Waṯani Religion: Fertile Crescent

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

I am so sad. I cannot go to the mosque because nobody is looking after my father. Everybody went somewhere else. Maybe they have something to attend to so I have to take the charge to look after my father because he is all paralyzed. He cannot move and he had arthritis because of dependency to powder milk which we have to feed through the feeding tube at his nose down to his belly every three hours. Now, how can I go to work when this happens? Everyone out there would blame me because being a jobless loser but they do not even care to interview me as to check the root course. I have ambition and vision just like everyone else in the world. But it faded away once I have to go through the "facts" of the life... I tried hard and I fall. Then I tried again and again with the hope and optimism but somehow it also makes me exhausted.   

Let us continue with this topic. This "practices" of waṯani or polytheism were not only happened in ancient Arabia. It was everywhere and it happens when human becoming ignorant due to several factors. Nowadays, we could also see new ideas such as neo-paganism in Europe as for example where there are people who wanted to revive ancient Teutonic, Norse, Gaelic Druidism and other Scandinavian cultural traits besides despising Christianity as a foreign religion. I have got all these ideas from my colleague and he is a non-religious Muslim, Amir. He was a fan of metal music and he was the one who introduced the music genre to me. I listened to some folk metals and I have got the information about European paganism. They are kind of folk religions or something. However, this topic is only confined to the Middle East as to make things easy...

Nineveh, Assyria

Jonah a.s was sent to the city-state of Nineveh in Assyrian empire. The people there worshiped Marduk, Ishtar, Nabu, Shamas and other deities. They claimed that the worship of those deities was inherited from their ancestors. 

The teachings that Jonah a.s brought to them was quite new and they could not accept it as the replacement of their current beliefs since it is deeply rooted in their customs and culture. They challenged Jonah a.s to curse them and to pray to his "Deity" to make the "torment" descends upon them if he is a true prophet of the God the Highest. Jonah a.s was so angry that he went out from the border of the city-state and he prayed that may He the Highest punish them all! 

The people then saw the sky turned gloomy and dark. Their cattle too making noises as if something is going to happen after Jonah a.s went away from them. Wind flowing ferociously and the sound of the nature was so scary. They were afraid if something really happen when they look at the changing of the nature around them so they began to accept the teachings of Jonah a.s. They began to ponder on their words and speeches and later repented. They cried in remorse while walking and looking for Jonah a.s everywhere in their city-state to teach them lessons about Him but they cannot find him.

Phoenecia, Levant

According to the Map of the Quran authored by Shawqi Abu Khalel, Elijah a.s was appointed by the God the Highest to Phoenician and the Israelites in the city-state of Ba'albek (Heliopolis). Elijah a.s was the fourth generation of Aron, the son of Imran who lives around 910-850 BC.

The people there worshiped a deity known as Ba'al personified as a woman. He repeatedly reminds the people to leave behind the superstitious belief but they refused. Since, many times they had refused to obey the commandments so the area experienced drought for years. 

They begged Elijah a.s to pray to the God the Highest may the disaster cease to happen so Elijah a.s prayed and the prayer was granted. However, they began to practice polytheism again after they came back to normal. The drought then return and it was longer than before.

The Greek rename the city-state as Heliopolis in 323-64 BC. In 64 BC, the city-state became a colony of the Romans under the reign of Julius Caesar. The Romans build temples in dedication for their deity, Jupiter.   

Sheba, Yemen

The people in the kingdom of Sheba worshiped both the Sun and the Moon. The news was made known to Solomon a.s, the second king of Judah through a woodpecker who flied across the kingdom before stopping at the North. There is a brief story about this in Surah al-Naml 20-44.

King Solomon a.s had sent a letter to the kingdom and inviting them to worship the God the Highest directly as compared to worshiping Him through objects of nature such as the Sun or the Moon. The ruler of the kingdom at that time was a woman. 

Yemen actually has two women rulers. The one was the Queen of Sheba, known in Quran as Lady Balqis. She started to travel to the North to Jerusalem around 1000-950 BC. Some said that she was married to Solomon a.s and I am not sure so I would not speculate anything which I do not come across. The second was lady Arwa the daughter of Aḥmad bin Muḥammad bin Ja'afar bin Mūsa al-Ṣulayhī. We call lady Arwa as Sayyidah al-Hurra which means the Noble Lady. She was the Chief Missionary representing a fraction of Fatimid empire in the city of Haraz, Yemen who patronized the missions in Gujarat, India around 11th century AD. That is why, we said that we are so close to North West of India and Pakistan region. Inshā Allah I would post about the history of Muslims in those region when the time come or if He wills for that as a tribute to our paternal grandmothers who particularly were brought here from the subcontinent.  

