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Journal of Religious HistoryVol. ••, No. ••, •• 2016doi: 10.1111/1467-9809.12360

CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN

Rehabilitating the Spirituality of Pre-Islamic Arabia:On the Importance of the Kahin, the Jinn, and the

Tribal Ancestral Cult

This article brings into focus the misunderstood and oft-ignored pre-Islamicspirituality of, primarily, the Hejaz and their religious leaders, the kahins, oftenuncharitably translated as soothsayers. A combination of factors has limiteddiscussion of pre-Islamic religion, including the persistent rejection by Muslims ofpre-Islamic history as a time of ignorance (jahiliyyah) and a Judaeo-Christian biasin Western scholarship. From the perspectives of anthropology and comparativereligion, certain conclusions about pre-Islamic spirituality can be derived. Mostimportant among these is that the pre-Islamic Arabs engaged in clearly religiouspractices revolving around the importance of the tribe and its members, living anddead. This article will hopefully spark a renewed interest in the study of thespirituality and religion of the pre-Islamic Arabs.

IntroductionThe primary aim of this article is to bring a fresh light to bear upon theoft-neglected (and oft-denied) religious

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inclinations of the pre-Islamic Arabs,particularly those tribal elements of the Hejaz and into the Nejd. I will availmyself of several methodologies in order to arrive at, following Sharma,

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anapproximation of pre-Islamic spirituality. Given the scant resources, literaryand archaeological, from pre-Islamic Arabia, a purely historiographicalapproach to the subject proves inadequate. To deal with the gaps in literary

Dr Christopher M. Moreman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, CaliforniaState University, East Bay, Hayward, CA, USA.

1. I use “spirituality” and “religion” almost interchangeably in the context of the pre-IslamicArabs. The term “spirituality” connotes both that there is no explicit unified theology, set ofscriptures, etc., commonly associated with definitions of religion, and that the basis of pre-Islamicreligiosity lies in contacts with the spirit-world. The term “religion” identifies a sacred order sharedacross tribal boundaries that cannot be ignored simply because it is “pagan.” Thus, the pre-IslamicArabs followed a religion that is patently spiritual and a relationship with spirits that affects day-to-day life religiously.2. A. Sharma, To the Things Themselves (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 166–68.

Journal of Religious HistoryVol. ••, No. ••, •• 2016doi: 10.1111/1467-9809.12383

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history, I will combine the methods of phenomenology with those ofcomparative religion and anthropology. One can get a sense of the importantelements of pre-Islamic spirituality from the extant pre-Islamic material andfrom ways that Islamic sources describe their predecessors. These hints ofspirituality can then be compared with the more complete knowledgeassociated with other cultures exhibiting similar patterns to construct aspeculative hypothesis as to the core of the religion of pre-Islamic Arabs(especially those living in the Hejaz), which has been largely ignored byscholarship both Muslim and “Western.”

Most of what we know of pre-Islamic Arab culture comes through laterIslamic sources. These sources, especially the Qur’an and the hadith, whileregarded as authoritative by believers, present many problems for an academichistorical study.

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As Donner argues, early Islamic historiography was directedby a Muslim “master narrative” that aimed to “affirm the belief that theIslamic community was, in fact, the community of the true faith.”

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Wansbrough goes further, declaring that the Islamic sources are so unreliablethat the methods of literary analysis are more applicable than any historicalapproach at all.

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Indeed, Islamicists are becoming increasingly aware of “justhow much apparent history is religio-polemic in disguise, some even doubtingwhether the host of Arabic historical works that appear in the late eighth andearly ninth centuries contain any genuine recollection of the rise and earlygrowth of Islam.”

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Caveat emptor notwithstanding, I take the position thatIslamic historiography, while clearly biased, does include some reference toan objective historical reality. Rejecting it all leaves us completely in the dark,while accepting it all is not sceptically prudent.

The purpose of this article is not to debate the authenticity of the Islamicsources.

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One has to deal with the substantial limitation of a lack of greathistorical data, both archaeological and written, compounded with the polemicwritings of Muslims who describe the times before Muhammad as jahiliyyah,the time of ignorance, and a time that is better left behind.

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This obfuscation ofthe past, whether intentional or circumstantial, is something that might one daybe redressed through subsequent research. Meanwhile, this article provides analternate interpretation of the relationship between what is known of thepre-Islamic Arabs and what can be constructed from an understanding ofanthropology and comparative religion.

Tribal LoyaltiesThe nomads of central Arabia were organised by tribe, affiliated as large familynetworks which often overlapped with the Arabs who lived in settled areas, so

3. See C. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).4. F. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1998), 129.5. J. E. Wansbrough, “Res Ipsa Loquitur: History and Mimesis,” in Method and Theory in theStudy of Islamic Origin, ed. H. Berg (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 3–19.6. R. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1997), 2.7. Instead see H. Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam (Richmond, CT: CurzonPress, 2000).8. For example, Qur’an 3:154; 5:50; 33:33; 48:26.

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the distinction between the nomads and settled people is not clear-cut. It islikely that the distinction between settled and wandering groups is one duemore to lifestyle preference than to any cultural differences.

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The story of theinfant Muhammad (a city dweller) being given over to a Bedouin woman forsuckling indicates the symbiotic relationship between the two groups.

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Tribalties were of the utmost importance, and, within the tribe, all were equal.

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Acode of honor (asabiyyah) constrained tribes to protecting their own even whenan individual was guilty of wrongdoing. A tribe that had one member wrongedfelt wronged as a group, and the tribe that had a member guilty of some wrongwas guilty as a group. Fault always required redress, and the murder of a tribemember would require vengeance in blood, whether human or animal, from thetribe of the killer. In the words of one poet:

In the cleft of the rocks below Sal’ is lying one slain whose blood drips not withoutvengeance.He left the burden to me and departed, and I take up the load lightly andbear it –A heritage of bloodshed to me the son of his sister.

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Berkey sees the blood-feud as social glue providing rules in what could bean otherwise anarchic state.

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The tradition is attested even in the Qur’an, asfor instance:

O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the murdered; thefreeman for the freeman, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female.And for him who is forgiven somewhat by his (injured) brother, prosecution accord-ing to usage and payment unto him in kindness. This is an alleviation and a mercyfrom your Lord. He who transgresseth after this will have a painful doom.

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Familial tribal bonds brought some meaningful order to an otherwiseuncertain life of desert wandering. Stetkevych makes the convincing argu-ment that the pre-Islamic odes (qasida) describing blood vengeance representit as a rite of initiation incorporating human sacrifice for the tribal ancestors.By this rite, the inheritor of the murdered relative is obliged to exact revengeupon the offending tribe, enacting a blood sacrifice to the deceased as “kin-dred blood must be avenged in order to revitalize the kin and devitalize theenemy.”

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9. Compare J. Cauvin, The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000 and I. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1995).10. Ibn Hishām and A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad (Lahore: Oxford University Press,1970), 70–73.11. See M. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974),148–49.12. C. Lyall, Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry: Chiefly Pre-Islamic (Westport, CT:Hyperion Press, 1930), 47.13. J. Berkey, The Formation of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 40.14. Surah 2:178; cf. 17:33.15. S. P. Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).

