In Semitic Mesopotamia, Enlil was often known as "Bel", meaning "lord" 84.
MacKenzie noted that Enlil was known as "the older Bel" so as to distinguish him from the later Bel Merodach of Babylon 85.
Frazer likewise identified Enlil/Illil with Bel 86.
Like Allah in Arabia, Bel of Nippur originally had Allat as his consort 87, which further suggests the connection between Enlil/Ellil and Il/Ilah-derived deities, as well as the evolutionary relationship between Bel and Allah. In the process of time, this title was transferred to the Babylonian deity Marduk (Merodach), who was generally identified with Enlil, and to whom was ascribed a sovereignty and omnipotence indicative of monotheizing tendencies.
At the same time, Marduk and Sin were also sometimes identified with each other in later myths - one of Sin's epithets was "Marduk who illuminates the night"88.
Not surprisingly then, Marduk also was associated with astral religion, as Ringgren notes,
"In the ritual for the New Year Festival in Babylon Marduk is identified with a series of astral deities, and the prayer ends with the words" 'My lord is my god, my lord is my ruler, is there any lord apart from him'?" 89
Thus, we again see the familiar association of Mesopotamian henotheism, of the high god, with astral deities, which would include the moon god. Later, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the worship of Bel spread to Palmyra, a caravan city in the Syrian desert. The population of Palmyra was mixed, with several distinct groups inhabiting the city and bringing their gods with them. Migrants from northern Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions brought the reverence for Bel with them. In Palmyra, Bel was a high god (termed a "cosmocrator", ruler of the universe) and was associated with two astral gods, Yarhibol, a solar deity and Aglibol, a lunar deity 90.
Both of these gods carry names containing "Bol", which is identified as a pre-Hellenistic Syrian name for Bel (to which the name Bol was changed through the influence of the Bel-Marduk cult brought in by Mesopotamian immigrants) 91.
Teixidor notes that the cult of the triad of Bel, Yarhibol, and Aglibol arose in the first century AD as the result of both theological and political pressures that led to the association of these two astral deities with the Bel, who received a cosmic role. This association, unattested in the epigraphic evidence until a dedicatory inscription of 32 AD, is thought to have developed through a slow process of assimilation that involved the divine patrons of specific groups which populated Palmyra 92.
As such, it can be surmised that Yarhibol and Aglibol, previously the patron gods of separate tribes or ethnic groups, may have been understood more than just as associates, but rather as subordinated personifications of the emergent supreme god Bel. This would tend to reinforce the henotheistic tendencies of Bel in later times, as well as the association of him with astral religion.
BAAL
Closely related to the Mesopotamian Bel was a titular deity found in the Syro-Palestinian pagan systems - Baal.
"Baal" is merely the west Semitic cognate of the Assyro-Babylonian "Bel", and among the western Semites the term was put to similar use, as much a title or epithet as a proper name. Indeed, the term "Baal" was often used to describe local high deities who were revered as high gods by local groups. For instance, we find Baal-Peor of the Moabites, Baal-Zebul of the Philistines, Baal-Shamin of the native Syrian Palmyrenes, and so forth. Evidence from the Al-Amarna documents and Ugaritic texts indicate that by the sixteenth or fifteenth centuries BC, Baal had taken on a broader scope than just as a title for local deities, and had grown to be understood as a god in his own right 93.
One interesting thing we should note about Baal is that in the Ras Shamra texts, an early witness to Baal, he was associated with three daughters, much as Allah would be later 94.
One of these daughters of Allah - al-Uzza - is identified with the Arabic goddess Ruda by Lundin, who points out that the root behind that name, 'RD, can be linked with the Ugaritic Ars.ay, one of these daughters of Baal 95.
The local Baals were most likely understood to be localized manifestations of this Baal, perhaps as tutelary personifications particular to each individual city or region. These Baals usually took on the characteristics of atmospheric, vegetation, and fertility deities (see the discussion below of the equivalence of Baal with Hadad/Adad), but in later periods also were identified with astral spheres of influence. This astral character generally took on solar overtones 96, but could at times also be lunar. Smith notes that in Phoenician mythology, even after the gods had become more pronounced in their astral character, they still retained their more primitive functions as the givers of rain and other atmospheric phenomena 97.
This broadly parallels the religious development in Mesopotamia from the original view of the storm and weather god Enlil as the highest god toward the exaltation of Sin, the moon god, into the role of high god, with a concurrent usurpation of much of Enlil's former provenance. Indeed, Roberts notes that in the Ugaritic mythologies, Dagan was analogous to Enlil (both being weather deities), while Ba'al (Dagan's son, also a weather and fertility god) was analogous to Sin/Nanna (Enlil's son, the moon god) 98.
Like the moon god, Baal was represented by the bull, a symbol of male sexuality and fertility. Further, the Baal title could be applied directly to the astral deities. For instance, Teixidor notes that in Harran, the city in Paddan-Aram devoted to the moon god which was discussed briefly earlier, Sin was known as the Baal of Harran 99.
This frequent merging of astral with atmospheric and fertility functions in the gods will be revisited shortly.
Earlier, we saw that a god called Mar-Allah was recognized from inscriptional evidences in northern Arabia. We see a probable appearance of this deity again in inscriptions found at Sumatar Harabesi, a site located about 25 miles northeast of Harran. This site contains a number of inscriptions in Syriac that are dated to the mid-to-late 2nd century AD and were made by or on behalf of certain rulers "of the Arab". A number of dedications to Sin, coupled with the typical crescent moon symbology, are found here. As well, however, are a number of inscriptions dedicated to Mrlh'. In Green's discussion of these inscriptions 100, she reports that Drijvers transcribes the name as Marelahe, "The Lord of the gods", which is equivalent to the Mesopotamian "Bel-ilani", and that while the title itself can denote the chief god of any pantheon, here at Sumatar Harabesi, it was applied to Sin the moon god of Harran, who is the only god mentioned by name at the site.
