The pre-Islamitic religion of the Arabs was mainly a debasing idolatry polluted by human sacrifices, and ascending, by ill-defined gradations, from the lowest forms of fetichism to the adoration of the stars. Their faith was far from uniform, and almost every tribe had special objects of veneration and peculiar modes of worship. Some were absolutely destitute of the idea of a God; some grovelled before roughly-hewn blocks of stone; others worshipped trees and springs,—the most grateful gifts of nature in a parched and thirsty land; others, again, greeted with praise the rising sun as its beams illuminated the purple mists of the Desert, or bowed reverently at night before the glittering majesty of the heavens. The members of certain tribes were materialists; not a few accepted the metempsychosis; many were familiar with the philosophical creed of the Buddhist, which regarded death as the irrevocable end of all spiritual activity, the beginning of a state of absolute quiescence, of eternal and immutable rest. The majority of the Arab races, however, looked upon their idols as mediators between the Supreme Being and man. Hence they erected temples in their honor, named their children for them, made pilgrimages to their shrines, and solicited their good offices with precious gifts and offerings. The heavenly bodies were placed in the same category. Their intercession with the Deity was also invoked by frequent applications; and to their power, thus indirectly exercised, were attributed the most important as well as the most trivial occurrences of life, the benefits of fortune, the infliction of calamities, the mysterious and terrifying effects of natural phenomena. It is a superstition as old as the human race to imagine the universe to be peopled with mysterious beings, and the lives of men to be moulded by the beneficent or malignant influence of the stars. The worship of the Sun, the genial dispenser of light, of warmth, of health, in whose train follow the increase of flocks, the bursting of buds, the welcome sight of refreshing verdure, the author of all that is useful and attractive in every species of organic life, a worship which in ages of primeval simplicity has always most strongly appealed to the gratitude and veneration of man, was highly popular in Pagan Arabia. Classic historians have established the fact that it was at one time almost universal in the Peninsula, where the idol which was the terrestrial manifestation of that great luminary was designated by the appellation Nur-Allah, “The Light of God.” His authority was everywhere paramount, whether openly worshipped, represented by fire the great purifying agent, or exhibited under various symbols of force and power, which all nations, however separated, and differing in physical and mental characteristics, have, with wonderful unanimity, adopted as his peculiar emblems. Temples were also raised to the Moon, Sirius, Canopus, the Hyades, Mercury, and Jupiter. But of all the starry bodies none enjoyed greater favor, or was worshipped with more splendor, than Saturn. His attributes were often confounded by his votaries with those of his kindred divinities Mars and the Sun. It has been proved by the learned researches of Dozy, that the famous Kaaba was originally a shrine dedicated to that deity. He was the Baal of the Hebrews, and once their tutelary god as well as that of the Phœnicians—carried by the former during their sojourn in the wilderness, venerated by the latter in the magnificent temples of Sidon and Tyre. The extent of his worship in the East was, it might be said, coincident with the view of the brilliant planet by which he was represented in the tropical heavens. The giver of all material blessings, he was, in this capacity, invoked as the creator and preserver of terrestrial life; but he was also propitiated as the avenger of sacrilege and crime. Among different peoples he was adored under innumerable manifestations. The familiar word Israel is a synonym of Saturn; the Hebrew priests knew him as Sabbathai—whence is derived our Sabbath; and in Judea, as in Egypt, the first day of the week was dedicated to and named for him. In Arabia, this popular divinity was known as Hobal, a word indisputably derived from the Hebrew language. Occupying the most exalted position in the Arabic Pantheon, while his image was anthropomorphic, he was, in reality, a representative of the monotheistic principle. His name and his worship in the Peninsula were alike of Jewish origin. Antiquarian ingenuity and research have traced his various migrations from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to the province of Hedjaz, and have elucidated certain obscure Scriptural texts relative to his shrine, his worship, and his festivals. Among the multitudinous divinities which claimed the reverence of the ancient Arabians was also the Hebrew Jehovah, adored under the form of a he-goat, sculptured in gold, as well as the profligate Venus, known to the Babylonians as Mylitta, and to the Phœnicians as Astarte. As a tribute to their eminence in the Christian world, the Virgin and the Child occupied a post of honor among the three hundred and sixty idols which crowded the sanctuary of Mecca. In the religious system of the Peninsula there was no mythology, a fact which perhaps contributed not a little to its speedy overthrow. But, though polytheistic to the last degree, the Arabs recognized a Supreme Being whose majesty was confined to no particular locality, to whom no altar was dedicated, and who, too awful to be directly addressed, could be approached only through his celestial ministers the stars. This was the great Al-Lah, whose name, corresponding to the El and the Elohim of the Jews, was pre-eminent in honor and dignity, both in the Age of Ignorance and in the Age of Islam. The most superstitious races of men, and those that are the highest in intelligence among the most civilized, have and require no shrines. In Arabia the whole Desert was the temple of the Supreme God.