Israelites

Because the Israelites were those in existence before the term Jewish exist so we use the term Israelites to refer to Moses and his people. Israelites were Bedouins before they established the kingdom in Cana'an which later was torn into two kingdoms and colonized by the Romans.  

The history of polytheism in Israelites could be traced among the Simeon clan. The person known as Samiri (Zimri bin Salo). Samiri made the golden female calf and later persuaded the Israelites to worship it while Moses a.s went to the holy mountain to receive Revelation. I have not check on the story in my Bible but our Quran mentions that Aron a.s had tried to stop the people from worshiping nonsense thing. Moses a.s was so angry that he pulled the beard of his younger brother because he had mistaken him for not reminding the people. 

Some people speculated that Samiri perhaps was influenced by the ancient Egyptian culture who worshiped the deity known as Hathor which was represented as a cow. She was worshiped in this form around 2700 BC during the rule of the Second Dynasty. I guess that it is plausible for some of the Israelites to be influenced by neighboring cultural traits because it was not so long before their exodus from Egypt. The Quran mentions that those who commit errors were commanded to suicide. I guess there are three exceptional sins within Orthodox Judaism where a Jewish is required to die rather than transgressing them which are idolatry, sexual immorality and murder (Talmudim: Sanhadrin Council). I am sure there are interpretations within their school of thoughts as well as religious bodies with regard to the issues and jurisprudence.

Rasibites, Arabia

This tribe is known from the dry well who inhabited a village known as Falaj in Yamāmah. It is a district within the Najd upland region. They are ancient Arabs referred in the Quran as the Tamudic Arabs. Those in Ta'if who refused the invitation of Muhammad s.a.w to accept his prophecy were also related to these people as according to Ibn Khaldun, Jawwad 'Ali and Abu al-Faraj al-Asfahany. Another remaining civilization of this nation could also be seen in Mada'in Ṣāleḥ which is in the modern Saudi Arabia.    

They worshiped the Sanobar tree known as the Shah-e-Darakht. It was believed that the tree was first planted again by Yafit the son of Noah after the beside the spring known as Roshan Āb. A sage reminds them but they mocked him and murdered him. His body was thrown into a well. Because of this sin, the Lord of the universe destructed them with heavy and long drought. There is also a belief about killing religious teachers or a sage within ancient Indian tradition known as the pañcha mahā pātakaḥ. It means the five great crimes. One of them is to kill the sages and holy men.

I am not sure whether Malay language speakers notice this. The term, malapetaka which is used to refer to disasters actually was a Vedic Sanskrit term which your ancestors had gotten when they mingled with ancient Indians. It happens when the dust of evil covers the area of the three elements of a "soul" known as the trimalas. From these, a "being" would develop negative habits which would slowly manifest in four levels of sins and crimes. Pañcha mahā pātakaḥ is the third level of the four components which would later blasting the souls and beings involved within the mandala (sphere). People would be fallen from their previous noble position when these happens. Those who were involved with the star-gazing knowledge would also believe that when the position of planets such as when the Moon and the Jupiter is afflicted then a "being" would also easily turning to "crimes". Janardhan Hari Jī in his Māṇsagari treatise explains that these positions are counted among 10 independent movements which do not actually need any particular time, reason or corresponding position to happen in the earthly realms.

If we check again the story of prophets in the Middle East, and the thing is also the same with the thought that happened in ancient India or elsewhere. For e.g the murder of Zechariah and his son, John as intended by their own people resulted the people becoming down-graded in this very life. But as to say, we who see and listen to the stories or news are not judges. The judge is only the God the Highest. We should take heed and take the lessons from them because we are also the "same" human-being just like them.

The Rasibites are mentioned in the Glorious Quran twice in the Surah al-Furqan and the Surah Qaf respectively. Do not worry about the bibliography. I would include them once He permits me to do so for brethren reference because I do not like people to be dependent to this site or to the internet sources but I wish that everyone would apply research methodologies in the searches.   

Midianites

The Midianites were the descendants of Midian the son of Abraham through the third wife known as, Keturah. They mingled with the Moabites in religio-political connection and they worshiped various gods such as Ba'al Peor and Ashteroth.

The wife of Moses a.s was a Midianite lady known in the Old Testament as Zipporah. The priest appointed to be the spiritual guide for the Midianites was Jethro.

The Midianites whom Jethro lived with were treacherous in trade. They used false weights and measures and lying along the road to cheat on the business caravans. They were destroyed by a tremor after rejecting the reminders given to them. The Midians used to inhabit Aycah which is located in the south-east of Sinai along the Red Sea. The region was a forest like area in Midian and they worshiped a land filled with trees.

