see Christianity in pre-Islamic Arabia. For Judaism in pre-Islamic Arabia, see Judaism in pre-Islamic Arabia.

Monotheism as the belief in a supreme Creator being,[1] existed in pre-Islamic Arabia. This practice occurred among pre-Islamic Christian, Jewish, and other populations unaffiliated with either one of the two major Abrahamic religions at the time. Monotheism became a religious trend in pre-Islamic Arabia in the fourth century CE, when it began to supplant the polytheism that had been the common form of religion until then.[2][3] Transition from polytheism to monotheism in this time is documented from inscriptions in all writing systems on the Arabian Peninsula (including those in Nabataean, Safaitic, and Sabaic), where polytheistic gods and idols cease to be mentioned. Epigraphic evidence is nearly exclusively monotheistic in the fifth century,[4] and from the sixth century and until the eve of Islam, it is solely monotheistic.[5] Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry is also monotheistic or henotheistic.[6]

Gilded statue of the Canaanite supreme deity El (c. 1400–1200 BC) from the site of Tel Megiddo. El is identical to the Ugaritic god Ilu, whose name is considered to be the cognate of the word "Ilah", which later becomes Allah.[7]

An important locus of pre-Islamic Arabian monotheism, the Himyarite Kingdom, ruled over South Arabia, whose ruling class converted to Judaism in the fourth century[citation needed] (roughly when official polytheistic inscriptions stopped appearing in the area) and who nevertheless presented a neutral outwards monotheism in engagement with the public. Historians call a monotheism that came to be prevalent among populations unaffiliated with either then widespread Abrahamic religion by many terms, including "gentile monotheism", "pagan monotheism", "Himyarite monotheism", "Arabian monotheism", "hanifism", "Rahmanism", and so on.[8] In the sixth century, the Aksumite invasion of Himyar led to Christian rule in the region.

Islamic tradition - as in the Book of Idols by Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (737–819) - characterises Arabia as dominated by polytheism and by idolatry before the mission of Muhammad. Such a representation is important to the Islamic idea of pre-Islamic Arabia as the Jahiliyyah ("Age of Ignorance"). Monotheism was allegedly confined to small pockets, like the Christian community of Najran or to Jewish tribes such as the Banu Qurayza. There was also the occasional hanif ("renunciate"). The awāʾil ("firsts") genre of literature frequently attributes the status of the first true monotheist to figures of the sixth and early-seventh-centuries like Quss Ibn Sa'ida al-Iyadi (died c. 610), Waraqah ibn Nawfal (died c. 610), and Zayd ibn Amr (died 605).[9]

Polytheistic era

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Early attestations of Arabian polytheism include Esarhaddon's Annals, mentioning Atarsamain, Nukhay, Ruldaiu, and Atarquruma. Herodotus, writing in his Histories, reported that the Arabs worshipped Orotalt (identified with Dionysus) and Alilat (identified with Aphrodite).[10] Strabo stated the Arabs worshipped Dionysus and Zeus. Origen stated they worshipped Dionysus and Urania.[10] Similarly, late Nabataean, Safaitic, and Sabaic inscriptions attest to the veneration of a broad array of sacred stones and polytheistic deities until the fourth century.[8]

Judaism

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Main article: Judaism in pre-Islamic Arabia

Judaism is attested on the Arabian Peninsula since the 1st century BC, and it is the first form of monotheism documented in the area. The main centers of Judaism were in Northwest and Southern Arabia. Judaism briefly gained political ascendancy in South Arabia, from the late fourth century when Malkikarib Yuhamin converted to the religion, until the first decades of the sixth century, when the Aksumite invasion of Himyar ushered Christian rule into the region. Local forms of political involvement also occurred in the Northwest: for example, one inscription from 203 AD states that a Jew named Isaiah became the head of the Tayma oasis. Additional inscriptions from the mid-4th century refer to Jewish headmen of both Hegra and Dedan.[11][12] Christian J. Robin has suggested that a governor of one of the tribes in central Arabia, Ḥujr, may have been Jewish. In eastern Arabia, Josephus claims that a son of the first-century king of Adiabene converted to Judaism.[13]

Literary sources outside of Arabia occasionally refer to Jewish communities there, such as a passage from the Midrash Rabba which says two rabbis travelled to Hegra to improve their Aramaic. Procopius, a 6th-century Byzantine historian, also mentions that "Hebrews had lived from of old in autonomy, but in the reign of this Justinian they have become subject to the Romans", referring to the Tiran Island.[14] A few Palestinian and Jordanian inscriptions also reveal knowledge of the South Arabian Jewish community.[15]

Christianity

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Main article: Christianity in pre-Islamic Arabia

The major center of Christianity in pre-Islamic Arabia was in South Arabia. The earliest reported missionary sent to the region, Theophilus the Indian, lived in the fourth century, commissioned by the emperor Constantius II, the successor of Constantine the Great. The summary of the event by Philostorgius claims that Theophilus succeeded in establishing three churches, but the attempt to convert the leader, Tharan Yuhanim, failed.[16]