Segal, on the other hand, transcribes the name as Marilaha, "the Lord god", and suggested it as an epithet of Ba'alshamen, a name that had by this period come to designate any god who was seen as the possessor of the heavens (as was the case with Sin the moon god in the later Mesopotamian myths, as seen above). Either way, we see a clearly identified moon god referred to as a Bel or Baal, and Green sees these inscriptions as evidence for the continuation of Sin's role as bestower of political power 101.
In Arabia, Baal (Ba'l) was introduced into the settled agricultural centers, likely being borrowed from the Semitic groups north of Arabia at the same time that the arts of agriculture were introduced 102.
On the peninsula, Baal was more widely known in later periods as Hubal (meaning "the lord"). There is some controversy over whether Hubal was a traditional deity in Arabia, or if he was introduced at some point in the 3rd century or immediately thereabouts, finding his way to the Ka'bah at Mecca, then a pre-Islamic pagan shrine. For instance, Zwemer states,
"Hobal [Hubal] was in the form of a man and came from Syria; he was the god of rain and had a high place of honour."103
Some scholars view Hubal as a newcomer to the Ka'bah, based upon the tradition that Amr ibn Luhayy, a 3rd century Arab, brought the statue of Hubal to the Ka'bah from Syria.
"Having asked the local inhabitants what was the justification of their idols, `Amr b. Luhayy is said to have received the following reply: .. these are the lords (arbab) whom we have chosen, having [simultaneously] the form of the celestial temples (al-hayakil al-`ulwiyya) and that of Human beings. We ask them for victory over our enemies and they grant it to us; we ask them for rain, in time of drought, and they give it to us". In the Ka'ba, Hubal must have preserved this original character of a stellar deity; but his most characteristic role was that of a cleromantic divinity. Indeed, it was before the god that the sacred lots were cast. The statue stood inside the Ka'ba, above the sacred well which was thought to have been dug by Abraham to receive the offerings brought to the sanctuary. Another somewhat surprising fact indicates a connection with Abraham: in the mural paintings of the pre-islamic Ka'ba, Hubal, represented as an old man holding arrows, seems to have been assimilated with Abraham." 104
Hence, after his appearance in Mecca, Hubal would have retained his earlier astral traits. Additionally, he would have gained his well-known oracular function by which suppliants would draw lots using arrows so as to obtain answers for important questions put to the god. Peters states that while Hubal grew to be an important deity in Mecca, he never replaced Allah as the Lord of the Ka'bah, and bases his argument upon the fact that the Qur'an never raises a contention about Hubal being "lord of the house" 105.
This view, unfortunately, suffers from the traditional over-reliance upon late and redacted Muslim sources which are tainted with apologetic revision. As Coon has observed,
"Moslems are notoriously loath to preserve traditions of earlier paganism, and like to garble what pre-Islamic history they permit to survive in anachronistic terms." 106
Hence, it must be understood that much of what is said about the late arrival of Hubal to the Ka'bah, and the attempts to disconnect him from lordship over that House, is suspect because of the tendency of scholars in the earlier days of Islamic studies to rely upon Islamic sources themselves for information pertaining to the Jahiliyya, the pre-Islamic pagan period. Peters, mentioned above, makes his arguments with the dichotomy of Allah versus Hubal in mind. Yet, the possibility must be explored that Allah was Hubal, and that the initial understanding of Hubal as the local al-ilah falls right into line with the tendency, mentioned above, for the developing Arab monotheism to incorporate local high gods into the state sponsored high god. It was shown above that Allah "was preceded" by the moon god Ilmaqah in South Arabian, that Ilah was "originally a phase of the moon" and later became a term for the high god in Southern Arabia, and even that Allah "replaced" Hubal as the Lord of the Ka'bah.
What if these are all vestiges of these various Arabian high gods becoming "al-ilah", the god, in developing henotheistic systems that eventually led to the monotheistic Allah of Islam?
With the advent of independent information obtained from direct archaeological and epigraphic studies, it is being more widely recognized that Hubal was not a late arrival to the Ka'bah, but was instead long resident there and was himself the Lord of the Ka'bah, probably arriving not long after the Christian era began. On the originality of Hubal at the Ka'bah, Rodinson writes,
"The Ka'ba at Mecca, which may have initially been a shrine of Hubal alone, housed several idols; a number of others, too, were gathered in the vicinity." 107
Ruthven states further,
"Although originally under the aegis of the pagan god Hubal, the Makkan haram which centred around the well of Zamzam, may have become associated with the ancestral figures of Ibrahim and Isma'il as the Arab traders, shedding their parochial backgrounds sought to locate themselves within the broader reference-frame of Judeo-Christianity." 108
According to Fahd, the earliest appearance of Hubal in the epigraphic record is in an inscription from Nabataea (a region in northwest Arabia, including present-day Jordan), in which he is associated with Manawat, which is cognate with the name of the daughter of Allah, Manat 109.
Peters notes that some of his sources also indicate the origin of the Hubal idol (and presumably the cult which came to Mecca) to be from Jordan 110.