Joseph a.s was sold by his brothers to the Midian caravans where he was sold again to a nobleman in the Eyptian court. The Midianite while occupying Timna Valley (Southern Israel) continued to use the site of Hathor temple in their worship. Hathor was the Egyptian goddess of fertility. However it is not so certain whether they worshiped Hathor as the focus of their worship or something else.

'Adites, Arabia

These people were the offspring of 'Ad bin Uz bin Aram bin Shem bin Noah. They are the children of sage Noah a.s. A sage mentioned in the Quran was sent to them known as Hūd a.s. Their region was in al-Ahqāf  located in Northern Yemen spreading to the East in modern Oman. This place comprised an archeological site known as Rubb el-Khaly where the Western explorers founded the remnants of ancient cities inhabited by these people.   

They made idols and icons for the deities such as Ṣamūd and al-Hattar. They focused their worship to those idols and deities in which they believed that they could bestow them happiness, goodness and benefits. They believed that those deities could help them to avoid evil, dismal and disasters.

Babylon, Assyria

When Nimrud was in reign, the people there practiced polytheism with many deities represented by idols. The most popular ones among the Chaldeans were Marduk and Nabu. There are other gods along with these such as Śïn who was a personification of the Moon in the form of a long-bearded man wearing a long robe with a crescent on his head. They made the icons for these deities and focusing their mind to these images. Others are Shamas (the Sun) and Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, battle and sex.  

This matter had been deeply rooted and spread far at that time. It was even accepted in the Near East and the existence of this kind of practice was maintained for such a long time. Polytheism survives in these regions until 600 century AD. Ancient Mesopotamians and Sumerians build Ziggurats as places to gaze at the stars and planets. The worship of various gods extended from Mesopotamia to rural Anatolian region where the people there also worshiped the Moon.

At the time where Abraham a.s destroyed the idols in the national temple of his city-state with his axe. His father, Terah (Āzar) ironically was an idol-maker. The message of Abraham in the midst of Chaldeā was to uproot the practices of the worship toward various deities who were the creatures of the Lord of universe and to place monotheism into its appropriate position again.

In the History of the Prophets authored by the late Ahmad Bahjat (a former columnist in al-Ahram), stated that there were three kinds of idolaters during the period of Abraham in Sumeria. They are:

• The worshiper of the idols made of earthly materials or creatures such as stones or wood.
• The worshiper of heavenly materials and creatures.
• The worshiper of kings and the men in power or the rulers.  

The God the Highest is none of these. The Glorious Quran which is revealed to Muhammad s.a.w taught us that He is beyond all of these and is not confined by the time and space.

Closing

I am going to continue with the Takfir issue in which I had found that someone who is eager to follow the method of al-Musnad is talking about the kufr classification. I am not saying that there is anything wrong in al-Musnad because I respect the compiler of the book, Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal along with other teachers. There are countless of teachers from each generations which we cannot get to know each one of them in a time. When we post something or talk about something in the midst of public or even when we are alone, we should also aware that we could easily fall prey to "Satan" although we feel that we are already in the "right" path. The burden of the sin is still there so be very very careful and discreet with the thought which is also related to other senses in one's gross body. The thing is not as simple as it is although it could be simplified for public viewers.

When we condemn something, try to check whether our "mind" is already there or still not there? Be open-minded as well as be very careful with the mind as it might also boggling between two extremes which would later bring us to no where. I found that people who are newly converted to "something" would turn to be a zealot yet one has to remember that He is all-powerful over the "Right" of guidance. I was once like that but I am grateful to Him that I quickly realized. Never make our selves as His rival or His revenge would reach us since we had forgotten our position before Him. Yes, we should practice the Sharia prescription in our worship as highlighted in the Hadith al-Qudsi but we should also notice that there is a mention about iḥsan before Him.

Our school of jurisprudence is a method on the angle of the prophetic traditions but not something for us to cling ourselves to it as a pride as to show our superiority over other groups! A Muslim is a life-time student of the "Path" and would always have to correct his practices although he knows all the basics. We cannot be sure that we are doing things closer to the noble prophet Muhammad s.a.w because we are not living with him that make us know everything about him but we get to know about the practices through narrations of his surviving family members, companions, chroniclers, the disciples, the disciples of disciples, the pious generations and the latter teachers. There are methods of deciding the judgement and we are looking down on Islam ourselves when we do not follow the guidelines through the Council of Clerics. There are still many issues which need to be observed by researchers and to be settled among the clerics. It is not yet the time for us, the public Muslims to jump of with emotions but to stay aware with our selves!