In the second half of the fourth century, the ruling elites of Himyar, the polity ruling South Arabia, converted to Judaism, during the reign of Malkikarib Yuhamin, and it is in this time that polytheistic inscriptions cease to be recorded in the area, leaving Rahmanan ("The Merciful One") as the sole high god mentioned in texts from this period onwards,[17] and with the former polytheistic temples being decommissioned or converted into sites of worship for the new religion.[18] This transition was sharp,[17] and the last South Arabian polytheistic inscription was created in the 380s.[19] However, Christianity continued to grow in South Arabia during this time period. This prompted a reaction by the ruling elites, who eventually committed a massacre against the Christian community of Najran during the reign of Dhu Nuwas. This prompted the invasion of Himyar by the nearby Aksumite Kingdom located in Ethiopia, which was Christian at the time. The invasion was a success, and ushered in Christian rule over South Arabia from the 520s onwards.[20]

Sumyafa Ashwa came into power at first, but he was soon overthrown by his rival Abraha, who dominated regional politics for much of the middle decades of the 6th century.[21] Christianity became the official religion[22] and inscriptions begin mentioning churches,[23] priests, abbots, and monasteries.[24] The high god continues to be called Rahmanan in these texts, but the texts are now also accompanied by crosses and references to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.[25] One of these texts (the Jabal Dabub inscription) has a pre-Islamic variant of the Basmala.[26] Abraha also realigned himself from the Ethiopian church to the church of Syriac Christianity, centred in Antioch and Syria.[22] Abraha's influence would end up extending across the regions he conquered, including regions of eastern Arabia, central Arabia, Medina in the Hejaz, and an unidentified site called Gzm.[27]

Sources

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Epigraphy

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With a few exceptions, there are no polytheistic pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions from the fourth to sixth centuries:[28] among over one hundred monumental inscriptions that could testify to a polytheistic cult, only two of them do, along with less than ten inscriptions from wood remains.[29] Similarly, of 58 extant Late Sabaic inscriptions that mention the theonym Rahmanan from the period of Jewish rule in south Arabia, none of them can be labelled as pagan or polytheistic. Invocation of alternative deities was rare, though it suggests the cult surrounding Rahmanan was henotheistic as opposed to purely monotheistic. Once Christian rule initiates in South Arabia in the early sixth century, extant inscriptions become purely monotheistic.[30]

Epigraphic evidence further attests to the spread of Judaism beyond South Arabia, into northwestern Arabia,[31][32] as well as Christianity into all major regions of Arabia[4] including northern Arabia and the southern Levant, southern Arabia, western Arabia,[33] and across the gulf of eastern Arabia.[34][35] All Paleo-Arabic inscriptions from the fifth and sixth centuries, which have been found in all major regions of the Arabian peninsula and in the southern Levant, are either monotheistic or explicitly Christian.[36] These inscriptions also demonstrate a penetration of monotheism into previously thought holdouts or surviving bastions of paganism or polytheism, such as Dumat al-Jandal and Taif (which ibn al-Kalbi held to be the centre of the cult of Al-Lat in the sixth century).[36] These inscriptions refer to God with the use of terms like Allāh, al-Ilāh (ʾl-ʾlh), and Rabb ("Lord"). The uncontracted form Al-Ilāh/ʾl-ʾlh is thought to have among Christians as an isomorphism or calque for the Greek expression ho theos, which is how the Hebrew ʾĕlōhîm is rendered in the Septuagint.[37] This uncontracted form continued to be used by Christians until the tenth century, even as the form ʾllh appeared in the Quran with two consecutive lāms without a hamza.[38] One Islamic-era example of the uncontracted form is in the Yazid inscription.[39]

Pre-Islamic poetry

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Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry rarely mentions idols or the gods and practices of polytheistic religion. Principally, they indicate a belief in monotheism or henotheism.[40][41]

Quran

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The Quran occasionally offers evidence for vestiges of knowledge of polytheistic deities in two passages. Its descriptions of the "associators" (mushrikūn) have been increasingly understood, since originally being posited by Julius Wellhausen, to be references to monotheistic/henotheistic individuals who did not dispute the supremacy of Allah but instead believed in other beings (such as angels) that acted as intermediaries in the devotion to the one high God.[42][43][44]

Arabic historiography

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Muslim-era historiographical sources, such as the eighth-century Book of Idols by Hisham ibn al-Kalbi as well as the writings of the Yemeni historian al-Hasan al-Hamdani on South Arabian religious beliefs continue to depict pre-Islamic Arabia as dominated by polytheistic practices until the sudden rupture brought about by the coming of Muhammad and his career between 610 and 632.[45]

Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) attempts to describe the broad landscape of pre-Islamic religious belief in his Jamharat ansāb al-ʿArab (Compilation of Arab Genealogy):[46]

all of [Mesopotamian tribes] Iyād and Rabīʿah and Bakr and Taghlib and Namar and [the eastern] ʿAbd al-Qays are Christian, so too is [Syrian] Ghassān, and [the southern] Banū Ḥārith ibn Kaʿb in Najrān, and [the northern] al-Ṭayyiʾ, Tanūkh, many of [the Syrian] Kalb, and all those from [Najdi] Tamīm and [Iraqi] Lakhm residing in Ḥīrah. Ḥimyar were Jewish, as were many from Kindah. Khathʿam had no religion at all (lā tadīn bi-shayʾ aṣlan). Zoroastrianism (al-majūsiyyah) appeared among Tamīm, and it is said that Laqīṭ ibn Zurārah had converted to Zoroastrianism (qad tamajassa). The rest of the Arabs worshipped idols.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ West, Martin Litchfield (8 July 1999). "Towards Monotheism". In Athanassiadi, Polymnia; Frede, Michael (eds.). Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 21. ISBN 9780191541452. Retrieved 16 February 2025. A standard dictionary definition of 'monotheism' is 'the belief in only one God' [... with ] a god (and gods, of course, embrace goddesses) [defined] as an entity identified or postulated, by one or more members of the species homo sapiens, as a wilful agent possessing or exercising power over events that appear to be beyond human control or not governed by other tangible agencies.
  2. ^ Hoyland, Robert G. (11 September 2001) [2001]. "Religion". Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. Peoples of the Ancient World (reprint ed.). London: Routledge. p. 139. ISBN 9781134646340. Retrieved 16 February 2025. Up until about the fourth century AD almost all the inhabitants of Arabia were polytheists.
  3. ^ Hoyland, Robert G. (2003). Arabia and the Arabs: from the Bronze Age to the coming of Islam (Reprinted, (twice) ed.). London: Routledge. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-415-19534-8.
  4. ^ a b Reynolds, Gabriel Said (2023). The emergence of Islam: classical traditions in contemporary perspective (2nd ed.). Fortress Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-1-5064-7388-8.
  5. ^ Lindstedt, Ilkka (2023-12-01). "The Seed of Abraham". Advances in Ancient, Biblical, and Near Eastern Research. 3 (3): 253–255. doi:10.35068/AABNER.V3I3.1107.
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  7. ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2025-05-13). "Ancient Allah: An Epigraphic Reconstruction". Journal of Semitic Studies. doi:10.1093/jss/fgaf012. ISSN 0022-4480.
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  29. ^ Gajda, Iwona (2017). "Remarks on Monotheism in Ancient South Arabia". In Bakhos, Carol; Cook, Michael (eds.). Islam and its past: Jahiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qur'an. Oxford studies in the abrahamic religions. Oxford: Oxford university press. pp. 247–256. ISBN 978-0-19-874849-6.
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  31. ^ Hoyland, Robert G. (2011). "The Jews of the Hijaz in the Qurʾān and in their inscriptions". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). New perspectives on the Qur'an. The Qur'an in its historical context. New York: Routledge. pp. 91–116. ISBN 978-0-415-61548-8.
  32. ^ Lindstedt, Ilkka (2023). Muhammad and his followers in context: the religious map of late antique Arabia. Islamic history and civilization. Leiden Boston: Brill. pp. 54–78. ISBN 978-90-04-68712-7.
  33. ^ Lindstedt, Ilkka (2023). Muhammad and his followers in context: the religious map of late antique Arabia. Islamic history and civilization. Leiden Boston: Brill. pp. 79–119. ISBN 978-90-04-68712-7.
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  36. ^ a b Al-Jallad, Ahmad; Sidky, Hythem (2022). "A Paleo-Arabic inscription on a route north of Ṭāʾif". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. 33 (1): 202–215. doi:10.1111/aae.12203. ISSN 0905-7196.
  37. ^ Sinai 2019, p. 7.
  38. ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2021-12-02), ""May God be Mindful of Yazīd the King": Further Reflections on the Yazīd Inscription and the Development of Arabic Scripts", Late Antique Responses to the Arab Conquests, Brill, pp. 195–211, doi:10.1163/9789004500648_009, ISBN 978-90-04-50064-8, retrieved 2024-02-21
  39. ^ Lindstedt, Ilkka (2020-11-30). "Review of Nicolai SINAI, Rain-Giver, Bone-Breaker, Score-Settler: Allāh in Pre-Quranic Poetry". Journal of the International Qur'anic Studies Association. 5 (s1): 58–73. doi:10.1515/jiqsa-2020-06s106. ISSN 2474-8420.
  40. ^ Sinai 2019, p. 57–63.
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  45. ^ Lindstedt, Ilkka (2023). Muhammad and his followers in context: the religious map of late antique Arabia. Islamic history and civilization. Leiden Boston: Brill. pp. 2–3, 38–39, 143. ISBN 978-90-04-68712-7.
  46. ^ Miller, Nathaniel A. (2024). The emergence of Arabic poetry: from regional identities to Islamic canonization. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-1-5128-2530-5.

Sources

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