There is ample evidence to suggest that Hubal was the "Lord of the Ka'bah". Armstrong provides an interesting piece of information, though she still tends to be too reliant upon Islamic tradition instead of scientific facts,
"By the time he began to preach in Mecca, it seems to have been generally acknowledged that the Ka’aba was dedicated to al-Llah, the High God of the pagan Arabs, despite the presiding effigy of Hubal. By the beginning of the seventh century, al-Ilah had become more important than before in the religious life of many of the Arabs. Many primitive religions develop a belief in a High God, who is sometimes called the Sky God...But they also carried on worshipping the other gods, who remained deeply important to them." 111
The question which must logically be asked is whether this dedication of the Ka'bah to the high god al-Ilah perhaps was not "despite" the presiding effigy of Hubal, but rather because of it? As noted before, "Hubal" is really a title (considered by many to be of Aramaic origin and imported into the early Arabic dialects) which simply means "the lord", and as such, is no different from the usage of the Baal/Ba'l terminology found all over Syria, Palestine, and northern Arabia. This association of Hubal with Baal is noted by al-Saeh,
“As well as worshipping idols and spirits, found in animals, plants, rocks, and water, the ancient Arabs believed in several major gods and goddesses whom they considered to hold supreme power over all things. The most famous of these were Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, Manat, and Hubal. The first three were thought to be daughters of Allah (God) and their intercessions on behalf of their worshippers were therefore of great significance. Hubal was associated with the Semitic god Ba’al and with Adonis and Tammuz, the gods of spring, fertility, agriculture and plenty....Hubal’s idol used to stand by the holy well inside the Sacred House. It was made of red sapphire but had a broken arm until the tribe of Quraysh, who considered him one of their major gods, made him a replacement in solid gold.” 112
It seems very likely that this "al-Ilah" to which the Ka'bah was dedicated was known also by the titular name Hubal, especially as the presiding idol of that house was Hubal's, and it was before Hubal that decisions requiring oracular resolution were brought. Indeed, an excerpt from Ibn Ishaq (an early Muslim biographer of Mohammed, 704-767 AD), in a garbled and oblique manner, seems to suggest the validity of this view. He relates the following story about Mohammed's grandfather 'Abd'ul Muttalib,
"It is alleged, and God only knows the truth, that when 'Abdu'l-Muttalib encountered the opposition of Quraysh when he was digging Zamzam, he vowed that if he should have ten sons to grow up and protect him, he would sacrifice one of them to God at the Ka'ba. Afterwards when he had ten sons who could protect him he gathered them together and told them about his vow and called on them to keep faith with God. They agreed to obey him and asked what they were to do. He said that each one of them must get an arrow, write his name on it, and bring it to him; this they did and he took them before Hubal in the middle of the Ka'ba. (The statue of) Hubal stood by a well there. It was that well in which gifts made to the Ka'ba were stored.
“Now beside Hubal there were seven arrows, each of them containing some words. One was marked 'bloodwit'. When they disputed about who should pay the bloodwit they cast lots with the seven arrows and the one on whom the lot fell had to pay the money. Another was marked 'yes', and another 'no', and they acted accordingly on the matter on which the oracle had been invoked. Another was marked 'of you'; another mulsaq, another 'not of you'; and the last was marked 'water'. If they wanted to dig for water, they cast lots containing this arrow and wherever it came forth they set to work. If they wanted to circumcise a body, or make a marriage, or bury a body, or doubted someone's genealogy, they took him to Hubal with a hundred dirhams and a slaughter camel and gave them to the man who cast the lots; then they brought near the man with whom they were concerned, saying, 'O our god this is A the son of B with whom we intend to do so and so; so show the right course concerning him'. Then they would say to the man who cast the arrows 'Cast!' and if there came out 'of you' then he was a true member of their tribe; and if there came out 'not of you' then he was an ally; and if there came out mulsaq he had no blood relation to them and was not an ally. Where 'yes' came out in other matter, they acted accordingly; and if the answer was 'no', they deferred the matter for a year until they could bring it up again. They used to conduct their affairs according to the decision of the arrows.
“'Abdu'l-Muttalib said to the man with the arrows, 'Cast the lots for my sons with these arrows', and he told him of the vow which he had made. Each man gave him the arrow on which his name was written. Now 'Abdullah was his father's youngest son, he and al-Zubayr and Abu Talib were born to Fatima d.'Amr b.'A'idh b.'Abd b.'Imran b. Makhzum b.Yaqaza b. Murra b. Ka'b b.Lu'ayy b.Ghalib b.Fihr (113).
It is alleged that 'Abdullah was 'Abdu'l-Muttalib's favorite son, and his father thought that if the arrow missed him he would be spared. (He was the father of the apostle of God). When the man took the arrows to cast lots with them, 'Abdu'l-Muttalib stood by Hubal praying to Allah. Then the man cast lots and 'Abdullah's arrow came out. His father led him by the hand and took a large knife; then he brought him up to Isaf and Na'ila (T. two idols of Quraysh at which they slaughtered their sacrifices) to sacrifice him; but Quraysh came out of their assemblies and asked what he was intending to do. When he said that he was going to sacrifice him, they and his sons said 'By God! you shall never sacrifice him until you offer the greatest expiatory sacrifice for him. If you do a thing like this there will be no stopping men from coming to sacrifice their sons, and what will become of the people then?' Then said al-Mughira b. 'Abdullah b. 'Amr b. Makhzum b. Yaqaza, 'Abdullah's mother being from his tribe, 'By God, you shall never sacrifice him until you offer the greatest expiatory sacrifice for him. Though his ransom be all our property we will redeem him'. Quraysh and his sons said that he must not do it, but take him to the Hijaz for there was a sorcerer who had a familiar spirit, and he must consult her. Then he would have liberty of action. If she told him to sacrifice him, he would be no worse off; and if she gave him a favorable response, he could accept it. So they went off as far as Medina and found that she was in Khaybar, so they allege. So they rode on until they got to her, and when 'Abdu'l-Muttalib acquainted her with the facts she told them to go away until her familiar spirit visited her and she could ask him. When they had left her 'Abdu'l-Muttalib prayed to Allah, and when they visited her the next day she said, 'Word has come to me. How much is the blood money among you?' they told her that it was ten camels, as indeed it was. He told them to go back to their country and take the young man and ten camels. Then cast lots for them and for him; if the lots falls against your man, add more camels, until you lord is satisfied. If the lots falls against the camels then sacrifice them in his stead, for your lord will be satisfied and your client escape death. So they returned to Mecca, and when they had agreed to carry out their instructions, 'Abdu'l-Muttalib was praying to Allah. Then they brought near 'Abdullah and ten camels while 'Abdu'l-Muttalib stood by Hubal praying to Allah. Then they cast lots and the arrow fell against 'Abdullah. They added ten more camels and the lot fell against 'Abdullah, and so they went on adding ten at a time, until there were one hundred camels, when finally the lot fell against them. Quraysh and those who were present said, 'At last your lord is satisfied 'Abdu'l-Muttalib'. 'No, by God', he answered (so they say), 'not until I cast lots three times'. This they did and each time the arrow fell against the camels. They were duly slaughtered and left there and no man was kept back or hindered (from eating them).”113
Thus we can see that this man was essentially praying to the idol of Hubal, while praying to Allah. As Hubal was the "Lord of the Ka'bah" and the tutelary deity of Mecca, it is instructive to note that after the rise of the Arab Empire, Allah seems to have maintained his place as the Lord of that “House”, even if under a different name and with an innovative conception of deity. Indeed, the Ka'bah was often known by the name beit Allah, "house of Allah", even though it was presided over by Hubal.