Beware with the trap of "Satan". It could prey anyone regardless of his school of jurisprudence, his teachers, his movements or his status until the death comes to him. The honorable teacher, Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal while in his death-bed also told his son about the state of delusion where he answered to the "Satan" that he is still not free from "it" even at his death-bed. Do not assume that we know everything but be very humble before the God the Highest. We would develop ego from our assumptions and later become a prey for the "Satan". Ego is dangerous and it is the root where the wars, fights, and battles happen around the world since the antiquities. May the God the Highest help everyone to be free from the tests and slanders of the life and the death and from the slanders of the false Messiah (Christ) (Report of Lady Aisha r.a; Abu Dawūd Book 3 No. 0879).  

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!

Watani Religion: Major Pagan God

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

Mecca: Pagan Chief Deity

Hubāl

This pagan god was placed within the vicinity of the Holy Shrine in Mecca since before Muhammad s.a.w was born. The idol was a human figure, believed to control acts of divination, which was in the form of tossing arrows before the statue. The direction in which the arrows pointed answered questions asked of the idol. The origins of the cult of Hubal are uncertain but the name is found from Nabatea inscriptions in Northern Arabia (across the territory of modern Syria and Iraq). The specific powers and identity attributed to this pagan Arab god are equally unclear.   

Access to the idol was controlled by the Quraish tribe after they become obsessed with superstitions and leaving behind the religion of forefathers. The god's devotees fought against followers of the noble prophet Muhammad s.a.w during the Battle of Badr in 624 CE.

Hubāl in Mecca

Hubal most prominently appears at Mecca, where an image of him was worshiped at the Cubicle Shrine in Holy Sanctuary. Karen Armstrong in Islam: The Short History said that the sanctuary was dedicated to god Hubal, who was worshiped as the greatest of the 360 idols the Cubicle contained, which probably represented the days of the year (Armstrong, 2002). I have not seen the book yet so I could not judge on how this lady had got her sources about our Cubicle Shrine or the Ka'aba. I am accustomed to Research Methodology and I do not simply write anything without references. I am also collecting the references for this particular topic so if there is reference for the statement then it is also included for viewers to check.

Hisham Ibn al-Kalbi in his Kitab al-Asnam describes the image of the god as shaped like a human, with the right hand broken off and replaced with a golden hand. The image was made of red agate, whereas al-Azrawi, an early Islamic commentator, described it as of "cornelian pearl". Al-Azraqi also related that it "had a vault for the sacrifice" and that the offering consisted of a hundred camels. Both authors speak of seven arrows placed before the image, which were cast for divination in cases of death, virginity and marriage.

Ibn Kalbi mentioned that, the image was first set up by Khuzaymah bin Mudrikah bin al-Ya's bin Mudar. However, another tradition recorded by Ibn Ishaq, holds that Amr bin Luhay, a leader of Khuza'a tribe of the larger Azdite Arab group, installed the image of Hubal in the Cubicle where it was worshiped as one of the chief deities of the particular tribe.

The date for Amr is disputed, with dates as late as the end of the 4th century CE suggested, but what is quite sure is that the Quraish later became the protectors of the ancient Holy Shrine, supplanting the Khuza'a. A tale recorded by Ibn al-Kalbi that Muhammad s.a.w grandfather Abd al-Motallib vowed to sacrifice one of his 10 children. He consulted the arrows of Hubal to find out which child he should chose. The arrows pointed to his son Abdullah, the future father of Muhammad s.a.w. Hoever, he was saved when 100 camels were sacrificed in his place. According to al-Tabari in the History of the Prophets and Kings, Abd al-Motallib later also brought the infant Muhammad himself before the image and circumambulating the Ka'aba (1:157).  

Origins

830 BC

There may be some foundation of truth in the story that Amr bin Luhay traveled in Syria and had brought back from there the cults of the goddesses al-'Uzza and Manat. He later combined them with that of Hubal, the god of Khuza'a tribe (Rodinson, 1961).

Al-Azraqi stated, the image was brought to Mecca "from the land of Hīt in Mesopotamia" and Hīt is in modern Iraq. Philip K. Hitti (1937), who relates the word Hubal to an Aramaic word for spirit, suggests that the worship of Hubal was imported to Mecca from the North of Arabia, possibly from Moab or Mesopotamia. Hubal may have been the combination of Hu meaning spirit or a deity, and the Moab god, Bāl meaning master or lord.

Outside South Arabia, Hubal's name appeas just once, in Nabatean inscription, there Hubal is mentioned with the gods such as Dhu al-Sharāh and Manawati, the latter, as Manāt later became popular in Mecca. On the basis of such slender evidence, it has been suggested that Hubal "may actually have been a Nabatean" (Rodinson, 1971). There are also inscriptions in which the word Hubal appears to be part of personal names, translatable as "Son of Hubal" or "made of Hubal" (Healey, 2001).