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Watt describes this system as “tribal humanism,” applying a pragmaticDurkheimian view that tends to alienate the sacred.

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By this term, Wattexplains, “is to be understood that what gives value and significance to a man’slife is human excellence, manifested in the performance of deeds of nobilityand generosity and the other virtues admired by the Arabs.”

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And these virtueswere tribal rather than personal, being handed down from one generation to thenext. “The glories that have grown up with the grass/Can match not thoseinherited of old.”

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Despite his distinction between pre-Islamic spiritualityand so-called “higher religions,” Watt paradoxically recognises the religioussignificance of tribal loyalties as the “public recitation of the poems had thusa religious cult function, namely, to renew and keep alive men’s belief in thehonour of their tribe. For each individual the aim in life was to uphold andenhance the honour of the tribe within the narrow limits set for him by Time.”

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This poetry sings of battles, camels, lost love, glory for both individuals andtribes, and rules of eye for an eye. Krone argues that the reasoneasily-recognised religious themes are not present in the poetry is simplybecause these were not motifs of the qasida genre, but that we can still hopeto parse out hints from within them.

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Hamori further argues that religiousthemes fell out of favour in poetry altogether with what he calls the opacityof Islam.

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Of course, what might be considered obviously religious must beviewed broadly to avoid monotheistic biases as to what constitutes religion,and, further, the absence of such themes does not mean that religious conceptsdid not appear in other aspects of society. While the thematic content of theqasīda poetry is sparse and repetitive, these very features form a traditionbest-explained in terms of ritual performance.

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And, as will be shown below,some of the themes can be seen to relate to the spiritual life of the Arabs.

Tribal AncestorsReligiously, as I will illustrate below, the Arabs practised an ancestor worshipthat has often been mistaken for litholatry, or stone worship, by Muslim andWestern scholars alike.

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Recall, however, Mircea Eliade’s observation that“when a tree becomes a cult object, it is not as a tree that it is venerated, butas a hierophany, that is, a manifestation of the sacred.”

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One must try to

16. W. M. Watt, What is Islam? (New York: Praeger, 1968), 26–27.17. Watt, What is Islam? 2, 26.18. A. Tammam, Hamása, 679, quoted in R. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (NewYork: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907), 100.19. Watt, What is Islam?, 27.20. S. Krone, Die altarabische Gottheit al-Lat (Berlin: Peter Lang, 1992), 176.21. A. Hamori, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1974), 36–37.22. Hamori, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature, 21–24.23. For example, Clement of Alexandria, “Exhortation to the Heathen,” Early Christian Writ-ings: available online at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement-exhortation.html(accessed 26 May 2016). Cf. J. Henninger, “Einiges uber Ahnenkult bei arabischen Beduinen,”in Der Orient in der Forschung, ed. W. Hoenerbach (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1966), 301–317;J. Henninger, “Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion,” in Studies in Islam, ed. M. Swartz (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1981), 3–22.24. M. Eliade and J. Kitagawa (eds.), The History of Religions (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1959), 95.




understand what is considered sacred and thus manifests in the tree, or in thiscase stone.

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The tribe is the basis for all that is sacred to the nomadic Arab, andextends to include not only the living but the ancestors as well. Belief in theancestors is one of the best-attested beliefs in the study of religions cross-cul-turally.

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In terms of pre-Islamic spirituality, it has long been recognised that theveneration of ancestors was the best-evidenced form of pre-Muslim religion.

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Despite Whitley’s complaint that the ancestor theory is over-used inanthropology generally,

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the pre-Islamic Arabian situation clearly requires it.As one poet states:

I and we, as you know, are men whoAre created from the insides of rock.

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When the Arab thus venerates a stone, it is not as a stone that it is venerated,but as the ancestral hierophany of tribal sanctity.

Burial – the Connection between Ancestors and StonesIt is obvious from early burial evidence that the nomads paid their dead great re-spect. Objects that might be useful to them were buried alongside their bodies,and camels, seen as the essence of desert life, were often sacrificed, “tied to dieat its master’s grave.”

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The camel is of particular interest, havingmost likely beendomesticated by the tribal Arabs of central Arabia in whose folklore the animal isoften associated with spirits and jinn.

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That the camel, a source of life for the no-mad, is not only a primary sacrifice to the dead but is also itself associated withspirit beings reinforces connections across worlds of the living and dead, and thatthe camel might be associated with jinn as well further suggests the connection,which will be discussed further below, between the jinn and spirits of the dead.What has led to a mistaken association between ancestor worship and theworshipof stones is explained by looking at the graves themselves. Burial in the desertsteppes is a difficult matter and the nomads, even when able to bury in grassy ter-rain, normally piled rocks upon a shallow grave. “We spin about and whirl ourway through life, /Then, rich and poor alike, at last seek rest/Below the groundin hollow pits slate-covered; /And there we do abide.”

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These stones served mul-tiple purposes in marking the spot of one’s death and preserving the body fromwild animals, while acting as a marker of the tribe’s passing. Cairns have been

25. Cf. M. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (London: Sheed and Ward, 1993), chap. 6.26. For example, L. Steadman, C. Palmer, and C. Tilley, “The Universality of Ancestor Worship,”Ethnology 35 (1996): 63–76.27. Hisham Ibn al-Kalbi, The Book of Idols, trans. N. A. Faris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1952). Cf. Henninger, “Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion.”28. J. Whitley, “Too Many Ancestors,” Antiquity 76 (2002): 119–27.29. A. Tammam and A. Wormhoudt, Al Washiyyat Al Hamasa Al Sugra: An Anthology of WildOnes (Oskaloosa, IA: William Penn College, 1974), 18.30. Al-Mufaddal, The Mufaddaliyat: An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes. Trans. C. Lyall(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918), Vol. 2: 307; cf. G. King, “Camels and Arabian baliya and OtherForms of Sacrifice: A Review or Archaeological and Literary Evidence,” Arabian Archaeology andEpigraphy 20 (2009): 81–93.31. R. Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel (New York: Columbia University Press), 46–48.32. A. Tamman, cited in P. Hitti, History of the Arabs (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970), 102.




the preferred method of burial in Arabia for millennia.33

As in other cultures, therelative importance of the particular deceased — a great warrior perhaps —would often receive larger and more protective piles of rocks.

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As the Arabs roamed through the desert, a group might come acrossrock-markings or a simple cairn placed upon a grave, and a sacrifice to thedead ancestor would be offered. The blood of an animal might be spilled uponthe rocks, or, more often for the impoverished nomad, camel milk wouldsuffice.

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One poet remarks:

My camel fled when she spied the cairn on the stony wastebuilt over one who was free of hand, most quick to give […]Long is my way, and the thirsty desert before me lies,else here for thee she had fallen, butchered to feast thy friends!

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Some of the most powerful such spirits might, according to a euhemeristicmodel, eventually ascend to the heights of divinity,

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the praises of these heroeslegendary among their tribemates.

Returning to the burial stones themselves, by accepting that under any pile ofrocks there should reside the remains of a once living person, all rocks becomepotential dwelling places for spirits. One can also see a relationship here withancient Arabic attitudes towards mountains, some of which were believed tohouse very powerful spirits or deities.