Interestingly, we should note the early interest among the Muslims in (re-)establishing the original religion of Abraham, at least as they conceived it. Arabic lore, extending into the period before Islam, held that Abraham himself had built the Ka'bah, dug its well, and established its worship. In the centuries before the rise of the Arab Empire, there were many Arabs who, while accepting neither Christianity nor Judaism, did conceive of the idea of establishing a pure monotheism to replace the paganism of their day. Many of these groups could have been called "Abrahamic", as they desired to renew the deen, the religion, of Abraham. This Abrahamism emphasized its link to Abraham as its putative founder, and its followers were described by the Christian historian Sozomenus, writing circa 450 AD, as Ishmaelite monotheists who followed a loose analog of Judaism 114.
Indeed, Pines notes evidence for Abrahamists as early as the time of Tertullian (~200 AD), who disputed with a group of them 115.
The Abrahamists were one of many groups of hanifiyya, emergent monotheists who preceded Islam in Arabia. The monotheism of these groups engendered the belief in a high god who was without partners. It is likely that these hanifiyya, who were more or less independent of Judaism and Christianity, were the next natural step in the progression from pure paganism to the henotheistic belief in a "high god" to monotheism. As a result, it is likely that their views were arrived at by elevating one of their native gods at the expense of the others, and accepting him as the "only" god. That this seems to have been the case, at least with those who revered the Ka'bah as the "house of Allah" (including, of course, local groups of Abrahamists), seems evident in the association with Abraham of the oracular method of divination through Hubal. Rubin notes that the ritual of casting arrows before Hubal was itself Abrahamic (referring to the pre-Islamic religious system, not to the Biblical Abraham), and that when Mohammed conquered Mecca, he ordered the removal of a painting of Abraham holding arrows from within the Ka'bah 116.
The deen of Abraham, at least as it appeared to the Arabs both pagan and hanif, involved reverence for both the Ka'bah and its lord, and this suggests that the god which they were monotheizing was probably Hubal.
This understanding of the "lord of the Ka'bah" as a high god again points to the familiar pattern of henotheism that can be found all across the Semitic world. Wellhausen considered Hubal to be an ancient name for Allah 117.
In this is meant the sense that he believed Allah to be an abstraction which originated in the many local gods (one of whom was Hubal), and gave rise to a common word for the high god. This view has been judged as inadequate by many later scholars 118.
I would note, however, that much of the later impetus against Wellhausen's initial view stems from the over-reliance of scholars upon Islamic sources for information concerning the period of Jahiliyya, the pagan period prior to Islam. It would seem natural that Islamic traditions, produced two centuries or more after the fact, would present an artificially sanitized view of the pre-Islamic period. As noted previously, this was common in early Muslim works for polemical purposes. We have seen earlier that it was common for cultures in the ancient Near East to hold up a high god, and to attribute to him various spheres of influence, depending on the prior nature of the henotheized deity. This would seem to support the arguments made above and by Wellhausen that the high god of the Arabs was not one original deity, but rather became such by the synthesis of the various local high gods of Arabia and the regions conquered by the Arabs.