Associated with the most exalted ideas of divine power were to be found superstitions usually encountered only in the primitive epochs of society. The wide-spread worship of the generative forces of nature, whose remaining monuments seem to the uninstructed sense of our cavilling age mere evidences of a depraved imagination, had its share of public favor in Arabia, where the male and female principles were adored under various symbolical forms. Many of these have survived in the monoliths scattered throughout the Peninsula, whose towering masses are regarded, even by devout Moslems, with no small degree of superstitious awe. The stone-circles and menhirs mentioned by travellers as existing in Oman and Nedjd are evidently of the same general type as those of Carnac and Stonehenge, and, from the descriptions given of them, of scarcely inferior dimensions, and perhaps of still higher antiquity. It is a singular circumstance, that gigantic structures, bearing such a common resemblance as to suggest that they were erected by the same race of builders and designed for similar purposes, should be found in countries so different in physical features, climate, inhabitants, religious traditions, language, and history, as Central Arabia and Western Europe.
Like other nations of ancient times, the Arabs invested certain trees with a sacred character, a custom indicative of the lingering influence of phallicism; a worship whose original principles, long forgotten in the Peninsula, survived only in the exhibition of its peculiar emblems and in the practice of a gross and shameless immorality. Among the Pagan Arabs, no form of superstition was too debasing to claim its votaries. They raised altars to fire. They attributed supernatural powers to the crocodile and the serpent. Each tent had its image; every hovel of sun-dried bricks was filled with tutelary deities. Shapeless masses of stone, which tradition had associated with remarkable events or endowed with celestial origin, were approached with a reverence not vouchsafed to idols of the most costly materials and elaborate workmanship. Of these blocks, which partook of the nature of the fetich, the black were sacred to the Sun, the white to the Moon. In the Pagan world two of the former were especially famous; over one was erected a splendid temple on the mountain near Emesa in Syria, whence the infamous Roman emperor Heliogabalus derived his name; the other was built into the wall of the Kaaba of Mecca. The latter was the most remarkable object of the kind known to antiquity. A plain fragment of basalt, seven inches in diameter, whose composition is apparently identical with that of a neighboring mountain, it had acquired, in the eyes of the people of Arabia, a sanctity not shared by any other emblem of idolatrous worship. It was probably, in its origin, a phallic symbol, and stood alone in an open square of the city, ages preceding the building of the Kaaba, an event which tradition has assigned to a date four hundred years before the foundation of the temple of Solomon. Thus invested with the sanction of immemorial prescription and the virtues of a miraculous relic, it has received the reverent homage of millions upon millions of idolaters and Moslems. It has survived the accidents of conquest, of iconoclasm, of conflagration. The silver bands which unite its fragments bear witness to the vicissitudes and rough usage to which it has been subjected. The healing power it was supposed to possess attracted the sick and the disabled from regions far beyond the limits of Arabia. It was the starting-point of ceremonial and pilgrimage. It imparted its virtues to the Kaaba, that temple where alone, in all the Peninsula, hereditary feuds were suspended; where violence was forgotten; where rudeness gave way to courtesy; where the temporary surrender of individual freedom, and the voluntary relinquishment of tribal animosity, seemed to announce the existence of national sentiment and the possibility of national union. The recognition by Mohammed of the claims of the Black Stone and the Kaaba—the ancient temple of Saturn—to public veneration, in a creed otherwise uncompromisingly hostile to idolatry, demonstrated the high estimation in which they were held by the Arabs. The latter, with their numerous shrines, their swarms of deities, their elaborate paraphernalia of worship and imposture, were, however, far from being a religious people. They evinced a decided aversion to metaphysics. Their ideas of personal liberty were not consistent with unquestioning submission to the tyranny of a priesthood. Their native intelligence rendered them. skeptical; their nomadic habits were unfavorable to the maintenance of a permanent ecclesiastical establishment. The multiplicity of deities had, as is invariably the case, weakened the faith of the masses in any. The genuine piety of a people is always in an inverse ratio to the number of its gods.
The early Arabians practised magic and divination, had recourse to oracles, maintained wizards and sorcerers—charlatans whose ascendency was largely due to the narcotics they made use of to open a pretended communication with the spirit world. Amulets were universally worn as a protection against the baneful consequences of the evil eye. Hand in hand with presages and magical arts, auguries, and incantations, came the incipient doctrine of the influence of the planets upon mineral substances, as well as a belief in their power to affect the destiny and welfare of man; theories which, eventually developing into the vain pursuits of alchemy and judicial astrology, indicate an acquaintance with the principles of science only acquired by much study and repeated experiments. The practice of these rites, so severely reprobated in the Koran, was associated in the minds of the people with the ceremonies of public worship during the age of polytheism. The words altar and talisman are practically synonymous in Arabic, a fact which discloses the intimate alliance originally existing between divination, sorcery, and religion in the Peninsula.
