Hubal
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- "Hubal" was also the pseudonym of Henryk Dobrzanski, a Polish partisan from World War II
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Hubal (هبل) was a god worshipped in pagan Arabia, notably at Mecca before the arrival of Islam.
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[edit] Hubal in Mesopotamia
Tracing the origins of ancient gods is often tenuous. If the name Hubal is related to an Aramaic word for spirit, as suggested by Philip K. Hitti [1], then Hubal may have come from the north of Arabia.
In Sumer, in southernmost Mesopotamia north of Arabia, the moon-god figures in the Creation epic, the Enuma Elish. In a variant of it, Hubal is chief among the elder gods. According to Hitti, a tradition recorded by Muhammad's early biographer ibn Ishaq, which makes ˤAmr ibn-Luhayy the importer of an image of Hubal from Moab or Mesopotamia, may have a kernel of truth insofar as it retains a memory of such an Aramaic origin of the deity.
Outside South Arabia, Hubal's name appears just once, in a Nabataean inscription; [2] there Hubal is mentioned along with the gods Đu sh-Sharā (ذو الشراة) and Manawatu—the latter, as Manat, was also popular in Mecca. On the basis of such slender evidence, it has been suggested that Hubal "may actually have been a Nabataean" [3], but the Nabataeans were cosmopolitan traders who drew on many traditions in every aspect of life.
According to Hafiz Ghulam Sarwar, Muhammad The Holy Prophet (1969),
- About four hundred years before the birth of Muhammad one ˤAmr ibn Lahya ibn Harath ibn ˤAmru l-Qays ibn Thalaba ibn Azd ibn Khalan ibn Babalyun ibn Saba, a descendant of Qahtan and King of the Hijaz, more usually called Amr ibn Luhayy, had put an idol called Hubal on the roof of the Kaˤabat. This was one of the chief deities of the Quraysh before Islam."
The actual date for this quasi-legendary leader of the Quraysh is disputed, with dates as late as the end of the fourth century CE suggested, but what is quite sure is that the Qurayshiyya became the protectors of the ancient holy place, supplanting the Khuza'a. There may be some foundation of truth in the story that Luhayy had travelled in Syria and had brought back from there the cults of the goddesses ˤUzzā' and Manat, and had combined it with that of Hubal, the idol of the Khuza'a. (Maxime Rodinson, 1961).
An earlier reference to this legend records that he "brought with him [to Mecca] an idol called Hubal from the land of Hit in Mesopotamia... So he set it up at the well inside the Kaaba and ordered the people to worship it. Thus a man coming back from a journey would visit it and circumambulate the House before going to his family, and he would shave his hair before it. Muhammad ibn Ishaq said that Hubal was cornelian pearl in the shape of a human. His right hand was broken off and the Quraysh made a gold hand for it. It had a vault for the sacrifice, and there were seven arrows cast [on issues relating to] a dead person, virginity and marriage. Its offering was a hundred camels. It had a custodian (hajib)"[4]
According to Ibn al-Kalbi's Book of Idols, "The Quraysh had several idols in and around the Kaaba. The greatest of these was Hubal. It was made, as I was told, of red agate, in the form of a man with the right hand broken off. It came into the possession of the Quraysh in this condition, and they therefore made for it a hand of gold. The first to set it up was Khuzaymah ibn-Mudrikah ibn-al-Ya's' ibn-Mudar. Consequently it used to be called 'Khuzaymah's Hubal'.
- "It stood inside the Kaaba. In front of it were seven divination arrows. On one of these arrows was written "pure" (sarih), and on another "consociated alien" (mulsag). Whenever the lineage of a new-born was doubted, they would offer a sacrifice to it [Hubal] and then shuffle the arrows and throw them ... It was before [Hubal] that 'Abd-al-Muttalib shuffled the divination arrows [in order to find out which of his ten children he should sacrifice in fulfilment of a vow he had sworn], and the arrows pointed to his son ˤAbdu l-Lāh, father of the Prophet.