As has been alluded, Hubal seems to have also had a variety of characteristic spheres which he dominated. Zwemer above identified Hubal as a god of rain, which correlates well with the typical station of Baal among the Arabs' northerly neighbors. Hubal also, however, had several marked astral stations among the Arabs. Hommel tells us that in southern Arabia, Hubal was to be identified with the planet Venus, understood by these groups to be male. In northern Arabia, including the region of Mecca, Hubal was understood to be a lunar god,
“First of all, as regards the religion of the South Arabians, as we find it in their inscriptions, it is a strongly marked star-worship, in which the cult of the moon-god, conceived as masculine, takes complete precedence of that of the sun, which is conceived as feminine. This is shown in the clearest fashion by the stereotyped series of gods (Minaean: ‘Athar, Wadd, Nakruh, Shams; Hadramawtic: ‘Athar, Sîn, Hol, Shams; Qatabanian: ‘Athar, ‘Amm, Anbai, Shams; Sabaean: ‘Athar, Hawbas, Al-maku-hu, Shams); here we find throughout, a. ‘Athar (the planet Venus conceived as masculine...as symbol of the sky) the god of the heavens mentioned first, b. Wadd or as the case may be, Sîn, ‘Amm or Hawbas the real chief god i.e. the moon; c. Nakruh (the planet Saturn or Mars), or Hol, Anbai (messenger of the gods, Nebo) or Almaku-hu, his (the moon’s) servant or messenger, and finally, d. Shams, the daughter of the moon-god to whom women may have appealed by preference and who therefore stands at the end of the whole enumeration. Besides these, a certain part was played by a great Mother-goddesses, the mother and consort of the moon-god conceived as a personified lunar station, the Minaean Athirat, who was called Harimtu among the Sabaeans and who was in all probability universally known as Ilat (e.g. as a component part in names of persons, also in the shortened form Lat). We may also mention various lesser ‘Athar deities (confined later to the part played by Venus as morning or evening star), and among the West Sabaeans Ta’lab, a god of the bow who also bears merely the epithet Dhû Samawî ‘lord of the heavens’, and to whom especially camels (ibil) are sacred (hence in Midian but probably in South Arabia Habul or Hubal etc.). It is a particularly favourite mode of thought to conceive the two chief aspects of the moon (waxing and waning moon) as twin deities, in which connection sometimes the one and sometimes the other phase is specially favoured according to the locality....In North West Arabia from Mekka onwards to Petra and further onwards to the Syrian desert (Palmyra) and the Hawran, the same ideas prevailed, partly even appearing under the old names partly with new designations. Here we have especially to do with the cults of Mekka and of the whole Hidjaz shortly before Muhammad (al-Lat and Hubal, in certain cases also al-Lat, and Wudd, in addition al-‘Uzza, a feminine form of...Aziz-Lat, the goddess of death Manat, a god Ruda and others) and at an earlier period the still more important cult of the Nabataeans. Among the latter also we find the moon divided into twin deities: Dhu Shara (‘He of the mountain’) and his Kharisha (the sun), the former especially in Petra, and Habul (or Hubal) and his consort Manawat...."119
Other scholars have also noted the place of Hubal as the moon god. Concerning Hubal Glassé writes,
"An idol, the god of the Moon..."120
Occhigrosso further illustrates,
"Before Muhammad appeared, the Kaaba was surrounded by 360 idols, and every Arab house had its god. Arabs also believed in jinn (subtle beings), and some vague divinity with many offspring. Among the major deities of the pre-Islamic era were al-Lat ("the Goddess"), worshiped in the shape of a square stone; al-Uzzah ("the Mighty"), a goddess identified with the morning star and worshiped as a thigh-bone-shaped slab of granite between al-Taif and Mecca; Manat, the goddess of destiny, worshiped as a black stone on the road between Mecca and Medina; and the moon god, Hubal, whose worship was connected with the Black Stone of the Kaaba." 121
Once again, we see that the high god of this locality was thus a moon deity, and yet also strongly connected with the realm of atmospheric phenomena and fertility through his being a bringer of rains and storms. The astral aspects of the Ka'bah, over which Hubal ruled, have been noted by scholars. Occhigrosso notes that the black stone in the Ka'bah was said by the pre-Islamic Arabs to have come from the moon 122.
The fact that the number of idols in the pre-Islamic Ka'bah is repeatedly said to be 360 is viewed by some as having astronomical overtones related to the worship of the heavenly bodies,
"The earliest Muslim sources suggest that the pre-Islamic cult of the Ka'ba had some astronomical significance. The historian Mas'udi (896-956) stated that certain people had regarded the Ka'ba as a temple dedicated to the Sun, Moon and the five visible planets (making up the mythical figure of seven, the number of circumambulations required for each tawaf). The story that there were exactly 360 idols placed round the temple also points to an astronomical significance. Among the votive gifts said to have been offered to the idols were golden suns and moons." 123
This connection of the Islamic religion with a site sacred to the moon god is not unique to the Ka'bah. Speaking of the ancient temple to the moon god Sin located at Harran (who, as we saw above, was the "Baal of Harran"), Green says this,
"It is most likely that it was on the site of his great temple that the Muslim rulers of the city constructed the Great Mosque." 124
Dushara - Proto-Islamic Arabian High God
Let us now turn to yet another pre-Islamic Arab god with close associations, both conceptual and through lineage, to the deities previously mentioned as precursors to Allah. This deity is Dushara, a god worshipped primarily in Nabataea and nearby regions in northern Arabia. Dushara, whose name appears in many cases to be an epithet, rather than a proper name, was worshipped as the supreme god among the Nabataeans, but may have been known by several other names 125.
Indeed, Healey notes that scholars are still trying to find the true name of the supreme god to whom this epithet applied 126.
The name/title Dushara is commonly understood to mean "he of the mountain", indicating a local geographic extent as a mountain-god (but which also recalls the place of Enlil as a lord of mountains, seen above). In this vein, Browning identifies the name as Dhu-esh-Shera, “He (Lord) of Shera (Seir)”, thus placing Dushara as a local deity based around Mount Seir, in Edom 127.
However, it cannot be ruled out that the second part of his name describes a general characteristic of the god instead. One of the most prominent meanings suggested is that of vegetation 128.
Healey also suggests that Dushara may have had astral characteristics as well 129,
which was supported above by the statement of Hommel to the effect that Dhu Shara was one of two moon deities found among the Nabataeans, along with Hubal. Healey also notes that there is a close relationship, perhaps a non-spousal pairing, between Dushara and Hubal, as indicated by certain Nabataean funerary inscriptions 130.
Though Healey himself notes a secondary solar role for this deity rather than a lunar, it is possible that both characters were combined in this god. Hitti also points out Dushara's solar role, discusses the worship of Dushara through the box-like ka'bah mentioned previously, and notes that Dushara was associated with Allat, viewed in northern Arabia as a moon goddess 131.
