In pre-Islamic Arabia, the dominant religious practice was that of Arab polytheism, which was based on the veneration of various deities and spirits, such as the god Hubal and the goddesses al-Lāt, al-‘Uzzā, and Manāt. Worship was centred on local shrines and temples, like the Kaaba in Mecca and the Temple of Awwam in Yemen. Deities were venerated and invoked through pilgrimages, divination, and ritual sacrifice, among other traditions. Many of the physical descriptions of the pre-Islamic gods and goddesses are traced to idols, especially near the Kaaba, which is said to have contained up to 360 of them.
Other religions, especially Christianity and Judaism, were also represented in the region, especially in the fourth to seventh centuries. The influence of the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Aksum enabled the nurturing of Christian communities in northwestern, northeastern, and southern Arabia. In the other areas of the Arabian Peninsula, Christianity did not have as much of a presence, though it did secure some converts, and with the exception of Nestorianism in the northeast and around the Persian Gulf, the dominant form of the religion was Miaphysitism. Since the beginning of the Roman era, Jewish migration into Arabia had become increasingly frequent, resulting in the establishment of a prominent Jewish diaspora community, which was supplemented by local converts. Over time, Judaism formed large communities throughout southern Arabia and the northwestern Hejaz.
The influence of Persian empires, including the Parthians and Sasanians, aided a limited spread of Zoroastrianism, especially in Eastern and South Arabia. It is speculated that Zoroastrianism may have been practiced by some inhabitants of the Himyarite Kingdom, which was home to a mixed Arab–Persian community called al-Abnāʾ in Arabic. Tentative evidence may also support a presence of Manichaeism or Mazdakism in parts of the peninsula.
Background and sources
Until about the fourth century, almost all inhabitants of Arabia practiced polytheistic religions at which point pre-Islamic Arabian monotheism had begun to spread. From the fourth to sixth centuries, Jewish, Christian, and other monotheistic populations developed. Until recent decades, it was believed that polytheism remained the dominant belief system in pre-Islamic Arabia, but some recent trends suggest that henotheism or monotheism was dominant from the fourth century onwards.
The contemporary sources of information regarding the pre-Islamic Arabian religion and pantheon include a growing number of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions, written in scripts like Safaitic, Sabaic, and Paleo-Arabic, pre-Islamic poetry, external sources such as Jewish and Greek accounts, as well as the Muslim tradition, such as the Qur'an and Islamic writings. Nevertheless, information is limited.
One early attestation of Arabian polytheism was in Esarhaddon's Annals, which mentions Atarsamain, Nukhay, Ruldaiu, and Atarquruma. Herodotus, writing in his Histories, reported that the Arabs worshipped Orotalt (identified with Dionysus) and Alilat (identified with Aphrodite). Strabo stated the Arabs worshipped Dionysus and Zeus. Origen stated they worshipped Dionysus and Urania.
Muslim sources regarding Arabian polytheism include the eighth-century Book of Idols by Hisham ibn al-Kalbi, which F.E. Peters argued to be the most substantial treatment of the religious practices of pre-Islamic Arabia, as well as the writings of the Yemeni historian al-Hasan al-Hamdani on South Arabian religious beliefs, crucially including the Crowns from the Accounts of the Yemen and the Genealogies of Himyar.
According to the Book of Idols, descendants of the son of Abraham (Ishmael) who had settled in Mecca migrated to other lands and carried holy stones from the Kaaba with them, erected them, and circumambulated them like the Kaaba. This, according to al-Kalbi led to the rise of idol worship. Based on this, it may be probable that Arabs originally venerated stones, later adopting idol-worship under foreign influences. The relationship between a god and a stone as his representation can be seen from the third-century Syriac work called the Homily of Pseudo-Meliton where he describes the pagan faiths of Syriac-speakers in northern Mesopotamia, who were mostly Arabs. However, mythologies and narratives elucidating the history of these gods, as well as the meaning of their epithets, remain uninformative.
Religious traditions
Arabian polytheism Arabian polytheism was not a single organized religion, but a range of local and regional cults with their own deities, spirits, cultic places, objects, ritual specialists (like diviners) and cultic practices (like pilgrimage). Before the spread of Judaism, Christianity and other monotheistic traditions in late antiquity, most inhabitants of Arabia appear to have practiced some form of polytheism. The surviving inscriptions preserve many divine names, since one of their most common purposes was to invoke a deity, usually in petition or thanksgiving. The texts are too short for historians to be able to reconstruct the theology or mythology of the Arabian polytheistic religions in any detail, but these gods were generally invoked for aids regarding affairs beyond human control, such as rain, fertility, health, protection, love, death and security.
How Arabian polytheism was practiced varied considerably by region. The kingdoms of South Arabia developed large pantheons. The god ʿAthtar often occupied the highest position in the pantheon, while the main smaller South Arabian peoples had their own distinct patron deities: Almaqah among the Sabaeans, Wadd among the Minaeans, ʿAmm among the Qatabanians and Sayin among the Hadramites. These high gods, or patron deities, were closely tied with local politics and social organization. In less complex societies, pantheons could be smaller and focused more strongly on a local patron, such as Dhu Ghaba at Dedan or Dushara among the Nabataeans; other deities, including al-ʿUzzā, Manāt, Allāt, Hubal, Shayʿ al-Qawm and foreign deities such as Isis, appear in particular regional, political or mercantile contexts.