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Goldziher notes that graves andmountains also shared an etymologically similar epithet (jadath rāsin vs. al-jibāl al-rawāsī), thus equating the mound of stone housing the ancestor withthe mountain housing a god.

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Eliade notes a general sense of the sacred emanat-ing from rock itself appearing across various cultures: “Above all, stone is.”

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The belief that spirits dwell in rocks, or other aspects of nature, is commonamong nomadic people, allowing comparisons with pre-Islamic Arabs.Parker-Pearson reveals several common characteristics appearing in cross-cul-tural research on ancestral cults which relate clearly to the pre-Islamic Arabs.

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Primary among ancestral-cults, death is recognised as permanent and lifetransitory – an attitude often referred to in the scholarship on pre-Islam asfatalistic, a derisive term to those who believe in salvation in the afterlife.

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Fatalism is often thought to be a defeatist attitude, a contemptuous view which

33. M. Rice, The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf (New York: Routledge, 1994), 235; R.Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs (New York: Routledge, 2001), 174; I. Goldziher, Muslim Studies(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967), 213.34. E. Bendann, Death Customs (London: Dawsons, 1969), 197–201; Goldziher, Muslim Stud-ies, 214–15; Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, 218–19.35. Henninger, “Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion,” 10; Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 217.36. Lyall, Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry, 55.37. T. Andrae,Mohammad (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 13, argues that such stone sac-rifice was common in the ancient Middle East, citing Judges 6: 18–21.38. Henninger “Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion,” 11.39. Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 212.40. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, 216–17.41. M. Parker-Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial (College Station: Texas A & MUniversity Press, 2000), 158.42. See, for example, F. Denny, An Introduction to Islam (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 57; Watt,What is Islam?, 27; J. Chelhod, Introduction à la Sociologie de l’Islam (Paris: Librarie G.-P.Maissoneuve, 1958), 43; R. Bell, Introduction to the Qur’an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 1953), 8.




still appears in those who blame Arab fatalism for modern problems in theMiddle East.

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This is not the attitude represented in the literature.44

True, theArabs recognised the ephemeral nature of life and that death wasunavoidable though its occasion was unknown until it occurred, but thisresulted not in nihilism but instead a call for action. In the face ofoverwhelming odds, one poet recites:

They said to us – “Two things lie before you: now must ye choose –The points of the spears couched at you, or, if ye will not, chains.”We answered them – “Yea, this thing may fall to you after fight,When men shall be left on ground, and none shall arise again;But we know not, if we quail before the assault of Death,How much may be left of Life: the goal is too dim to see.”We strode to the strait of battle: […].

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Though the speaker here is in the end victorious, it is clear that the fact ofdeath is not a thing from which to retreat thereby bringing shame upon hisname, but a certainty that provokes the individual to see beyond himself andseek glory for his tribe.

The ancestors, Parker-Pearson points out, can exist apart from the living, oramong them either in imagined or actual “houses.” These spirit “houses,”baetyls, are the stones themselves— altars, grave markers, and portable stonesnot unlike the Hebrew tabernacle, which Hoyland

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designates as“god-stones.”

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Ibn al-Kalbi describes how travellers when setting camp wouldchoose four stones, selecting one to house the tribal spirits and the rest to form astand for cooking upon.

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The use of these stones as centres of worship has led tothe mistaken assumption by some that the pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped thestones themselves. The connection to the ancestral spirits, however, is crucial.

In many ancestral cults, monuments for the collective are constructed, whileindividuals receive attention only at death: a phenomenon common to thenomadic Arabs whose burial sites are sparse.

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Those burial sites that do appearstood as anchor points for nomadic wandering, marking loose boundaries andmeeting points at the extremities of a tribe’s territory.

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43. N. Saleh, “Commentary: Are Arabs Fatalists?” Southwestern Journal of International Studies2, no. 1 (2008): 93–96.44. H. Ringgren, Studies in Arabian Fatalism (Uppsala, Sweden: A.-B. LundequistskaBokhandeln, 1955).45. Lyall, Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry, 10.46. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, 185.47. Cf. H. Lammens, “Le culte des Bétyles et les processions religieuses chez les arabespréislamites,” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’archeologie orientale du Caire 17 (1919): 39–101;Henninger, “Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion,” 5–6; Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion,227–29.48. Ibn al-Kalbi, The Book of Idols, 28–29.49. T. Steimer-Herbet, Classification des sépultures à superstructure lithique dans le Levant etl’Arabie occidentale (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2004); Parker-Pearson, The Archae-ology of Death and Burial, 28.50. L. Leshnik, “Pastoral Nomadism in the Archaeology of India and Pakistan,” World Archae-ology 4, no. 2 (1972): 150–66; Steimer-Herbet, Classification des sépultures à superstructurelithique dans le Levant et l’Arabie occidentale, 30.




Typically, ancestral beliefs involve an ongoing co-dependent relationshipbetween the living and the dead. The living offer sacrifices to placate the deadand entreat their aid. Failure to perform the sacrifices might lead to retributionfrom the dead. Thus, a group encountering the markings of a grave would bebest advised to offer a sacrifice or steer well clear and move on. Likewise, agroup that felt the effects of misfortune, be it illness either human or animal,lack of good pastures, or some other calamity, might seek out such a site inorder to obtain spiritual aid, or wonder at which spirit they had offended. Aportable baetyl may even become a convenient substitute.

Ancestors and the Tribal CollectiveAncestral cults evolve from one generation to the next as group membersforget the identities of individual ancestors and instead venerate them as acollective, the emphasis being on continuing kinship bonds rather thanindividual existence. As Watt puts it, “whatever happens to the individual,the tribal stock is permanent.”

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Despite the emphasis on the group, eachhuman life had value (consider that blood-feuds between whole tribes mighterupt over the accidental killing of one person), and a collective is made upof a sum of its parts.

Noteworthy figures received individual treatment after death, memorialisedthrough folktales and song, and it is such heroes that might occasionally beelevated to tribal divinity status. Local divinities existed as tribes associatedthemselves regularly with particular gods such that one can readily associatea particular tribe name with the worship of a particular deity or deities.

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Theselocal divinities are further linked to tribal ancestors as members of a given tribewere “collectively termed the ‘children’ of their respective patron deity.”

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Thisancestral link was significant enough that it crossed over into Islam. Theseventh-century Chronicler of Khuzistan states: “Regarding the dome ofAbraham [...] the memory of the place was preserved with the generations oftheir race. Indeed, it was no new thing for the Arabs to worship there, but goesback to antiquity, to the early days, in that they show honour to the father of thehead of their people.”

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In this case, Abraham himself can be recognised as theancestral “patron” who begat many children.

Tombs, Graves, and StonesAbraham’s tomb brings to mind a noteworthy tangent — namely, the maqam,or standing place of Abraham found at Mecca’s Ka’ba. The above-quoted textrefers to the ongoing practice of pilgrimage to the tomb of the ancestorAbraham, but one might also be able to draw a similar link to the greatpilgrimage to the Ka’ba, which predates Islam. The argument here rests ontwo related terms — maqam and muqim. The former is defined as “station,”

51. Watt, What is Islam?, 27.52. Ibn al-Kalbi, The Book of Idols; T. Fahd, Le panthéon de l’Arabie centrale à la veille del’hégire (Paris: Librarie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1968).53. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, 140.54. Chron. Khuzistan, p. 38, Quoted in Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, 187, 536.




with specific reference to the shrine of a holy man, and in the case of Abraham,the place where he is said to have stood while building the Ka’ba itself.