The name itself is traced by some even further back than the Nabataeans, to the Mesopotamian divine name "Du-shar-ra" found in cuneiform records from Mesopotamia. It has been suggested that this name entered into West Semitic mythology from Assyro-Babylonia 132.
Among the Nabataeans and other Northern Arab tribes, Dushara was often known simply as 'lh', "the god", par excellence 133.
For the Nabataeans, this accorded to Dushara the role of high god, as Healey states,
"On this basis Dushara (or the god behind the title....) was regarded as the god par excellence and this would in part explain why the name of Dushara appears rather rarely in theophoric personal names, while derivatives of 'lh', 'the god' ('lhy, etc.) appear quite often. 'The god' in the Nabataean context meant 'the one and only significant god, also known as Dushara'." 134
There appears to have been the same tendency to both develop him into a high god, and to associate both lunar and fertility/atmospheric spheres together into his character, which parallels this same phenomenon as it occurred all across the ancient Near East. Indeed, among this Arabian tribe, Dushara was associated with a consort, Allat, placing him firmly within the Arabian Allah-Allat milieu. Healey questions the view that Allat was the consort of Dushara however, instead suggesting that she may have been viewed as his mother, and that she and another goddess, al-Uzza (also found in the Islamic descriptions as a “daughter of Allah”) were originally the same deity, later diverging to separate deities at some time prior to the rise of Islam 135.
Further, references to other deities previously associated with Allah, such as Manat and al-Uzza, and also Baal, had been found among the Nabataean remains 136.
Dushara is mentioned alongside Hubal and Manawat (Manat) in a Nabataean inscription found in Edom 137.
In several Nabataean inscriptions, Dushara is closely associated with Manotu 138, and it is significant that the inscription series was found in the vicinity of the Nabataean center of Hegra, which is in Northern Arabia, much closer to the Hijaz than is Petra, and thus geographically adjacent to the classically Arabian milieu. Also notable is that Dushara was worshipped through a typical Semitic litholatric block, described by the Byzantine historian Suidas (from his antique sources) as a cubic black stone 139, a view also supported by Glueck 140.
Hadad/Rimmon and the Islamic Rahman
Another aspect of this overall conjoining of astral, atmospheric, and fertility spheres is to be found with the deity known in Sumeria as Ishkur, and in the Semitic world as Adad or Hadad. This deity also was a storm, thunder, and weather god, and at various points in time was worshipped as the high or highest god in some pantheons, especially among the Aramaeans. Adad appears in many cases to have been synonymous with Baal (another storm god), being also called Hadd at various points and associated in parallel with Hadad at one point in the Ras Shamra texts 141.
Kapelrud notes from texts from Ras Shamra that Ba'l as a name was applied to and eventually was used virtually in place of the name Hadad/Haddu 142.
Adad was understood in Babylonian texts not simply to be a fearsome god of storms, but also as the "lord of abundance, the controller of the floodgates of the earth" (because of his role as a weather god) 143.
There naturally would seem to be a strong conceptual connection between the weather/storm sphere of a god's influence, and his capacity for producing fertility and agricultural abundance, especially in many places in Syria and Palestine which rely primarily upon rainfall for the sustenance of farming and flocks.
Corroboration for the joining of astral and vegetation/fertility spheres in Hadad/Adad is found in Arabian evidences from North Arabia and the Transjordan region. Later iconographic evidence from the Nabataean temple site at Khirbet Tannur is identified by Knauf 144 as denoting Dushara-Zeus-Hadad, and there is ample evidence from Nabataean inscriptions to indicate the integration of the Nabataean high god, Dushara, with Zeus, the high god of the Hellenistic Greeks who were present in the region from the time of Alexander’s conquests onward 145.
Gleuck identified the main deity of the temple at Tannur as Zeus-Hadad 146 (so-called because of the combination of Hellenistic and Semitic characteristics) on the basis of the “eagle” iconography associated with the images of the main deity in the complex, suggesting this god to be an atmospheric deity, though as has been previously noted, this deity was Dushara. Healey, following Starckey, instead identifies this deity as Qos based upon the fact that Qos is the only god mentioned in the inscriptional evidence from the site.
This connection is also made, however, on the basis of the lightning/storm iconography associated with the god in this temple, which suggests an association with Zeus-Hadad 147.
Either way, whether this god was Qos or Dushara, the evidences from Tannur clearly connect him with the atmospheric god Hadad (associated in Hellenistic times with Zeus). Qos, as was seen earlier, very clearly had lunar attributes (and was directly coupled with Allah), and Dushara was also associated with astral idolatry as well. The evidence for the conjoining of astral and fertility spheres given by Tannur is strengthened through the appearance of a grain (and dolphin!) goddess, thought by Gleuck to be Atargatis, with the main god of that temple 148.
Another point of evidence for the joining of astral and weather traits is in the South Arabian god known as Almaqah/Ilmaqah, who was suggested above as a South Arabian antecedent to the more generally known Allah. Ringgren notes that Baal, also called Hadd, sits enthroned upon his mountain, and that the iconography of Baal included his being surrounded by seven lightning flashes, among other details 149.
Elsewhere, we see that the symbol often associated with Adad is a fork-shaped flash of lightning 150, emphasizing his role as a storm and weather god. Almaqah, the national god of the South Arabian Sabaeans, is also widely recognized as a moon god 151.
Almaqah, however, also demonstrates iconographic evidences which suggest a storm/weather role. The Sabaeans symbolized this god using a cluster of lightning flashes and a weapon that looks like a slightly-bent capital S 152, which is quite similar to the symbology used with Adad and Teshub (an analogous Hurrian storm god).