The idol of this pagan deity was destroyed during the opening of Mecca in 630 AD. Noble prophet Muhammad s.a.w ordered the idols being removed and the statue of this particular deity was also destroyed. The Ka'aba Shrine was sanctified from paganism and re-dedicated again to the God the Highest as according to the order of previous prophets which happened after the Battle of Badr. Abu Sufyan bin Harb, the leader of Quraish army at the side of the pagans, is said to have called the god Hubal for support to gain victory in their next battle, saying "Show your superiority, Hubal!"

Role in Mythology

The paucity of evidence concerning Hubal makes it difficult to characterize its role or identity in pagan Arabian mythologies. The 19th century scholar, Julius Wellhausen suggested that Hubal was regarded as the son of al-Lāt and the brother of Wadd.

Hugo Winckler in the early 20th century speculated that Hubal was a lunar deity, a view that was repeated by other scholars. This was derived from Ditlef Nielsen's theory that South Arabian mythology was based on a trinity of Moon father, and Sun mother and the evening star, planet Venus envisaged as their son. More recent scholars have rejected this view partly because it is a speculation but also because a Nabatean origin would make the context of South Arabian beliefs irrelevant (Fahd, 1958).

Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams assert that he was "a god of rain and a warrior god. Towards the end of the pre-Islamic era he emerged as an inter-tribal warrior god, worshiped by the Quraish and the allied tribes of the Kinanah and Tihamah". The view that he was a warrior rain god is repeated by David Adams Leeming.

John F. Healey in The Religion of the Nabateans (2001) accepts the Nabatean origins of the god, but says there is little evidence of Hubal's mythological role, but that it is possible that he was closely linked to Dhu Sharāh in some way. The one surviving inscription concerns a religious injunction to placate Hubal and others for violating a tomb.   

In Modern Culture

Both Islamists and Christian evangelists have invoked the figure of this god in their ideological struggles of the post Cold War era. 

A. Islamists

In Islamism, Hubal has been used as a symbol of modern forms of "idol worship". According to Adnan A. Musallam, this can be traced to one of the founders of radical Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, who used the label to attack secular rulers such as Nasser, seen as creating "idols" based on un-Islamic Western and Marxist ideologies.  

In 2001, Osama Laden called the US as the modern Hubal. He referred to allies of the US as "hypocrites" who all stood behind the head of global unbelief, the Hubal of the modern age, the US and its supporters. AL-Qaeda's then number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, repeated the phrase "Hubal al-'Asr" in describing the US, during his November 2008 message following Barack Obama's election to presidency. The analogy may have been passed on to Bin Laden by one of his teachers, Abdullah Azzam (Musallam, 2005).   

B. American Evangelists

Conversely, American Evangelists have invoked Hubal by claiming that the worship of Allah (the God the Highest) as proclaimed by Muhammad s.a.w was not a restroration of Abrahamic monotheism, but an adaptation of the worship of Hubal.  

Robert Morey's (1994) Moon-god Allah in the Archeology of the Middle East revives Hugo Winckler's identification of Hubal as a moon god, and claims that worship of Allah evolved from that of HUbal, thus making Allah a "moon god" too. This view is repeated in the Chick tracts, "Allah had no Son" and "the Little Bride".  

This "perception" has been widely circulated in Evangelical and anti-Islamic literature in the United States. In 1996, Janet Parshall asserted that Muslims worship a moon god in syndicated radio broadcasts. In 2003, Pat Robertson stated, "The struggle is whether Hubal, the Moon God of Mecca, known as "Allah", is supreme or whether the Judeo-Christian "Jehovah" God of the Bible is Supreme.

These views however have been dismissed by both Muslim and secular religious scholars. Farzana Hassan sees these claims as an extension of longstanding Christian Evangelical beliefs that Islam is "pagan" and that Muhammad s.a.w was an impostor and deceiver... 

"Literature circulated by the Christian Coalition perpetuates the popular Christian belief about Islam being a "pagan" religion, borrowing aspects of Judeo-Christian monotheism by elevating the moon god, Hubal to the rank of Supreme God, or Allah. Muhammad s.a.w for some of those extremist Christians, remains an impostor commissioned his companions to copy words of the Bible as they sat in dark inaccessible places, far removed from public gaze".

This perception is made up and I personally think that those involved in this kind of work as silly and they are no different to those "fanatic new-born Muslims" who had just started to grow beard down to their feet after they live their ungodly young life drinking beer, singing secular songs and socializing and womanizing before using the verses from the Scripture to legalize their own "lust" to marry four young pretty ladies... In this matter we could see the "lust" is used to irresponsibly legalize whatever view that they wanted to support them with the usage of the Scripture. Just a view of a Muslim educated within traditional circle but also trained in "other" traditions of the East.   

