Dushara (

Nabataean Arabic Nabataean Arabic was the dialect of Arabic spoken by the Nabataeans in antiquity. In the first century AD, the Nabataeans wrote their inscriptions, such as the legal texts carved on the façades of the monumental tombs at Mada'in Salih, ancient ...

: 𐢅𐢈𐢝𐢛𐢀 ''dwšrʾ''), also transliterated as Dusares or Dhu Shara, is a pre-Islamic Arabian

god In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

worshipped by the

Nabataeans The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ) were an ancient Arabs, Arab people who inhabited northern Arabian Peninsula, Arabia and the southern Levant. Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city o ...

Petra Petra (; "Rock"), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu (Nabataean Aramaic, Nabataean: or , *''Raqēmō''), is an ancient city and archaeological site in southern Jordan. Famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit systems, P ...

and Madain Saleh (of which city he was the patron).

Safaitic Safaitic ( ''Al-Ṣafāʾiyyah'') is a variety of the South Semitic scripts used by the Arabs in southern Syria and northern Jordan in the Harrat al-Sham, Ḥarrah region, to carve rock inscriptions in various dialects of Old Arabic and Ancient N ...

inscriptions imply he was the son of the goddess

Al-Lat Al-Lat (, ), also spelled Allat, Allatu, and Alilat, is a pre-Islamic Arabian goddess, at one time worshipped under various associations throughout the entire Arabian Peninsula, including Mecca, where she was worshipped alongside Al-Uzza and ...

, and that he assembled in the heavens with other deities. He is called "Dushara from

" in one inscription. Dushara was expected to bring justice if called by the correct ritual.

Etymology

Dushara is known first from

epigraphic Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

Nabataean sources who invariably spell the name ''dwšrʾ'', the

Nabataean script The Nabataean script is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) that was used to write Nabataean Aramaic and Nabataean Arabic from the second century BC onwards.Hisham ibn al-Kalbi Hishām ibn al-Kalbī (), 737 – 819 CE / 204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (), was an Arab historian. His full name was Abu al-Mundhir Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Sa'ib ibn Bishr al-Kalbi. Born in Kufa, he spent much of his life in Baghdad. L ...

in his "

Book of Idols The ''Book of Idols'' ('), written by the Arab scholar Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (737–819), is the most popular Islamic work about the religion in pre-Islamic Arabia. Arabian religion before Muhammad is described as polytheistic and idolatrous. Ibn a ...

" explains the name as ''Dhū l-Šarā'' (), "etymologically probably 'the one of the Shara (mountains north of

)'", referring to a mountain range southeast of the

Dead Sea The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...

now known as

al-Sharat ''Ash-Sharāt'' or ''Ash-Sharāh'' (, also known as ''Bilād ash-Sharāt'' () or ''Jibāl ash-Sharāt'' (), is a highland region in modern-day southern Jordan and northwestern Saudi Arabia. It was formerly a sub-district in ''Bilad al-Sham'' dur ...

. This interpretation is accepted by some scholars, and compared to other Canaaite deities who are associated with mountains or geographic areas (such as Baal Lebanon, Baal Hermon, and

YHWH The TetragrammatonPronounced ; ; also known as the Tetragram. is the four-letter Hebrew-language theonym (transliterated as YHWH or YHVH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four Hebrew letters, written and read from right to left, a ...

Teman and YHWH Shomron from Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions). If this interpretation is correct, ''Dushara'' would be more of a title than a proper name, but both the exact form of the name and its interpretation are disputed.

Worship

In Classical Greek times, he was associated with

Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Greek deities, Greek pantheon. He is a sky father, sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the child ...

because he was the chief of the Nabataean pantheon as well as with

Dionysus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ...

. A shrine to Dushara has been discovered in the

harbour A harbor (American English), or harbour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), is a sheltered body of water where ships, boats, and barges can be Mooring, moored. The t ...

of ancient Puteoli in Italy. The city was an important nexus for trade to the Near East and it is known to have had a Nabataean presence during the mid first century BCE. The cult continued in some capacity well into the Roman period and possibly as late as the Islamic period.Peterson, Stephanie Bowers, "The Cult of Dushara and the Roman Annexation of Nabataea" (2006). Open Access Dissertations and Theses. Paper 5352. This deity was mentioned by the ninth century CE Muslim historian

Hisham Ibn Al-Kalbi Hishām ibn al-Kalbī (), 737 – 819 CE / 204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (), was an Arab historian. His full name was Abu al-Mundhir Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Sa'ib ibn Bishr al-Kalbi. Born in Kufa, he spent much of his life in Baghdad. L ...

, who wrote in the ''

'' (''Kitab al-Asnām'') that: "The Banū al-Hārith ibn-Yashkur ibn-Mubashshir of the ʻAzd had an idol called Dū Sharā".

inscriptions mention animal sacrifices to Dushara, asking for a variety of services.

References

Bibliography

* Ibn al-Kalbī, ''The Book of Idols, Being a Translation from the Arabic of the Kitāb al-Asnām''. Tr. and comm. Nabih Amin Faris (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1952). * Healey, John F., ''The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus'' (Leiden, Brill, 2001) (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 136). * el-Khouri, Lamia; Johnson, David, "A New Nabataean Inscription from Wadi Mataha, Petra", ''Palestine Exploration Quarterly'', 137,2 (2005), 169–174.

External links

Nabataean religion
in the original Arabic (description on p. 5)
"Solving the Enigma of Petra and the Nabataeans"
Biblical Archaeology Review {{Pre-Islamic Arabia Nabataea Arabian gods Al-Lat

Etymology

Worship

See also

References

Bibliography

External links