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Therelated term, muqim, as Bravmann explains, means “sedentary” and refers toboth the dead person and the grave itself, in addition to referring to the settledcity-dwellers.

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This word’s meanings revolve around the Bedouin preferencefor the nomadic lifestyle over that of the city. The dead can no longer livethe free life of wandering and so become settled, their “settlements” holes inthe ground or the rocks which lay upon them. The living ritualise their attitudesto the dead as muqim by circumambulating the grave, symbolically reinforcingtheir own ability to keep moving and the inability of the deceased to dolikewise. While their tribe moves on, the dead stand in the place they wereburied, thus making the muqim also their maqam.

Drawing the link back to the Ka’ba as potential resting place for Abraham isentirely speculative, as Islamic tradition agrees with the Jewish one in placingAbraham’s tomb in Jerusalem. By contrast, Ibn al-Kalbi recounts the legendthat Adam was buried in a mountain called Nawdh, known as “the most fertilemountain in all the world,” which itself became a place of circumambulationand the site of the very first idol.

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The Ka’ba, according to tradition,incorporates the graves of Abraham’s son, Ishmaël.

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As a pilgrimage siteincluding not only circumambulation but other ritualised movements betweenand around erect stones, it is entirely plausible that it was a burial centre beforeIslam. Further, Ibn al-Kalbi and Ibn Ishaq both describe how pre-Islamic Arabscame to “the house of Abraham” and took stones away with them, recalling thestone baetyls carried into the desert to maintain connection with the ancestor,in this case Abraham himself.

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Pre- and early-Islamic tradition often speaks of a house (bayt) built over thedead, as: “for some dead is newly built a house of clay.”

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Of course, the house ismerely “the cairn on the stony waste built over one[’s grave].”

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In a sense, thesestone “dwellings” came to house the spiritual power of the ancestors as anextension of the tribal unit. The most important such gravesites would be ringedabout by other standing stones, thus demarcating a sacred space (hima)off-limits to both grazing and pedestrian traffic. The positioning of standingstones to demarcate burial space as sacred is not unique to Arabia; similarinstances appear from England’s Stonehenge to so-called “man-stones” ofMadagascar.

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Muhammad reinterpreted the practice by outlawing theirconstruction except in the name of Allah rather than to tribe-specific ancestors.

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55. W. Doniger ed., Encyclopedia of World Religions (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster,1999), 692.56. M. Bravmann, The Spiritual Background of Early Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 288–95.57. Ibn al-Kalbi, The Book of Idols, 43.58. ·Tabarī, W. M. Watt, and M. McDonald, Mu·hammad at Mecca (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1988), 38–43.59. Ibn al-Kalbi, The Book of Idols, 4; Ibn Hishām and Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, 35–39.60. Lyall, Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry, 53.61. Lyall, Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry, 55.62. M. Parker-Pearson and S. Ramilisonina, “Stonehenge for the Ancestors: The Stones Pass onthe Message,” Antiquity 72 (1998): 308–26.63. For example, Surah 22:26.




The Ka’ba at Mecca still houses such a stone, its brown hue perhaps fromthe blood spilled upon it in ancient sacrifices.

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Aside from the Black Stone,the Ka’ba is said to have held 360 idols of various divinities at the time ofMuhammad, which ostensibly made it a central meeting place for a range oftribal affiliations.

The divinities associated with these idols would naturally take on a widersignificance not only related to the tribe that was charged with tending the sanc-tuary, but open to those tribes that visited on pilgrimages. One can imagine inter-tribal loyalties growing and fading in correspondence to what sanctuaries anygiven tribe might choose to visit, and whether stones marking the presence ofassociated ancestors or other spirits might be available. Certainly, the ficklenessof the nomadic Arabs in terms of their loyalty to any particular sanctuary is wellattested. Ibn al-Kalbi illustrates this ephemeral loyalty with the stories of twomenwho brought their camels to idols for blessings. In each story, the camel shies atthe smell of sacrificial blood staining the stone; in the first, the man reacts angrily,cursing the idol and throwing a stone at it, while in the other it is taken as a sign offear and awe in anticipation of “its oracular voice.”

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The fluidity of tribal alliances indicates that the fickleness towards divinitiesmight easily be seen as political rather than strictly religious. Assmann explainshow tribal deities come together as “[t]hrough the process of increasing alliancesand of final unification these originally unrelated deities were brought into contactwith one another.”

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Further, the possibility (if not likelihood) also exists that thepurported indifference to some idols is the result of Islamic apologetic.

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Pre-Islamic Spiritual LeadersThe transition from a portable tribal spiritual identity to an establishedshrine-centred religiosity is a common pattern in the history of religions; ascultures become more sociologically complex, they allow for professionalritualists.

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The religious leaders of the moveable tribal elements in the pre-Islamic Arabian context were the kahin. Contrasted with these shaman-typefigures is the sadin, or sanctuary/temple guardian.

In approaching the kahin, many scholars have been unable to mitigate theirown biases, as Rodinson does (in what has been described as the bestbiography of the Prophet for a Western audience) in the following entirelyunsupported conclusion:

Muhammad had many traits in common with the kahin, as his contemporaries couldnot fail to notice. [...] But because he was endowed with a vastly richer and more

64. U. Rubin, “The Ka’bah: Aspects of its Ritual Functions,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic andIslam 8 (1986): 97–131; cf. P. Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton: GorgiasPress, 2004), 192.65. Ibn al-Kalbi, The Book of Idols, 32, 35.66. J. Assmann, Of God and Gods (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 13.67. M. Lecker, People, Tribes and Society in Arabia around the Time of Muhammad (Aldershot:Ashgate, 2005).68. J. Collins, Primitive Religions (Totowa: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1978), 178–81.




powerful personality than that of the average kahin, this dissatisfaction also led him tothink deeply [...] Muhammad was not a kahin.

69

How one can determine Muhammad’s character relative to “the averagekahin” is completely unknown, and that the latter might not be led to “thinkdeeply” is completely untenable. To provide but another example among many,Gibb acknowledges that Muhammad’s style “is admittedly that of the ancientkahins or Arabian oracle-mongers,” but reveals a similar bias in adding: “andit is not surprising that Mohammed’s opponents should have charged him withbeing just another such kahin.”

70

Further, many scholars deny that the spirituality of the pre-Islamic Arabs isreligion at all. Denny, in a book widely used in university courses on Islam,makes the following paradoxical statement:

The religious beliefs of the pre-Islamic Arabs of the Hejaz included the veneration ofstones, wells, trees, and sacred precincts connected with the tribe’s origins. The no-madic Arabian did not particularly warm to deep religious impulses. It was one thingto be aware of and respect the demons and spooks of one’s environment and quite an-other to be pious.

71

Denny here acknowledges the “religious” beliefs of the pre-Islamic Arabs,only to immediately note that they were not particularly religious whiledenouncing the spiritual basis of their religion, uncritically reducing the jinnand tribal ancestors to “demons and spooks.”

