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Pre-Islamic Arabian Monotheism
Monotheism, the belief in a supreme Creator being, 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. 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, and from the sixth century and until the eve of Islam, it is solely monotheistic. Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry is also monotheistic or henotheistic. An important locus of pre-Islamic Arabian monotheism, the Himyarite Kingdom, ruled over South Arabia, w ...
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Monotheism
Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God. Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. A distinction may be made between exclusive monotheism, in which the one God is a singular existence, and both inclusive and pluriform monotheism, in which multiple gods or godly forms are recognized, but each are postulated as extensions of the same God. Monotheism is distinguished from henotheism, a religious system in which the believer worships one God without denying that others may worship different gods with equal validity, and monolatrism, the recognition of the existence of many gods but with the consistent worship of only one deity. The term '' monolatry'' was perhaps first used by Julius Wellhausen. Monotheism characterizes the traditions of Bábism, the Baháʼí Faith, Cheondoism, Christianity,Christ ...
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Aksumite Invasion Of Himyar
The Aksumite invasion of Himyar consisted of a series of two invasions from 518 to 525 fought between the Christian Kingdom of Aksum and the Jewish Himyarite Kingdom. The wars functioned as proxy wars waged by the former on behalf of the Roman Empire during the Roman-Persian Wars with the ultimate goal of establishing an anti-Sasanid bloc in Arabia Felix. Background During the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, the Southern part of Arabia, known in antiquity as Arabia Felix, had experienced Aksumite political and military involvement, as the Aksumites had occupied relatively peripheral areas in the region and formed alliances with the local tribes. During the late 4th century AD, the local population converted to Judaism, and a Jewish kingdom known as Himyar was established. During the reign of Himyarite King Yanuf Dhu Shanatir, the Aksumites established diplomatic relations with the Himyarite capital city of Ẓafār, but the friendly relations between the two kingdoms did not last ...
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Atarsamain
Atarsamain (also spelled Attar-shamayin, Attarshamayin,Retso, Jan. The Arabs in Antiquity: Their history from the Assyrians to the Umayyads. Routledge, 2013, p. 168 Attarsame (ʿAttarsamē);Ahmad al-Jallad, "On the origins of the god Ruḍ aw and some remarks on the pre-Islamic North Arabian pantheon," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (2021) "morning star of heaven") () was an astral deity of uncertain gender, worshipped in the pre-Islamic northern and central Arabian Peninsula. Worshipped widely by Arab tribes, Atarsamain is known from around 800 BC and is identified in letters of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal.Hoyland, 2001, p. 68. Atarsamain may be identical with Allāt, whose cult was centred on Palmyra and also with Attar. According to Dierk Lange, Atarsamain was the main deity in a trinity of gods worshipped by what he calls the Yumu'il Confederation, which he describes as a northern Arab tribal confederation of Ishmaelite ancestry headed by the " ...
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Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon, also spelled Essarhaddon, Assarhaddon and Ashurhaddon (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , also , meaning "Ashur has given me a brother"; Biblical Hebrew: ''ʾĒsar-Ḥaddōn'') was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Sennacherib in 681 BC to his own death in 669. The third king of the Sargonid dynasty, Esarhaddon is most famous for his conquest of Egypt in 671 BC, which made his empire the largest the world had ever seen, and for his reconstruction of Babylon, which had been destroyed by his father. After Sennacherib's eldest son and heir Ashur-nadin-shumi had been captured and presumably executed in 694, the new heir had originally been the second eldest son, Arda-Mulissu, but in 684, Esarhaddon, a younger son, was appointed instead. Angered by this decision, Arda-Mulissu and another brother, Nabu-shar-usur, murdered their father in 681 and planned to seize the Assyrian throne. The murder, and Arda-Mulissu's aspirations of becoming king him ...
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Zayd Ibn Amr
Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl (died 605) was a monotheist who lived in Mecca shortly before Islam. Family He was the son of Amr ibn Nufayl, a member of the Adi clan of the Quraysh tribe.Muhammad ibn Saad. ''Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir'' vol. 3. Translated by Bewley, A. (2013). ''The Companions of Badr''. London: Ta-Ha Publishers. Zayd's mother had previously been married to his grandfather, Nufayl ibn Abduluzza, so her son from this marriage, al-Khattab ibn Nufayl, was at the same time Zayd's maternal half-brother and paternal half-uncle. Zayd married Fatima bint Baaja from the Khuza'a tribe, and their son was Sa'id ibn Zayd. A subsequent wife, Umm Kurz Safiya bint al-Hadrami, bore his daughter Atiqa.Muhammad ibn Saad. ''Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir''. Translated by Bewley, A. (1995). ''The Women of Madina''. London: Ta-Ha Publishers. Religious beliefs Abandonment of idols According to the Islamic historians Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa'd, Zayd became disillusioned with the traditional religion ...
