Arabian religion

Arabian religion:

  beliefs of Arabia comprising the polytheistic beliefs and practices that existed before the rise of Islām in the 7th century ad. Arabia is here understood in the broad sense of the term to include the confines of the Syrian desert. The religion of Palmyra, which belongs to the Aramaic sphere, is excluded from this account. The monotheistic religions that had already spread in Arabia before the arrival of Islām are also mentioned briefly. For historical background, see Arabia, history of: History and cultural development: Pre-Islāmic Arabia, to the 7th century ad.

Nature and significance

In the polytheistic religions of Arabia most of the gods were originally associated with heavenly bodies, to which were ascribed powers of fecundity, protection, or revenge against enemies. Aside from a few deities common to various populations, the pantheons show a marked local particularism. But many religious practices were in general use. The study of these practices is instructive in view of their similarities with those of the biblical world and also with those of the world of Islām, for, while firmly repudiating the idolatry of the pre-Islāmic period, which it calls the “Age of Ignorance” (Jāhilīyah), Islām has nevertheless taken over, in a refined form, some of its practices.

History of Arabia, history of the region from prehistoric times to the present.
Sometime after the rise of Islam in the first quarter of the 7th century ce and the emergence of the Arabian Muslims as the founders of one of the great empires of history, the name ʿArab came to be used by these Muslims themselves and by the nations with whom they came in contact to indicate all people of Arabian origin. The very name Arabia, or its Arabic name Jazīrat al-ʿArab, has come to be used for the whole peninsula. But the definition of the area, even in Islamic sources, is not agreed upon unanimously. In its narrowest application it indicates much less than the whole peninsula, while in ancient Greek and Latin sources—and often in subsequent sources—the term Arabia includes the Syrian and Jordanian deserts and the Iraqi desert west of the lower Euphrates. Similarly, “Arabs” connoted, at least in pre-Islamic times, mainly the tribal populations of central and northern Arabia.