Just as Sin and other moon gods were often associated with Shamash (the sun) and Ishtar (representing Venus, and also a fertility goddess), so was Adad/Hadad 153, known also by the epithet Rimmon (meaning "pomegranate").
This suggests a link between Sin and Adad/Rimmon, probably another example of assimilation rather than a direct attribution of lunar province to Adad. Both were high gods worshipped in Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the northern and western Semitic areas, and thus it is natural that both would essentially become the same deity, even if not specified as such, in the minds of their followers. Hence, this could suggest an association of the Rimmon/Hadad deity with lunar idolatry, a tendency which has been shown above for several weather and/or fertility gods.
But what of the potential connection between Rimmon and Rahman (which is presented as an epithet for Allah at several points in the Qur'an)? Some Muslim apologists will attempt to deny the association of Rahman with Rimmon/Rammanu. It is argued that Rahman (from the rhm root, having the meaning “compassionate“) cannot be related to Rimmon or Rammanu (from the rmn root, meaning “pomegranate”). They will argue that because the Semitic triconsonantal roots are different, there cannot be a connection between Rahman and the ancient Syro-Babylonian storm god Rimmon/Rammanu. However, this argument does not take into account the fact that languages can change over time, diverging and converging, and that phonemes may evolve, causing words and roots to change over time. This can be seen in the comparison of the Arabic and Hebrew roots meaning “compassion”. In Arabic, the root is rhm, with the h indicating the letter h’aa, which has a sound approximated by a heavy, open “h” sound made from the soft palate at the back of the throat. In Hebrew, the root is rchm, where ch denotes the letter cheth, which has a sound approximated by the “ch” in the Scots pronunciation of “loch”. Same root, yet a somewhat different phoneme. Further, the apologetic argument ignores the fact that similar words can have divergent and/or multiple meanings across different cultures and time periods.
In the linguistic case of Rimmon and Rahman, it is important to first note that Rimmon/Rammanu was also known by the name “Ragimu” among Mesopotamian Semitic groups 154.
This is enlightening because both the “g” and “h“ are sounds with very similar articulation. Both of these phonemes are velar sounds, produced by pushing air over the velum, or the soft palate that sits right in front of the uvula. The primary difference between these sounds is that the “g” is a stop (meaning that the flow of air is stopped after the initial sound is made), while the “h“ is a fricative sound produced by forcing air through a narrow opening between the tip of the tongue and the velum, and hence can be extended. The shift from "g" to "h" would be the result of a process in Semitic phonetic development called "spirantization", in which a stop consonant changes into a fricative consonant. The point to this linguistic digression is that it is certainly very possible (and perhaps even likely from a phonetic standpoint) for the “g” in Ragimu to have developed into the “h“ of Rahman in the course of the development of the set of Arabian languages from their Mesopotamian Semitic precursors. After all, we see that Ragimu is related to Rammanu, probably developing through a process of epenthesis (a process in which a phoneme is inserted into the middle of a word to clarify or simplify pronunciation), so the theory proposed above is certainly not at all unlikely. The dropping of the final “n” in the course of the development from rmn --> rgm --> rhm is easily explained by noting that nasal sounds (such as “n”) tend to drop out from the end of words which find common use or have a systematic history of development, a form of apocope (a process where word final phonemes are dropped). This is seen in English, whereby many words ending in “ing” (the “ng” is a single nasal sound) tend to either lose that final “ng” completely, or else become the softer “n” sound, in everyday or hurried speech. Thus, the Muslim arguments against the identification of the very ancient Rimmon/Rammanu with the much later Rahman are not necessarily valid.
Scholars have noted that the rhm root, usually said to mean "compassionate", may have an earlier and/or alternative meaning. Ringgren notes that the epithet rhm can stress youthfulness, as well as the powers of life and generation, traditional roles of Ancient Near East fertility deities. He connects it with the Hebrew rechem, a cognate word meaning "womb" 155.
It is likely that the later attachment of the ideas of mercy and compassion to rhm sprang forth from these earlier fertility aspects. It is entirely logical to postulate that a god who was responsible for bringing in the rains and causing the earth to bring forth fertility (as was the function of Rimmon/Rammanu and the implication of his name meaning “pomegranate”) would evolve into a god whose name was associated with compassion. One of the most compassionate things a god in the arid Near East could do was bring in the rains with some regularity. The connection of this epithet with Allah is natural, then, and the appearance of Allah as a rain-bringer in pre-Islamic Arab myth is well-known 156.
Indeed, this sort of connection between the rain/storm god Rimmon/Adad and the compassionate god Rahman is made in the literature,
"...If this were Umm-ar-Rahma, we would not hesitate for a moment to choose the first solution; but the antiquated or archaic reading of Umm-Ruhm, specified by the authors, causes us to see in Ruhm a vestige of the old Semitic religion. Indeed, its Semitic root r'/h/hm puts us face to face with one of the oldest Semitic names of the god Adad, expressing what characterizes it primarily, namely the rain which makes "soft" and "tender" the ground, the vegetation and, by analogy, the hearts of humans, and also the thunder, source of rain, which symbolizes it. From the double significance of the root there occurs the two series of names which are given to him, on the one hand, Ramman, Rihamun, Ramimu and Ragimu, expressing roaring thunder and the howling of the bull which symbolizes this aspect of it; on the other hand, Rh/hm, Rhman (Akk. remenu), which expresses the grace and the mercy of Ba'l of the sky. But, in this last sense, this epithet applied to other gods." 157
Fahd notes the dual development of Rahman and Rimmon from this common Semitic root, even stating that Rahman is the Akkadian "remenu". Fahd goes further, showing that the rhm root was a specific epithet applied to a number of ancient Near East gods,
"The use of the root rhm in Arab paganism, to qualify the divinity, is attested, in addition to the testimony of Ibn Durayd, by another no less important, provided by the Palmyrene epigraphy, where a god RHM is named at the side of Allat. In addition, within Thamudic onomastics, a theophore, Raham'il, confirms the existence of this use in Northern Arabia. These weak indications for the name were to enjoy in Islam a very great expansion, in particular in the two forms of Abd ar-Rahman and Abd ar-Rahim, and are the echoes of an ancient usage, going back to Assyro-Babylonia, one of the principal hearths of Semitic paganism, where the epithet 'merciful' or the invocation 'have mercy upon me' was joined to the names of principle gods, such as Marduk, Ishtar, Sin, Shamash, Adad, and Assur. In the isolated state, Ri-mi-nu-u became an epithet of Marduk." 158
Again, the equation of rhm with rmn is taken for granted. Rahman was applied to many deities, including both Adad the storm god, Sin the moon god, and Marduk, another name for Bel (identified by Fahd further above as Ba'l). Indeed, the god-name Ri.ha.mun appears on ancient god lists from ancient Assyro-Babylonia, attesting the antiquity of rhm far before the appearance of this god in Arabian mythology 159.