Human sacrifices, so repugnant to all our ideas of piety and justice, but common to nations of Semitic origin, were of frequent occurrence among the Arabs before Mohammed. The mode of death was by fire, which removed every earthly impurity; but it was only in the fulfilment of a solemn vow, on an occasion of national rejoicing, or to avert some impending calamity, that such a costly expiation was exacted. The Israelites, allied to the Arabs by the ties of consanguinity, and by similar religious conceptions, had also long been familiar with these revolting and cruel rites; instances of whose observance will at once suggest themselves to all who are familiar with the Pentateuch.
The Hebrew has always exerted a remarkable influence upon the public sentiment, the religious faith, and the foreign and domestic relations of the inhabitants of Arabia. A great analogy exists between the languages of the two nations, and the Hebrew alphabet was used by the prehistoric Arabs. It is believed by many Oriental scholars that Israel was not the founder of the people who bear his name; that the twelve tribes have a mystic relation to certain of the heavenly bodies or to the months of the year; and it is known that the word Keturah means simply “frankincense.” No doubt now exists that the Jew and the Arab are of common ancestry. For a period of twenty-five hundred years before the Hegira the former had been established in Yemen. The trade of that kingdom, with all its vast ramifications, was in his hands. His power enabled him constantly to dictate the policy of its sovereigns.
His worship, equally idolatrous with that of the Bedouin—for he was the descendant of the Simeonites, against whom, among others, the anathemas of the Bible were directed—surpassed the latter in the splendor of its appointments and the insolence of its priests. In a land where toleration was otherwise universal, he was enabled to persecute, with implacable enmity, Christian exiles, whom even the rapacity of the desert freebooter had spared. The rich settlements of northwestern Arabia were, to all intents and purposes, Jewish colonies. In the barren and inhospitable region of the Hedjaz, the Jew founded the towns of Medina and Mecca. In such a congenial atmosphere, the superstitions of Asia Minor obtained a ready acceptance. He established the worship of Baal, the most renowned of the Phœnician divinities. He introduced the rite of circumcision, hitherto unknown in Arabia. He communicated his idolatrous observances to the population of the country which had offered him a refuge. He gave a name to its principal city, for the word Mecca is Hebrew, signifying “Great Field of Battle;” the Pagan ceremonial of the Hedjaz can be traced to Palestine, and the Kaaba was originally known as Beth-El, “The House of God.” Quick to recognize the advantages to be derived by commerce from religious pilgrimage, he made that city the centre of national devotion as well as the chief distributing point of the vast trade of Europe, Asia Minor, Ethiopia, and India. The excellent commercial situation of Mecca, near the Red Sea and on the great caravan highway connecting Syria and Yemen, could scarcely compensate, however, for the serious physical disadvantages which unfriendly nature had imposed upon it. Its houses were crowded into a narrow valley two miles long by only nine hundred feet wide. The rays of a vertical sun beat pitilessly down upon a landscape destitute of verdure. Water, the most priceless of blessings in the Desert, was scarce and unpalatable. A salt effervescence covered the neighboring plains. The seasons were irregular; storms were violent; the coast of the Hedjaz possessed the unenviable reputation of being one of the most pestilential in the world. The city was dependent upon trade for the necessaries of life, and the unexpected delay of the caravan often menaced the population with famine. Yet, with all these drawbacks, the commerce of Mecca flourished almost beyond precedent. Caravans of more than two thousand camels were no uncommon sight in its narrow streets. Each of these beasts of burden carried a load of four hundred pounds of rare and costly commodities,—silks, spices, ivory, gold-dust, and perfumes. The annual exports of the town in the closing days of Pagan ascendency reached the enormous sum of fifteen million dollars, half of which was profit. Not the least of the sources of gain to the people of Mecca were the valuable offerings left by pilgrims and merchants in their temples. For a distance of leagues the ground was holy, and all who trod upon it could claim the right of sanctuary. The blood of neither man nor beast could be shed within these sacred precincts without incurring the imputation of sacrilege and the punishment of death. There was no traveller, from whatever country he came, who could not find, among the innumerable idols of the Kaaba, a familiar divinity upon whom to bestow the tribute of his devotion or gratitude. Of the immense profits resulting from the politic combination of traffic and superstition, the Hebrew exacted the lion’s share. His rulers met each day at the Kaaba to exchange views on finance and theology. The heathen legends of Palestine were incorporated into the new system, with the astral worship of the Sabeans and the polytheism of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Desert, itself derived from a thousand different and uncertain sources. The monotheism of Israel was not recognized by the tribe of Simeon, which had been driven into exile long before the Pentateuch was written. Ideas thus blended in the popular mind for centuries might, under favorable conditions, be modified, but never obliterated. There is no question that Islam is largely Hebrew in origin, although a considerable number of its ceremonies can be deduced from the customs of Pagan Arabia. In their migrations, which closed with the settlement of the Hedjaz, the Jews, while wandering far, had at last returned to the cradle of their race.
