These narratives of at̤-T̤abarī and the secretary of al-Wāqidī are fully borne out in the facts of Muḥammad’s subsequent compromise with the idolatrous feelings of the people; for whilst he removed the images from the Kaʿbah, he at the same time retained the black stone as an object of superstitious reverence, and although he destroyed Isāf and Nāʾilah, the deities of aṣ-Ṣafā and al-Marwah, he still retained the “runnings to and fro,” and the “stonings of the pillars,” as part of the sacred rites of what was intended to be a purely theistic and iconoclastic system. The most singular feature in the fetichism of Arabia was the adoration paid to unshapen stones, and Muḥammad found it impossible to construct his religion without some compromise with the popular form of idolatry. It is a curious circumstance that so much of the zeal and bigotry of the Wahhābī puritans is directed against the shirk, or idolatry, of the popular veneration for tombs and other objects of adoration, and yet they see no objection to the adoration of the black stone, and those other strange and peculiar customs which form part of the rites of the Makkan pilgrimage.
IDOLS. Arabic was̤an (وثن), pl. aus̤ān, also ṣanam (صنم), pl. aṣnām, both words being used in the Qurʾān. Ten of the idols of ancient Arabia are mentioned by name in the Qurʾān, viz.:—
[Sūrah iv. 52]: “Hast thou not observed those to whom a part of the Scriptures hath been given? They believe in al-Jibt and at̤-T̤āg͟hūt, and say of the infidels, ‘These are guided in a better path than those who hold the faith.’ ”
[Sūrah liii. 19]: “Have ye considered al-Lāt, al-ʿUzza, and Manāt the third?”
[Sūrah lxxi. 21]: “They have plotted a great plot and said, “Ye shall surely not leave your gods: ye shall surely neither leave Wadd, nor Suwāʿ, nor Yag͟hūs̤, nor Yaʿūq, nor Nasr, and they led astray many.”
Al-Jibt and at̤-T̤āg͟hūt (the latter also mentioned in [Sūrah ii. 257, 259]) were, according to Jalālu ʾd-dīn, two idols of the Quraish whom certain renegade Jews honoured in order to please the Quraish.
Al-Lāt was the chief idol of the Banū S̤aqīf at at̤-T̤āʾif. The name appears to be the feminine of Allāh, God.
Al-ʿUzza has been identified with Venus, but it was worshipped under the form of an acacia tree, and was the deity of the Banū G͟hat̤afān.
Manāt was a large sacrificial stone worshipped by the Banū K͟huzāʿah and Banū Huẕail.
The five idols, Wadd, Suwāʿ, Yag͟hūs̤, Yāʿūq, and Nasr, the commentators say, were originally five persons of eminence in the time of Adam, who after their deaths were worshipped in the form of idols.