The religious life of nomadic groups is known especially from Safaitic inscriptions, which were produced before the significant spread of Judaism and Christianity among the nomads of northern Arabia. These inscriptions show a practical religious world in which worshippers invoked deities for security, aid, reunion with family or companions, relief, vengeance, healing, protection during travel and success in dangerous activities. Animal sacrifice is regularly mentioned and was invoked in numerous contexts including raiding, journeys, seasonal movement or other uncertain situations. Safaitic inscriptions also attest other practices like cult stones (nṣb, mṣb, or mnṣb(t)), offerings, vows, oaths, pilgrimage, ritual shelters and appeals to sacred water.
Monotheism and henotheism
In the fourth century, during Arabia's transition into late antiquity, it became increasingly common to only believe in or only invoke one God. In South Arabia, all gods quickly cease to be mentioned except for Rahmanan in the second half of the fourth century. Elsewhere, especially in northern and Western Arabia, inscriptions begin to only invoke Allah by the fifth and sixth centuries. These trends were companied by the rise of Christianity and Judaism in the peninsula, but not all monotheists were Christians or Jews. Gentile monotheists are called hanif in Islamic sources.
Judaism
A thriving community of Jewish tribes existed in pre-Islamic Arabia and included both sedentary and nomadic communities. Jews had migrated into Arabia from Roman times onwards. Arabian Jews spoke Arabic as well as Hebrew and Aramaic and had contact with Jewish religious centres in Babylonia and Palestine. The Yemeni Himyarites converted to Judaism in the 4th century, and some of the Kinda were also converted in the 4th/5th century. Jewish tribes existed in all major Arabian towns during Muhammad's time including in Tayma and Khaybar as well as Medina with twenty tribes living in the peninsula. From tomb inscriptions, it is visible that Jews also lived in Mada'in Saleh and Al-'Ula.
There is evidence that Jewish converts in the Hejaz were regarded as Jews by other Jews, as well as by non-Jews, and sought advice from Babylonian rabbis on matters of attire and kosher food. In at least one case, it is known that an Arab tribe agreed to adopt Judaism as a condition for settling in a town dominated by Jewish inhabitants. Some Arab women in Yathrib/Medina are said to have vowed to make their child a Jew if the child survived, since they considered the Jews to be people "of knowledge and the book" (ʿilmin wa-kitābin). Philip Hitti infers from proper names and agricultural vocabulary that the Jewish tribes of Yathrib consisted mostly of Judaized clans of Arabian and Aramaean origin.
The key role played by Jews in the trade and markets of the Hejaz meant that market day for the week was the day preceding the Jewish Sabbath. This day, which was called aruba in Arabic, also provided occasion for legal proceedings and entertainment, which in turn may have influenced the choice of Friday as the day of Muslim congregational prayer. Toward the end of the sixth century, the Jewish communities in the Hejaz were in a state of economic and political decline, but they continued to flourish culturally in and beyond the region. They had developed their distinctive beliefs and practices, with a pronounced mystical and eschatological dimension. In the Islamic tradition, based on a phrase in the Quran, Arab Jews are said to have referred to Uzair as the son of Allah, although the historical accuracy of this assertion has been disputed.
Jewish agriculturalists lived in the region of Eastern Arabia. According to Robert Bertram Serjeant, the Baharna may be the Arabized "descendants of converts from Christians (Arameans), Jews and ancient Persians (Majus) inhabiting the island and cultivated coastal provinces of Eastern Arabia at the time of the Arab conquest". From the Islamic sources, it seems that Judaism was the religion most followed in Yemen. Ya'qubi claimed all Yemenites to be Jews; Ibn Hazm however states only Himyarites and some Kindites were Jews.
Christianity
The main areas of Christian influence in Arabia were on the northeastern and northwestern borders and in what was to become Yemen in the south. The north west was under the influence of Christian missionary activity from the Roman Empire where the Ghassanids, a client kingdom of the Romans, were converted to Christianity. In the south, particularly at Najran, a centre of Christianity developed as a result of the influence of the Christian Kingdom of Axum based on the other side of the Red Sea in Ethiopia. Some of the Banu Harith had converted to Christianity. One family of the tribe built a large church at Najran called Deir Najran, also known as the "Ka'ba of Najran". Both the Ghassanids and the Christians in the south adopted Monophysitism.
The third area of Christian influence was on the north eastern borders where the Lakhmids, a client tribe of the Sassanians, adopted Nestorianism, being the form of Christianity having the most influence in the Sassanian Empire. As the Persian Gulf region of Arabia increasingly fell under the influence of the Sassanians from the early third century, many of the inhabitants were exposed to Christianity following the eastward dispersal of the religion by Mesopotamian Christians. However, it was not until the fourth century that Christianity gained popularity in the region with the establishment of monasteries and a diocesan structure.