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Waraqah Ibn Nawfal
Waraqah ibn Nawfal ibn Asad ibn Abd-al-Uzza ibn Qusayy Al-Qurashi (Arabic ) was the paternal first cousin of Khadija bint Khuwaylid, the first wife of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He was considered to be a hanif, who practised the pure form of monotheism in the pre-Islamic era. Waraqah presumably died in 610 AD, shortly after Muhammad is said to have received his first revelation. Waraqah and Khadija were also the first cousins twice removed of Muhammad: their paternal grandfather Asad ibn Abd-al-Uzza was Muhammad's matrilineal great-great-grandfather. By another reckoning, Waraqah was Muhammad's third cousin once removed: Asad ibn Abd-al-Uzza was a grandson of Muhammad's patrilineal great-great-great-grandfather Qusai ibn Kilab. Waraqah was the son of a man called Nawfal and his consort—Hind, daughter of Abī Kat̲h̲īr. Waraqah was proposed to marry Khadija, but the marriage never took place. Waraqah is revered in Islamic tradition for being one of the first ''hanifs'' ...
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Quss Ibn Sa'ida Al-Iyadi
Quss Ibn Sa'ida al-Iyadi (d. . 610 AD) was a pre-Islamic Arabian bishop of Najran, then in Yemen, but now located in Saudi Arabia. He lived in the 6th and early 7th seventh centuries, and his genealogy took him back to the North Arabian Iyad tribe. He was famous for his eloquence in his poetry, rhymed prose (saj'), sermons, and rhetoric, and Quss was held up as a model for literary excellence, if not the greatest orator of all the tribes. One of his sermons has survived, and his ascribed oeuvre has been collected. A proverb known from a 717 AD Meccan inscription is occasionally attributed to him too. Quss was a preacher of both theology and monotheism. Quss was a sage, judge, and more. When he died, he was buried in north Syria, probably at Mount Simon. Sources differ in saying how long he lived, some saying he reached the age of 380, others 600 or 700, old enough to have known the disciples of Jesus. He is considered a legendary or, at least, a semi-legendary figure, and is o ...
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Hanif
In Islam, a ( ar, حنيف, ḥanīf; plural: , ), meaning "renunciate", is someone who maintains the pure monotheism of the patriarch Abraham. More specifically, in Islamic thought, renunciates were the people who, during the pre-Islamic period or , were seen to have renounced idolatry and retained some or all of the tenets of the religion of Abraham (, ), which was submission to God in its purest form. The word is found twelve times in the Quran (ten times in its singular form and twice in the plural form) and Islamic tradition tells of a number of individuals who were . According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad himself was a and a descendant of Ishmael, son of Abraham. Etymology and history of the term The term comes from the Arabic root meaning "to incline, to decline" or "to turn or bend sideways" from the Syriac root of the same meaning.Lane, 1893 It is defined as "true believer, orthodox; one who scorns the false creeds surrounding him/her and profess the true religio ...
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Banu Qurayza
The Banu Qurayza ( ar, بنو قريظة, he, בני קוריט'ה; alternate spellings include Quraiza, Qurayzah, Quraytha, and the archaic Koreiza) were a Jewish tribe which lived in northern Arabia, at the oasis of Yathrib (now known as Medina). Jewish tribes reportedly arrived in Hijaz in the wake of the Jewish-Roman wars and introduced agriculture, putting them in a culturally, economically and politically dominant position.Peters, ''Muhammad and the Origins of Islam'', p. 192f. However, in the 5th century, the Banu Aws and the Banu Khazraj, two Arab tribes that had arrived from Yemen, gained dominance. When these two tribes became embroiled in conflict with each other, the Jewish tribes, now clients or allies of the Arabs, fought on different sides, the Qurayza siding with the Aws.Watt, "Muhammad", In: The Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 1A, pp. 39-49 In 622, the Islamic prophet Muhammad arrived at Yathrib from Mecca and reportedly established a pact between the c ...
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Christian Community Of Najran
The existence of a Christian community in the city of Najran is attested by several historical sources of the Arabian peninsula, where it recorded as having been created in the 5th century AD or perhaps a century earlier. According to the Arab Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq, Najran was the first place where Christianity took root in South Arabia. In the early 6th century, the Christians are said to have been persecuted by a Himyarite king named Dhu Nuwas. Dhu Nuwas was eventually defeated after foreign intervention from Abyssinia. In the 7th century, Christians of Najran interacted with the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who allowed them to worship in his mosque. There is evidence that the community continued to thrive until the 9th century; the community no longer exists today. Pre-Christian Najran Prior to the rise of Christianity, the people of Najran were polytheists and worshipped a tall date-palm tree, for which also they had an annual festival when they hung upon it the finest garm ...
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Jahiliyyah
The Age of Ignorance ( ar, / , " ignorance") is an Islamic concept referring to the period of time and state of affairs in Arabia before the advent of Islam in 610 CE. It is often translated as the "Age of Ignorance". The term ''jahiliyyah'' is derived from the verbal root ''jahala'' () "to be ignorant or stupid, to act stupidly".Amros, Arne A. & Stephan Pocházka. (2004). ''A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic'', Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden In modern times various Islamic thinkers have used the term to criticize what they saw as the un-Islamic nature of public and private life in the Muslim world. For Islamist scholars like Muhammad Rashid Rida, Abul A'la Maududi, and others, ''Jahiliyyah'' refers to secular modernity and modern Western culture. In his works, Maududi asserted that modernity is the “new jahiliyyah.” Sayyid Qutb viewed jahiliyyah as a state of domination of humans over humans, as opposed to their submission to God.
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