It appears that in many (most?) scholarly discussions of pre-Islamic religion,there is a serious Abrahamic bias preventing a full acceptance of its spiritualityas sacred reality. Assmann argues that the modern concept of religion must bere-examined to make adequate reference to the beliefs of ancient cultures:“There were no ‘religions’ in pagan societies, only ‘cults’ and ‘cultures.’‘Religion,’ like ‘paganism,’ is an invention of monotheism.”

72

He differentiatesbetween what he calls implicit and explicit theologies, the latter relating todeveloped argumentation more so than to narrative mythology. Many tribalcultures will not have developed explicit theology, but implicit theology existswithin any spiritual or religious meaning system. With the pre-Islamic Arabs,this implicit theology is one of ongoing co-operation between tribe membersboth living and dead. Chelhod argues that “myths” are a cornerstone to religionand that the lack of any evidence for such in the pre-Islamic poetry mustindicate a lack of religion.

73

According to him, without a transcendent unityto which the Arabs could direct their spiritual attention, the pre-Islamic Arabshad no real direction until “l’Islam vienne rationaliser le sacré.”

74

Chelhodelsewhere criticises the failings of what he sees as an inferior this-world

69. M. Rodinson, Mohammed (London: Penguin, 1976), 57–58; M. Ruthven, “The Islamic Op-timist,” New York Review of Books 54, no. 13 (August, 2007), 3.70. H. A. R. Gibb, Mohammedanism (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 25.71. Denny, An Introduction to Islam, 55.72. Assmann, Of God and Gods, 10–13.73. J. Chelhod, Sacrifice Chez les Arabes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955), 34–39.74. Chelhod, Introduction à la Sociologie de l’Islam, 43.




orientation: “Il est bien plutôt préoccupé à chanter sa bravoure, décrire sesexploits, vanter sa générosité, conspuer ses ennemis que de composer uneIliade ou une Odysée en l’honneur des dieux.”

75

What Chelhod entirely misses,however, is that the poems in honour of the tribal exploits are composed inhonour of “the gods,” or at least are directed at the pre-Islamic Arab’s formof divinity as much as are the Greek epics theirs.

Many scholars are at pains to distinguish non-monotheistic religion from“mere”magic. Chelhod proffers an evolutionary model that sees Islam drawingthe Arabs from magic into “true” religion.

76

Hoyland discusses pre-Islamicnomadic spirituality mainly in sections titled “magic and medicine” and “div-ination.”

77

He offers no argument for why this particular spirituality ought to beconsidered magic when others can be called religion, and lumps pre-Islamicspiritual leaders together under the titles of “diviners” and “sorceresses.”

78

Bythe logic Hoyland implies, doctrines such as the Catholic transubstantiationshould be considered magic; while this may be a prospect with which Hoylandagrees, most readers do not make this connection automatically. Instead, theunfamiliar spirituality earns the inferior label.

Some, like Peters in the following passage, explicitly accept a clearly biasedIslamic theology: “As the Quran itself makes clear, what was occurring atMecca in the name of religion was in part the work of a debased paganism,it is true.”

79

It is worth contrasting Peters’ reliance on the Qur’an with IbnKhaldun’s assertion that one can distinguish a prophet from a soothsayer bythe former’s character, veracity, and piety.

80

The assumption that monotheismis inherently superior to the pre-Islamic spirituality is widespread.

Smith reminds us that “[r]eligion is solely the creation of the scholar’sstudy,” and so one must be watchful for biases in the construction of the“religions” of others.

81

The present article aims to reconstruct and restorepre-Islamic spirituality to its place as valid religion.

Sabourin, in contrast to the above, usefully allows room for the sanctity ofan unorganised priesthood in his overview of the roles of priests across avariety of cultures.

82

Pre-Islamic spirituality must be seen as incorporating akind of unorganised priesthood different from but not inferior to “sacramen-tal” priests and other Abrahamic religious leaders, thus allowing for thereligious character of the jahiliyyah to be recognised despite its lack ofinstitutionalised religion as defined through a Judaeo-Christian lens. One mustcome to a more complete understanding of pre-Islamic spirituality and the roleof the kahin divested of any bias in order fully to appreciate the nature of Arabreligion before Islam.

75. Chelhod, Sacrifice Chez les Arabes, 36.76. Chelhod, Introduction à la Sociologie de l’Islam.77. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, 150–57.78. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, 156–57, 220–22.79. F. E. Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1994), 1.80. Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah, an Introduction to History, ed. N. J. Dawood, trans. F.Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 70–74.81. J. Z. Smith, Imagining Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), xi.82. L. Sabourin, Priesthood (Leiden: Brill, 1973).




The Nature of the KahinNomadic or herder-type cultures regularly include a shamanic/mediumisticrole within their tribes,

83

and the pre-Islamic nomads were no different. Therehas been no small debate over the cross-cultural usefulness of the term“shamanism” among anthropologists.

84

Ultimately, several shaman-types havebeen identified within tribal societies, with interaction with a spiritual worldthe defining role of the shaman.

85

Among the different shaman-types is the spirit-medium, which, unlikeEliade’s shaman that leaves the body to enter into the spirit world, allowsspirits to instead enter the body. One problem in the study of these phenomenahas been a (Judaeo-Christian?) bias that fails to differentiate betweenspirit-possession and spirit-mediumship. Crucially, possession implies thatthe (malignant) spirit forcefully takes over the subject’s body, whereas themedium actively allows the temporary inhabitation by the (benign) spirit.The victim of possession normally requires spiritual aid in the form ofexorcism to force the invading spirit (often referred to as a demon) out.Mediumship, on the other hand, is a means of having useful communion withthe spirit world. Lewis makes a distinction between exorcism (the expulsion ofspirits) and adorcism (the domestication of spirits), noting that the attitudetowards the spirits is governed by the dominant culture so that as long as thespirits operate within the framework of the existing cultural norms, then theycan avoid demonisation.

86

Since communication with spirits defies the statednorms of the Abrahamic tradition, exorcism is the accepted approach andspirits are demonised. Mediumship in the pre-Islamic context should be seenfor its religious implications, having been accepted within the norms of thatsociety, and so adorcism is the more appropriate attitude — spirits are thusnot demons to be expelled but allies to be fostered.

87

For the pre-Islamic Arabs the kahin fulfilled the role of medium, thoughusually translated unsympathetically as soothsayer, magician, or seer. TheShorter Encyclopedia of Islam, with a now-familiar bias, explains:

The kahin of course have their origin in the shamans, medicine-men, and fetish-priests, but in the form in which we first meet them in the old Arabic tales, in the Ha-dith and, much more rarely, in the pre-Islamic poetry, they have already passed be-yond the ruder forms of shamanism. Their mantic knowledge is based on ecstaticinspiration. They have also, it is true, visions by night which reveal to them futureand other events and things hidden from the ordinary mortal […] but they are not re-ally visionaries. Their inspiration is of demoniacal origin: a djinni or shaitan “de-mon” […] speaks out of them.