In one of these appearances, the name is accompanied by a descriptor meaning "he who holds the nose/bridle for Utu". Utu was an archaic Sumerian name (though apparently still being used in Babylonia at the time) for the sun-god Shamash. The description seems to indicate Ri.ha.mun as being in an inferior position, holding the horse of his master Utu/Shamash. This same combination of Rahim with the sun god is noted much later in Palmyra, where Rahim appears as an associated acolyte of Shamash, along with Allat as the third member of the triad 160.
One other point of interest is that Fahd noted that the "howling of the bull" was associated with this fertility god Rimmon/Rahman, just as the bull symbology was seen with other deities with fertility functions, such as the moon god and Baal.
By the Roman period, the transition had been made of rhm from fertility/compassion deity to a more abstracted idealization of mercy and compassion. Rahim was a god of mercy in the Palmyrene, Dura-Europan, and Safaitic pantheons, and Rahman was a god of compassion in the South Arabian pantheon of this period. Rahman in the South gradually was raised to the position of being an epithet for the unique god appearing in the nascent South Arabian monotheism, and would seem to be a strong candidate for the entrance of this deity into the developing Islamic belief system after the Arabs had cemented their hold on the Arabian peninsula and needed a cohesive religious system to unify their conquests. Healey has postulated that the traditional South Arabian epithet rhmn (with the suffixed South Arabian articular n) appearing in the monotheizing cult of the Merciful One in South Arabia could easily have arisen from earlier pagan usage, as he notes that the worship of the Merciful One was widespread throughout Syria in the first century AD in a non-Christian and non-Jewish context, instead tracing to Mesopotamian cultural influences 161.
The appearance of the same sort of cult in South Arabia (as well as elsewhere in Arabia, including the Nabataeans), suggests the natural development of this view of rhmn applied to emergent native monotheism. It would further then seem natural that this Rahman would be adopted into the theology of Islam as a way of bringing his worshipers in Southern Arabia into the fold of the developing monotheistic state religion. Indeed, both Rahman and Rahim appears as epithetic names for Allah in the Qur'an in numerous places.
What Does It All Mean?
Essentially, we must understand and accept that Allah of the Islamic religion is not the same as the God of the Bible. Allah can be traced backwards through ancient Near Eastern religious history as the latest development in a series of astral and atmospheric deities in the ancient Semitic world, all the way back to very ancient Mesopotamia, the original seat of both civilization, and also idolatry. Muslims, when they worship Allah, are not worshipping the true Creator God, but are rather worshipping a false god, one whose worship is condemned in the Bible:
“...And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either, the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded.” (Deuteronomy 17:3)
"And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them all that burned offering unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.” (II Kings 23:5)
For the Muslim who wished to deny or ignore this evidence, the question is posed: Why does Islam have such a fixation with the crescent moon symbol, a symbol which is intimately and widely associated with the worship of the moon god throughout history, under whatever name, in Sumer, Akkad, Syria, Persia, Canaan, Egypt, and Arabia? Though some Muslim apologists will argue that the crescent moon symbology entered Islam very late as a result of Turkish influence in the 15th century, this is simply not the case. The physical evidence for the crescent moon as a religious symbol in Islam goes back to 75 AH (696 AD), where it is used as a symbol on Islamic coins 162.
Why do many mosques and other Islamic religious buildings have depictions of the crescent moon on their spires and pinnacles? Why do the flags of twelve Muslim nations (Algeria, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Comoros, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) go so far as to include this crescent moon symbol? Why is the knowledge of the timing of the hilal, the crescent moon, so important for starting the Muslim holy month of fasting, Ramadan? All the evidence points to the fact of the moon symbol being important to the early Arabs among whom the religion of Islam gradually developed, and that this pre-Islamic pagan symbol was imported into Islam, along with the rest of the ancient trappings.
For the Muslim to be free of idolatry means, ultimately, that he or she must turn from Islam, with its worship of this created god, and turn to the True Creator God of the Bible, who has said that He will not share His glory with other “gods” (Isaiah 42:8).
In short, the notion that Allah is the same as the God of the Bible, and that Allah is just the fullest revelation of God who had previously been revealed in the Torah and the Bible, must be rejected. As Caesar Farah has said in his book about Islam,
"There is no reason, therefore, to accept the idea that Allah passed to the Muslims from the Christians and Jews". 163
The God of the Bible is not the same as the Allah worshipped in Islam. Instead, the roots of Islam's deity are found in Middle Eastern mythology, and as such represent the latest manifestation of idolatry in that region, and wherever Islam has spread.
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