Sealed with prayer for mercy, peace and love, amin!

Northern Arab: Literature

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

This topic is my favorite topic for our tradition but I am not good in language style like my father. My father cannot fluently speak in Arabic but he was undeniably very good in written Malay literature. There are boxes of his writings and poems out here in Malay. He even wrote few books such as his autobiography: Dari Kodiang ke Jalan Riong, Tokoh Ulama Nusantara which is a tribute for famous Muslim clerics within Malay speaking sphere, some Malay short stories such as the Bingkisan Sutera Biru and Mencari Pelangi published by the Malaysian Islamic Development Department before he is paralyzed by strokes. While for me, I am not good in writing, haha. Most of my writings are about spiritualism, psychology, yogic explanation based from Tantra-Yoga of India and about Islam I wrote everything that I heard by hand in Malay using Arabic script. Then, I spontaneously type them in here right away in English before I burn my notes in the metal can.

Arab Descent with Malay

I studied Arabic since I was a little child. We begin everything just like the Israelites children of the past were sent to teachers to learn reading and writing. I was educated through mosque system differently to my sisters who are my siblings where they were educated in secular system. I think the difference happened because my mother and some elders who split my lips with sweets during my tahnik ceremony had consecrated me for "religious" matter. Usually, Muslim parents would bring their newborn babies to spiritual leaders of their community while during the period of prophet Muhammad s.a.w was in Medina, Muslims brought their babies to prophet Muhammad s.a.w himself for the blessings. 

I get to know Arabic alphabets before the Roman alphabets and it was a big trouble for me when I was schooled in national system after I reached seven years old. I read things differently from my spellings other than I used different kind of language at home. For e.g the word chili being pronounced as cabai and everybody in the class laughed at me. I scribe things faster in Arabic script anyway but I cease to do that when I am around with people since Malay in Arabic script is deemed as alien after the 60's. The language style which using the Arabic script is different to the one which uses Roman alphabets since it is a kind of Classical Malay language. Arabic script was used by educated Malay speaking people in Classical period in South East Asia where they consists of native Malay noblemen like the royalties and Arab descents like us who worked closely with royalties. When the Educational Ministry converted the language into Roman script, it also means that we were in deprivation. 

The person in charge with the conversion of the Malay into Roman script was the Education Minister, Mr. Khir Johari who is also a citizen of Kedah state. He enforced the policy in 1966 and the younger generations who speak Malay found that Malay in Arabic script is alien to them. The government seems like trying to save the Arabic script as a medium for Malay written language but they do not put any hard effort on it. They show the "lack" of interest in it. As for me, I write in both Arabic and Malay using Arabic script as part of my identity, heritage and root.

Amṭhāl

Arabic is rich with amṭhāl or proverbs. It spreads fast due to its simplicity, it is compact and easy to be memorized by everyone. This is different to poems since not everyone could memorize it and the poets were known as the people of higher status and position in society. Those who receives the poem too are deemed with such a high esteem within the society.

Proverbs usually relating the people with the nature, activities and their surrounding. There are differences due to geographical location and region. For Northern Arabs, their proverbs would mostly be related to camel, horse, contests due in battles, hunting and arrow. For the Quraish Arabs, business and trade is the main theme of their proverbs since they engaged themselves more in the activity.

The Quran also consists various proverbs used to explain the teachings of morality in relation to the Oneness of the God the Highest.

Poetry

Northern Arabia during the "age of ignorance" values poetry and poets. It is known as the Sha'ir. They expressed their feeling and release their tensions in battles and wars through poetry. A poet is highly respected within a certain tribe. Sometimes, a certain dignified guest would be honored with poetry. Sometimes they express their courage in the beginning through poetry.

Expression of Feeling

Ancient Northern Arabian poetry could be seen as the modest ones. A poet would phrase his nostalgic memory in the form of a poem such as how he lived his life in a poor Bedouin tent with cattle around them. Later he has to migrate for uncertain luck abroad and does not know when he could return to his village. He would perhaps spontaneously phrasing the poem while he sits alone somewhere in the city expressing his melancholic feeling about his memory in the village or sometimes about his girlfriends in the village and how he missed them... Maybe about Fatma.. Maybe about Ablah and so on.

Poetry in War

Poetry held an important position within the ancient Arabia society with the poet or sha'ir filling the role of historian, soothsayer and propagandist. Words in praise of the tribe known as the qit'ah and the lampoons or hija' to denigrate other tribes seems to be the most popular forms of early Arabic poetry. It could also be used by a Northern Arab poets for propaganda as to raise the spirit of his tribe to take revenge or remembering how vulnerable was their enemies that they managed to defeat them in previous wars and battles. There were mock battles in poetry known as zajal and it represents psychological wars between the poets of different tribes besides the real wars. In other occasions, they would recite poems lamenting their deceased friends or brothers who were killed in the battle.