88

83. See Collins, Primitive Religions, 165–68.84. Cf. M. Eliade, Shamanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964); A. B. Kehoe,Shamans and Religion (Prospect Heights, NJ: Waveland Press, 2000).85. See I. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion (New York: Routledge, 2003).86. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, xiii–xv.87. I. Lewis, Religion in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ch. 6.88. H. A. R. Gibb and J. H. Kramers (eds.), Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 1965).




Despite the connection between the kahin and shamanic or mediumistictypes, a lasting bias against these “soothsayers” as legitimate religiousauthorities infects even academic discourse. Academic sources often presentthe kahin in an unfairly dark light, when they mention them at all. There isno justification — other than the Islamic dismissal of pre-Islamic spirituality

89

– for declaring that the kahin’s inspiration is demoniacal. It is this attitude thatprompted Izutsu to degrade pre-Islamic religion to “polydaemonism,” Lapidusto define a kahin as “a disreputable sort of magician or madman,” and Gibb tocall them “Arabian oracle-mongers.”

90

The spiritual role of the kahin deservesserious attention.

Aside from the Qur’anic source for demonical accusations against the kahin,there is also a long-running history in the Judaeo-Christian tradition ofredefining pagan divinities as demons.

91

Some scholars have also argued thatthe Arabs, and perhaps even Muhammad himself, drew upon Judaeo-Christianattitudes towards the gods of other cultures in defining demons as well.

92

The “soothsayers” have been described as frauds who, when not engaged intrickery,

93

gain their spiritual abilities from untrustworthy demons, called jinn.Ibn Khaldun explains that the kahin actually have innately inferior souls.

94

Such delegitimising tactics are not only common but obvious, and the criticalreader cannot simply accept demonical designations, especially from a hostilesource. In fact, the sources appear to protest too much as the vehemence withwhich the Islamic sources berate the kahin, and pre-Islamic spirituality ingeneral, implies a greater role for the kahin than the sources would themselvesdesire. Add to this the kahin’s relationship to other shamanistic types as thetribe’s link to the spirit world, and it should become clear that they have beenunfairly treated. Despite Islamic efforts, it is worth noting, the divinatory prac-tices of the kahin continued for some time into the early Islamic period,

95

just asHebrew laws against necromancy had earlier failed to eradicate mediums evenin biblical times.

96

In addition to likely having a healing function (One poet describes asorcerer’s being tested: “I said to the wise-man of Yemamah: Heal me; if youbring me to health, you are a true healer.”

97

), the kahin were called upon to

89. See Qur’an 26:224; 2:257; 4:76.90. T. Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an (Montreal: McGill University Press,1966), 56; Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 25; Gibb, Mohammedanism, 25.91. See V. Flint, “The Demonisation of Magic and Sorcery in Late Antiquity: Christian Redefinitionsof Pagan Religions,” inWitchcraft andMagic in Europe, ed. B. Ankarloo and S. Clark (Philadelphia: Uni-versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 277–348; G. Riley, “Demon,” inDictionary of Deities and Demonsin the Bible, ed. K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, and P. Van der Horst (Grand Rapids,MI: Eerdmans, 1998),235–40; J. R. Burton, The Prince of Darkness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 8; “Demons,Demonology,” Encyclopedia Judaica (New York: Macmillan, 1971).92. See, for example, Andrae, Mohammad , 48; W. F. Albright, “Islam and the Religions of theAncient Orient,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 60, no. 3 (1940): 283–301.93. B. A. Donaldson, The Wild Rue (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 39–40, cites Kashifi’s“Asrar-i-Ghasimi,” describing “jinn summoners” as “masters of deception.”94. Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah, 79–80.95. T. Fahd, La divination Arabe (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 169–76.96. 1 Sam. 28.97. Al-Mas’ūdī, C. B. de Meynard, and P. de Courteille, Les prairies d’or, Vol. 3 (Paris:L’imprimerie impériale, 1864), 353.




act as arbiters or judges in tribal disputes, with each tribe having at least oneamong them for such a purpose.

98

A distinction can be made between the kahin,the sadin (sanctuary care-takers), and a’if or qa’if (oracles whose function laysolely in their ability to interpret signs).

99

Of these spiritual figures, the kahinheld the most important position, often being located at the fore of an army,thereby combining the roles of spiritual leader and temporal leader (sayyd)— the Islamic caliph succeeding this role with his solemn plea being seen asjust as powerful as that of the prophetic kahin-sayyd.

100

The authority of thekahin carried over into early Islam as one of the early means of attributingauthority to hadiths relied upon reference to the kahin, though this practicewas later rejected as Islam evolved.

101

The kahin as medium was primarily responsible, through the aid offamiliar spirits, or jinn, for conducting communications between the livingand the dead, thus ensuring that the ancestors were placated in order thatthey may help rather than hinder their tribemates. Blood-feuds were fuelledas much by the need for respect of the dead as they were by the need forrevenge for the living. Tribal elders, or inheritors of ancestral duties, con-ducted the sacrifices themselves, so the kahin was not strictly speaking apriest.

102

As a conduit to the spirit world, however, the kahin was centralto the religious life of the wandering tribes. Ibn al-Kalbi tells the story ofone particular kahin whose familiar spirit (nicknamed abu-Thumāmah)guided him to seize a number of forgotten stones and to return them tobe rightly venerated once again.

103

The etymological connection might be noted here between the Arabic termkahin and the Hebrew kohen, both words being based upon the same Semiticroot.

104

The kohen were early Hebrew priests who attended to temple sacrifices,and who practised divination of a sort, though without any form of direct spiritcommunication. Practically, there is no clear connection in the roles performedby the kahin and the kohen. Still, the etymological connection suggests asimilarity in their broader roles as spiritual leaders. The Hebrew kohen canbe more clearly aligned with the pre-Islamic sadin, both custodians of sacredspace. Further, the kohen sometimes acted as oracle readers through theemployment of the Urim and Thummim. That the kahin relates etymologically

98. Muhammad ibn Habib, Kitab al-Munammaq fi Akhbar Quraysh (Delhi, 1964), 95–99. Cf.Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, 157.99. Lammens, “Le culte des Bétyles et les processions religieuses chez les arabes préislamites,”43.100. Lammens, “Le culte des Bétyles et les processions religieuses chez les arabes préislamites,”44.101. Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the EarlyMuslims (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995), 218.102. The ambiguity between the temporal and spiritual leadership is exposed in the descriptionfrom Pseudo-Nilus of a camel sacrifice which acknowledges that either may perform it, especiallyaccording to seniority. Col. 61 SA–B. Quoted in J. Henninger, “Ist der sogenannte Nilus-Berichteine brauchbare religionsgeschichtliche Quelle?” Anthropos 50 (1955): 114.103. Ibn al-Kalbi, The Book of Idols, 47.104. A. Haldar, Associations of Cult Prophets among the Ancient Semites (Uppsala: Almquist &Wiksells Boktryckeri AB, 1945), 162–63; S. Zwemer, Heirs of the Prophets (Chicago: MoodyBible Institute, 1946), 19–25; Henninger, “Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion,” 14.




to the kohen, whose role is then subsumed by other pre-Islamic figures — thesadin and the a’if/qa’if — suggests not only the spiritual significance of thekahin but also that some further connection ought to be drawn between thespecifically Arabic religious roles of priest/attendant, oracle reader, andshaman/medium. Again, the difference between settled peoples and nomadicones comes to light in their religious practice where the nomads require themobile kahin to inquire directly of the spirits, while the settled folks can resortto more relaxed oracular modes of divination.