- "In 624 at the battle called 'Uhud', the war cry of the Qurayshites was, 'O people of ˤUzzā', people of Hubal!' By the end of that war, the victorious Abū Sufyān ibn-Harb cried, 'O Hubal be exalted, O Hubal be exalted!'"
- "The Prophet answered him: 'God is the highest and the most exalted.'"
Julius Wellhausen[5] indicates that Hubal was regarded as the son of al-Lāt and the brother of Wadd.
[edit] Hubal and the Kaaba
One notable center of Hubal-worship is said to have been at the Kaaba at Mecca, prior to the religious reforms instituted by Muhammad in AD 630. At that time, the moon god Hubal was the most senior of the 360 god idols worshipped in the shrine.
About four hundred years before the birth of Muhammad, a man named Amr bin Lahyo bin Harath bin Amr ul-Qais bin Thalaba bin Azd bin Khalan bin Babalyun bin Saba, who was descended from Qahtan and king of Hijaz (the northwestern section of Saudi Arabia, which encompassed the cities of Mecca and Medina), had placed a Hubal idol onto the roof of the Kaaba, and this idol was one of the chief deities of the ruling Quraysh tribe. The idol was made of red agate, and shaped like a human, but with the right hand broken off and replaced with a golden hand. When the idol was moved inside the Kaaba, it had seven arrows in front of it, which were used for divination.[6] According to Karen Armstrong, in her book Islam: A Short History, the Kaaba was dedicated to Hubal, and contained 360 idols which probably represented the days of the year,[7] and Hubal's was said to be the grandest of the idols. As an infant, Muhammad was brought before Hubal by his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib, at-Tabari records in The History of the Prophets and Kings 1:157. When Muhammad conquered Mecca in AD 630, he ended the Quraysh's tradition of idol-worship by smashing the statue of Hubal along with the other 360 idols at the Kaaba, and re-dedicated the structure to Allah, the one God.[8]
[edit] Hubal and Allah
In the Battle of Uhud the distinction between the followers of Allah and the followers of Hubal is made clear by the statements of Muhammad and Abu Sufyan. Ibn Hisham narrates in the biography of Muhammad:
When Abu Sufyan wanted to leave he went to the top of the mountain and shouted loudly, saying: "You have done a fine work; victory in war goes by turns. Today in exchange for the day (of Badr). Show your superiority, Hubal," i.e. vindicate your religion. The apostle told Umar to get up and answer him and say: "Allah is most high and most glorious. We are not equal. Our dead are in paradise; your dead are in hell."[9]
[edit] Modern references
In one of Osama bin Laden's messages, he described the United States as "the Hubal of the modern age", alluding to the idol that Muhammad destroyed.[10]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Hitti, History of the Arabs 1937, pp. 96-101.
- ^ Corpus Inscriptiones Semit., vol. II: (189 or 198?); Jaussen and Savignac, Mission Archéologique en Arabie, I (1907) pp.169f
- ^ Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed, 1961, translated by Anne Carter, 1971, p 38-49
- ^ al-Azraqi, died 834 CE, an early commentator.
- ^ Wellhausen, 1926, p 717, an unidentified English translation as quoted by Hans Krause
- ^ Brother Andrew. Hubal, the moon god of the Kaba. bible.ca. Retrieved on 2007-09-04.
- ^ Karen Armstrong (2000,2002). Islam: A Short History, 11. ISBN 0-8129-6618-x.
- ^ Armstrong, p. 23
- ^ Is Hubal The Same As Allah?
- ^ Michael Burleigh. "A murderous message", Evening Standard (London), November 7, 2005.
[edit] External links
- Kitab al-Asnam in the original Arabic (description on p. 5)
- Is Hubal the same as Allah?
- Pre-Islamic Arabia and Its Socio-Religious Conditions
- Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed, 1961, translated by Anne Carter, 1971