Source of Studies

Among prominent Arab during the age before the advent of prophet Muhammad s.a.w was Imru' al-Qays bin Hujr of the Kindah tribe. He was the last king of the kingdom of Kindah. Although most of the poetry from the era was not preserved, the remains is well regarded as the finest of Arabic poetry to date and we had to learn these poems in our Higher Arabic classes. Due to the eloquence and artistic value, the poems in the age before prophet Muhammad s.a.w constitutes a major source for Classical Arabic in both grammar and vocabulary besides as a reliable historical record of the political and cultural life of the time in ancient Arabia.

Recitation Styles

Alongside the poems there is also a rawi or a reciter. The job as a reciter was to learn poems by heart and to recite them with explanations and probably often with decorative details on it from the recitation style to other details. This tradition allowed the transmission of poetic works and the practice was later adopted by those who memorize the Quran.

In certain periods, there are unbroken chains of illustrious poets. Each one trains a reciter as a bard to promote his verse, and then to take over from them and continue the poetic tradition. For e.g Tofayl trained 'Awas bin Hajar. Bin Hajar trained Zohayr. Zohayr trained his son, Ka'ab. And Ka'ab trained al-Hutay'ah, al-Hutay'ah trained Jamil Buthaynah and Buthaynah trained Kuthayyir 'Azza.

The art of tarannum adopted in the Quranic recitation within some parts of Muslim world is based from this tradition. I am not good and not so much interested in this art but I am not against this. I just found that it is fussy for me and young people do not like too elaborate art but simply the modest and practical ones. This kind of art is almost comparable to Indian styles of recitation for the Vedas and rāga (melodic recitation) of poems in Southern Indian style or Sanskrit meters. This art works closely with the tajwīd or philology. 

Wandering Poets

These people are almost comparable to the Śarmanas of the ancient India. They are called as the Su'luk in Arabic. Their literary works consisted attacks on the rigidity of tribal life and they praise solitude.

Maybe I could categorize myself within this group of people because when I turned to Buddhism as I confronted people around me, it is because the great teacher, Siddartha Gautama, was also a Śramana. Among the prominent wandering poets of ancient Arabia were Ta'bbata Sharran, al-Shanfara and 'Orwa bin al-Ward.

Some of these poets attack on the values of the clan and of the tribe with ironic words, teasing the listeners only in order finally to endorse all that the members of the audience held most dear about their communal values and way of life. While such poets were identified closely with their own tribes, others, such as al-A'sha, were known for their wanderings in search of work from whoever needed poetry. 

Best Poems

The very best of these early poems were collected in the 8th century as the Mo'allaqat meaning "the hung poems" since they were hung on or inside the Cubicle Shrine and the Mufaddaliat or the examination or anthology of the Mofaddal.

The Mo'allaqat also aimed to be the definitive source of the era's output with only a single example of the work of each of the so-called "seven renowned ones", although different versions differ in which "renowned ones" they chose. The Mofaddaliyat on the other hand contains rather a random collection.

The Northern Arabs would conduct the poetry contest in an annual market known as the Okaḍh and if a new poet arise within a particular tribe thus his whole tribe would also be proud of him and being the pride of his friends although his friends are not talented in poetry. It was customary for them to stay in a group outside of their tents at night especially when the full moon is there and they would recite the "seven renowned ones" over and over.

Characteristics of Ignorance Ages Poems

Several characteristics that distinguish the poetry of the ignorance ages from the poetry of the later times are...

• More attentions was given to the eloquence and the wording of the verse than than to the poem as whole. This resulted in poems characterized by strong vocabulary and short ideas but with loosely connected verses.
• It is the romantic or nostalgic prelude with which the poems of ignorance ages would often begin. In these preludes, a thematic unit known as "naṣīb", the poet would remember his beloved and her deserted home and its ruins. This concept in Arabic poetry is referred to as "al-waqafa 'ala al-atlal" or standing by the ruins since the poet would often begin his poem by saying that he stood at the ruins of his beloved. It is a kind of ubi sunt as explained in Latin term.

The latter period of Arabic poems consists of different ideas and also themes ranging from religious, love and so on. We could listen the poems in the form of al-ġinā', anāshid, and from various regions such as from Southern Spain, South East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and North Africa.

Khiţāb

This means oration and it was an art prominent in Arabia after the poetry. I hate this art the most and I used to sneak out from the contests at our schools while we were forced by the teachers to attend and to watch fellow schoolmates delivering their oration.