105

Another Inspired Spiritual Figure — The Poet (sha’ir)The sha’ir were also thought to gain inspiration from the jinn (one poetremarks of his words: “Your demon was wise in dictating this to you.”

106

),which imbued their words with supernatural power to cause either harm orblessing. So feared were their words that enemy poets might be gagged to pre-vent their harming their executioners before death.

107

Hitti interestingly pointsout that satire was an early form of Arabic poetry with a particularly stingingedge, given the spiritual power the words were thought to hold.

108

Poets wouldtypically spearhead battles by singing boasts of their tribe’s might and thepower of their ancestors while denigrating those of their opponents. A poeticdescription of such an encounter explains:

And many the obstinate adversary I have encountered on your behalf […] And we havedischarged at each other, while our enemies looked on, shafts envenomedwith poison longinfused – […] At last he turned and fled, unable to guard his buttocks frommy blows, […]with his eyes humbly cast down, and his hearing deafened. He ran away from me with hisdemon routed, unable to help or Protect him any more; […]Yea, in me he found […] a tongue adroit and nimble, sharp like the edge of a sword –whatever it touched it cut through. And there came to me a companion with aconstant supply of matter.

109

As Goldziher states:

The boasts (mafakhir), which are mainly based on reference to the deeds of ancestors[…] are matched by the taunts (mathalib) designed to throw as much scorn as possibleupon the ancestors of one’s opponent or upon his tribe and sometimes even to placetheir descent in doubt. […].

110

In singing the praises of the ancestors, the poets reinforced their own role asspiritual intermediaries, and further assert the relationship between spirits ofthe dead and the jinn.

105. Sabourin, Priesthood, 95–97 and ch. 4.106. Al-I·sbahāhī, and A. Wormhoudt, Akhbar Nusaib (Oskaloosa, IA: William Penn College,1977), 36.107. As in Al-Mufadda,l The Mufaddaliyat, 111–12.108. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 94.109. Al-Mufaddal, The Mufaddaliyat, 145–46.110. Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 48–49.




Traditional Views of the JinnThe spirits that the kahin communicated with have been collectively la-belled jinn, commonly defined as demons and depicted as untrustworthyin Islam. The Qur’an describes the jinn as sometimes good and sometimesevil, and mentions that some jinn are Muslim and others non-believers.

111

Since not all of the jinn have the best intentions, however, none can betrusted.

112

The jinn are thought capable of inflicting harm, often in the formof sickness, ill fortune, or even possession. The kahin would naturally haveacted as a medium for such possession, but, in a shamanistic role, mightalso have been required to exorcise an invading presence in another, withmadness (majnun) typically being ascribed to jinn possession. Watt andBell note that both the poets and the kahin were considered majnun beforethis term came to suggest madness rather than simply the presence ofjinn.

113

It is crucial to recognise, however, that in placing the spirits outside of thereligious system, Islam demonises these jinn and applies exorcism as thepreferred mode of relation to them. The pre-Islamic Arabs, on the other hand,applied adorcism to spirits whom they knew could be dangerous but mightbecome allies if treated properly.

Jinn and AngelsPainting the pre-Islamic source of spirituality in a dark light, all jinn were madeuntrustworthy. Angels, however, came to represent the one order of spirits thatcould be trusted, again creating a false dichotomy. The distinction is surely notone that predates Islam among the Arabs.

114

Iblis exemplifies the confusion thatexists in the Muslim tradition over what might constitute a jinn. Surahs 2:30–34 and 38:74–85 both include the proud Iblis among the angels addressed byGod. Surah 7:12 states that Iblis was made from fire, like the jinn, and surah18:50 describes him as “of the jinn,” thus explaining his reluctance to obeyAllah as angels are wont to do. Traditionally, the confusion is alleviated byassuming Iblis to have been a jinn who was brought up to Heaven by the angelsonly to later fall out of favour, but the transgression of boundaries betweenthese spiritual types blurs the line.

The confusion between jinn and angels extends beyond the figure of Iblis. Itis said that all individuals have a special jinn (qarin) with them from birth andthat their fortunes are tied to its nature.

115

It is also believed that every personhas two angels that watch over them, one recording good deeds, and the otherbad.

116

Interestingly, angels appear only in the latter revelations of the Qur’an,whereas the jinn receive special treatment in the earlier parts, indicating a

111. Qur’an 7:179; 46:29–32; 72:1–15.112. Ibn Taymeeyah, Essay on the Jinn (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Tahweed Publications, 1989).113. W. M. Watt and R. Bell, Introduction to the Qur’an (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 1970), 77–78.114. W. M. Watt, “Pre-Islamic Religion in the Quran,” Islamic Studies 15 (1976): 72–79, 78.115. Qur’an 43:36; Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, 145; Donaldson, The Wild Rue, 36–37.116. Qur’an 82:10–12 and 86:4; Cf. S. Murata, “The Angels,” in S. H. Nasr, ed., Islamic Spiri-tuality (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 324–44.




transference of attention from one form of spiritual being to another.117

Echoingthe persistent biases discussed above, Waardenburg assumes a distinctionbetween angels as higher beings and the jinn as lower as if this were objectivefact.

118

There is, in fact, nothing obvious about this distinction except for thetradition of favouring the spirits within a given tradition (angels in theAbrahamic tradition) versus those that are not and are therefore demonisedby the mainstream (the jinn of pre-Islamic spirituality). Ultimately, if angelsare “messengers,” and the kahin received supernatural messages via the jinn,then the connection between the two is clear.

Jinn and Spirits of the DeadSimilarly, confusion between what constitutes a jinn and what constitutes ahuman spirit is rampant. Waardenburg makes the unsupported assertion thatthe jinn “are spirits, basically nature spirits, and not ghosts.”

119

If we define“ghost” as human spirit then Waardenburg’s claim is simply not asstraightforward as he would have it. We have already seen the association ofthe life-giving camel, sacrificed at the grave, with the jinn above. As JaneIdleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad report: “In situations of violentdeath in Egypt … the spirit is often felt to become an ’ifrit [a sub-categoryof jinn] and to hover around its former habitation for a number of days [...and] goes out at night begging people for a drink.”

120

It is not uncommon inother cultures for there to remain an overlap between spirits of the dead anddemons, with those considered evil in life becoming potential demons oncedeparted, just as some today might imagine their loved ones becoming angels.Various funerary and honorific inscriptions draw a connection between the jinnand tribal/local ancestral divinities noting inscriptions near Palmyra to ginnayewho are called the “good and rewarding gods.”

121

The Nature of the JinnGiven the wide array of beings to which the term jinn may apply, there is littlejustification in disregarding them as demons and ignoring the spiritualsignificance they must have had to the pre-Islamic Arabs. The numerousreferences to the jinn found in the Qur’an testify to their importance toMuhammad’s audience.