The arbitrary rules of ceremonial cleanliness; the exclusion of blood from the precincts of the temple; the classification of certain animals as “holy,” which an error of the translator has transformed into “unclean;” the penalties for many offences; the adoration of Phœnician divinities; the nomenclature disclosed by family genealogies; the correspondence in meaning of many terms used in their languages—peculiarities common to both the Arab and the Jew—go farther to prove an intimate relationship between the two races than the uncertainties of tradition or the association of neighborhood would tend to establish. The antipathy to the Hebrew, subsequently so bitter among Mohammedans, did not exist in ancient Arabia. The Jew served with distinction in the armies of Khaled and Amru. Mutual aversion, however great in subsequent times, was never sufficient to induce the Israelite to destroy those whom he regarded as his kinsmen. As his myths had formed the basis of a new religion, his enterprise and assistance contributed, in no insignificant degree, to the foundation of a new and magnificent empire. He guided the councils of the most renowned Mohammedan princes. Without the dogmas he furnished, the history of Islam would never have been written. Without the suggestions he voluntarily offered, and the treasure he poured into the Moslem camps, the conquest of Spain could never have been achieved. The fairest of Mussulman writers have rarely failed to acknowledge the obligations of their countrymen to an unfortunate race which the prejudices of nearly twenty centuries have subjected to universal proscription.
Christianity made no progress in Arabia until after its political alliance with Constantine had imparted such a tremendous impulse to the dissemination of its doctrines. The latter do not seem to be adapted to the Asiatic mind, and have never been able either to appeal to the reason or to arouse the enthusiasm of nations of Semitic blood. It offered little that was congenial with, and much that was abhorrent to, the lax and tolerant code of the independent and polytheistic rovers of the Desert. At the birth of Mohammed it had already, for four centuries, been established in the Peninsula, and still, in the very shadow of its temples, the mocking Arab bowed before his thousand gods. The principles of the Ebionite sect, which prevailed in the Arabian churches, so far from attracting the curiosity or awakening the reverence of the sarcastic Bedouin, only served to excite his ridicule. The sublime truths of the religion of the Bible, the eloquence of its teachers, the piety of its saints, the pomp of its ritual, the promises and threats of its revelation, were lost upon the reckless freebooters, devoted to sensual pleasures, to escapades of gallantry, to the generous rivalry of poesy, to daring feats of arms. The only mark of attention its adherents received was their classification with the despised Hebrew as Ahl-al-Kitab, “The People of the Book.” In its adaptability to the requirements and the mental capacity of the multitude, it was ill-fitted to cope with the religion that eventually supplanted it. On one side were the incomprehensible dogmas of a debased Christianity, indispensable to its acceptance; on the other, the simplicity of the profession of Islam, which even a child could understand. For these reasons it made comparatively few proselytes in the Peninsula, and at no time was acknowledged over any considerable area, except during the short period which intervened between the Abyssinian conquest of Yemen and the rise of Mohammedanism.
Many of the rites and customs adopted by the great Lawgiver, or preserved by his followers and generally regarded as peculiar to Islam, antedated the Koran by centuries. The Mohammedan attitudes of worship are the same as those depicted upon the eternal monuments of the Pharaohs. The heathen pilgrims, clad in the Ihram, or sacred garment, seven times made the circuit of the Kaaba; embraced the Black Stone; ran the courses between the holy stations of Al-Safa and Al-Marwa; cast stones in the valley of Mina; performed the ancient duties of sacrifice and local pilgrimage, and were systematically plundered by the greedy and scoffing Meccans, just as all good Moslem pilgrims are to-day. The primitive Arabs inculcated the duty of personal cleanliness by frequent ablution. They shaved their heads, and used the depilatory for the removal of superfluous hair from the body. Like the Egyptians, they stained their hands and feet with henna, and blackened their eyelids with antimony. They removed their sandals, as Moses did, when they stood on holy ground. They scrupulously abstained from certain kinds of food, and their actions were often governed by regulations practically identical, in their general character, with those prescribed by the canons of Jewish and Moslem law.