122

The Qur’an even acknowledges the importance ofthe jinn to pre-Islamic spirituality; surahs 37:158 and 6:100 describe therelationship made by pre-Islamic Arabs between the jinn and the divine, and

117. Bell, Introduction to the Qur’an, 144.118. J. J. Waardenburg, Islam: Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives (Berlin: de Gruyter,2002), 28.119. Waardenburg, Islam: Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives, 26.120. J. I. Smith and Y. Y. Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 154.121. D. Hillers and E. Cussini, Palmyrene Aramaic Texts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1996); J.-B. Yon, “Palmyrene Epigraphy After PAT, 1996–2011,” Studia Palmyreńskie 12(2013): 333–79; Cf. J. Starky, “Gennéas: B. L’inscription,” Syria 26 (1949): 248–57.122. For example, Qur’an 6:100, 112, 128, 130; 7:179; 11:119; 15:27; 17:88; 18:50; 27:17;32:13; 34:12, 14; 37:158; 41:25, 29; 46:18, 29; 51:56; 55:15, 33, 39, 56, 74; 72:1–15; 114:6.




72:6 mentions that pre-Islamic Arabs beseeched the jinn for assistance in timesof need. It is common to see religious leaders demonising their competition,and Muslim tradition is no different in relegating the jinn, and pre-Islamic godsgenerally, to mischievous demons.

123

The Judaeo-Christian scriptures arereplete with similar references to demons signifying pagan gods.

124

Waardenburg speaks of the Qur’an’s “de-demonizing” and then“re-demonizing” the jinn.

125

His argument that the early Qur’an “de-demon-izes” the jinn by acknowledging them as creatures of God unjustifiablyassumes that they were considered demons before this point. He goes on tonote that the Qur’an “re-demonizes” the jinn when in fact this ought to be seenas the first stage of their Islamic demonisation. It is crucial to recognise, then,that the jinn were not seen by the pre-Islamic Arabs as necessarily malevolent,but instead encompassed a wide range of spirit-beings, including tribalancestors and divinities, all of which dealt with the kahin as mediums. A moreaccurate definition of jinn, then, includes any spiritual entity, be it considereddemon, angel, ancestor, or deity.

Lasting InfluencesThough the Muslim record attempts to purge pre-Islamic spirituality fromhistory, much of the earlier traditions remain under the veneer of Islam. Ritualsincorporating pilgrimage to Mecca and the circumambulation of its Ka’ba werereinterpreted to involve Allah rather than the myriad tribal gods. The pre-Is-lamic private devotions described as tahannuth have been renamed under thefast of Rammadan.

126

Some Sufi dervishes retain the ability to communicatewith “demons” to heal the sick.

127

Tribal affiliations were subsumed by theMuslim ummah, with tribal ancestors retreating in the face of Abraham asthe overarching ancestor. The ancestral hero cult and belief in the continuingexistence of spirits of the dead has survived in popular belief into the presentday. Goldziher relates this nineteenth-century story:

The deceased tribal hero was credited with the same attributes and virtuesafter death as distinguished him while alive, and his grave was believed tobenefit people seeking protection and help in the same way as did the tent ofthe living man. This trait of Arab belief is not confined to antiquity. We maymention the grave of Shahwan b. Isa, chief of the Banu Dabab. “O Shahwanb. Isa, we are your guests,” the Arabs who pass his grave (in Tripolitania) callout when they are short of food; and through the intervention of the deceasedshaykh [chief] it is usually possible for them to hunt up food in the vicinity ofthe grave.

128

123. Qur’an 2:14; 4:76, 117, 119–20; 6:100; 34:41.124. For example, Lev. 17:7; Deut. 32:17; 2 Chron. 11:15; Ps. 106:35–37.125. Waardenburg, Islam: Historical, Social, and Political Perspectives, 36–37.126. M. Kister, “Al-Tahannuth: An Inquiry into the Meaning of a Term,” Bulletin of the School ofOriental and African Studies 31 (1968): 223–36.127. H. Granqvist, Muslim Death and Burial (Helsinki: Helsingfors, 1965), 28–32.128. Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 213–14.




Indeed, the transference of a hero cult to a cult of saints is not uncommon inreligious traditions around the world and the cult of saints (wali) is alive andwell in Islam today; Muslims might still sacrifice an animal at the grave of asaint or pray to one for some form of blessing,.

129

Bin ’Aqil and McCorristondescribe the re-sanctification of graves under the presumption that all strangerswere holy men such that unrecognised bones might be reburied as potentialsaints.

130

The similarity to the pre-Islamic practice of making sacrifices at thegraves of the unknown is unmistakable. Blessings might also be received fromthe tomb of Muhammad himself, as in the Islamic legend of Abdul Kadir whoprayed by the Prophet’s tomb for forty days until a white hand extended to of-fer friendship and blessing.

131

Summary of Pre-Islamic Spirituality in the HejazFrom the above, it should now be clear that the pre-Islamic Arabs of centralArabia were far from irreligious and participated in a sacred world thatcannot properly be defined as mere humanism, tribal or otherwise. Theveneration of ancestors lay at the foundation of pre-Islamic religiosity,sometimes elevated to tribal divinity. These ancestors and tribal divinitiesexisted among myriad other spiritual forces of nature, all wielding greatpower, and so requiring respect. Such respect was granted most often inthe form of sacrifice and through the recital of panegyric poetry. Spiritswere often thought to dwell within natural objects, the most powerfulbeings often inhabiting mountains, while spirits of the dead would residein the stones laid upon the grave.

As the dead retained tribal affiliations, the living took tokens of the graves oftheir deceased, baetyls, the houses of the tribal ancestors and divinities. Somebaetyls remained portable, moving with the nomadic tribes, while othersbecame associated with specific locations: these locations often associated withan actual grave site.

The kahin appear as the predominant spiritual leaders, exhibiting theability to communicate with spirits, which source empowered the kahin’swords with authority. The sha’ir poets shared this ability, their words oftenmarking the first volley of battle, though the kahin retained shamanisticfunctions not available to the poets. Though one expects shaman-types tofill a healing function, the kahin emphasised the wisdom of the ancestorsfor divination and arbitration in this world whether between tribes orbetween the living and spirits. Other lesser religious specialists, such asthe sadin, operated simply as guardians of sacred spaces or interpretersof oracles, but only the kahin held the power of mediating the powers ofspirits.

129. C. Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous (Leiden: Brill, 1999); E. Westermarck, PaganSurvivals in Mohammedan Civilisation (Amsterdam: Philo, 1973): 77–82.130. Abdalaziz Ja’afar Bin ‘Aqil and J. McCorriston, “Prehistoric Small Scale Monument Typesin Hadramawt (Southern Arabia): Convergences in Ethnography, Linguistic, and Archaeology,”Antiquity 83 (2009): 12.131. J. Knappert, Islamic Legends (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 324.




ConclusionPre-Islamic Arabs were spiritual, and their seeming fickleness in devotion isreflective not of a general lack of religious commitment but, rather, the naturalorder of changing tribal alliances on both human and spiritual planes. It isirresponsible to continue promoting an academic view that imagines irreligioussavages becoming enlightened. Recognising the spirituality of the pre-IslamicArabs will have ramifications for the study of the transition from pre-IslamicArab tribalism to the inclusive Islamic state, on the role of Muhammad, andwill allow for other theories of religious conversion and evolution to be appliedto the origins of Islam.




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