I sneaked out because I think that their speeches are not original, boring and they have some kind of weird gestures, ahaha. Does not matter in whatever language that people deliver their oration... I still hate it the same as I hate to listen to preachers regardless movements or religions wasting my time to listen to their "meaningless" persuasion. Oh yeah, I hate choral speaking too. I never join any contests at the school and I never mingle closely with other students. I just cannot be dissolved into the "local" mainstream society and they I think is different from people around.

Well, in the beginning... Poets and poetry were deemed as precious and it could still be seen while prophet Muhammad s.a.w was a young man. While listening to the Revelation recited by prophet Muhammad s.a.w, some of the people said, "It sounds like poetry, but it is not poetry!"

Later, people began to feel sick of poetry because some of the poets began to make profits out of making poems for others. So, the attention to the poets turned little by little to the orators. The orators who delivered their speeches like a fiery fire would receive great attention and applauds from the audience. Orators appear and work in the same manner with the previous poets. They are used by political parties to attack each other, to defend their parties (tribes) from enemies who abuse their parties and in revenge.

The difference between the orators and poets is that orators do not have to pick up complicated or hard words but enough with common words. Many of the orators would bring up the pride of their tribes while delivering their oration in the battle field. They would stand on a place which is higher than the audience and delivering their speeches with hand gestures, face expressions, sometimes holding a stick. The orators who were praised in the society were not those who dubiously deliver the talk but the one who is spontaneous and loud in expressing his ideas.

Nowadays, we have the preachers who took the place of our ancient orators. There is also orator in the mosque which is known as the khaţib who recites the messages related to the "Path" and issues surrounding the society such as religious and morality, social, political and economic issues. 

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace, and, love, amin!

Northern Arabia: Language

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

Now, Northern Arabs were those who actually lived a Bedouin life. They were backward than the Southern Arabs as Southern Arabs had great kingdoms and city-states down there. However in term of language, Northern Arabs had also absorbed many loanwords from foreign powers surrounding them. They gradually absorbed the words into their vocabulary and the narration of historians themselves could not decipher when the Northern Arabs had absorbed those loanwords into their language. 

The development of Arabic language could be seen in three stages...

First Stage

The period where it was still pure and was not so much infiltrated with foreign words while the region of the spoken language is not so much vast like today. The period was the period of Amalek and other ancient Arab tribes.

Second Stage

Second Jurhumite period where the native Southern Arabs moved northward and mingled with Ishmael a.s and his family. Their language became influenced by these these Arabized non-Arabs and they also influenced them. The language evolved and later becoming other languages spoken by the Arabs of various tribes such as Mudharites, Rabi'as, Kinanas, Nizarites and the Qaysites.

Third Stage

The period where Quraish Arabs becoming the servants of the Cubicle Shrine and the Holy Mecca. Arabian tribes from the whole Arabia performing pilgrimage to the holy sites there every year. They would stay there for almost 50 days and becoming the guests of the Quraish who hosted them. Three days of the pilgrims would be spent in Dhu al-Majāz, seven days in the Majinnah, 30 days in the Okadh, and 10 days for pilgrimage sacraments as according to their religions and customs.

Quraish Arabs used to travel to other regions due to business needs and trade. They went to Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia, Hawrān, Persia and ancient Indian subcontinent. They met different and various kind of languages and foreign things to their region. They brought those things back to their state and introduce them to their people. The people use the things and calling them in their own names used in original states. The most popular loanwords within Northern Arab language were from Persian. These foreign languages and their business caravan had also helped them to enrich their language and their position as the servants in the Holy Mecca makes their language spread faster than any other Arab languages.

Besides, everyone should also take to their note that a development in a language also depends to the development of the knowledge and intellectual power of a certain nation who speak their own language. We could also see this in English because I am trying to write in English, haha. There were many literature works produced within English from the period of Old English which is a fusion of Angles, Jutes and Saxon languages. They have literature works in Old English such as Beowulf with those words which sound more like German to my ears, Middle English with its King James' Bible translations and Modern English which is now of different variations due to the spread of British influence in the world through their colonies such as Indian English, American English, Malayan English, British English, Jamaican English, Australian English, Scottish English, Irish English and so on. English also absorbed many foreign words into the its vocabulary such as from Arabic, from Indian languages and from the previous Roman and Norman empires. The English that I use in my posts is not even British English but more to Malaysian English which is closer to the Standard English. The same thing that happened to Quraish Arabic.

Because of this, many Bedouin Arabs could also express their feelings through Quraish Arabic. They sometimes enrich the language with their own dialects and so, we could see about 10-100 words could be used to refer only to one thing. We sometimes could articulate a verb with different ways in our grammatical and philology studies. Arabic has a special form of plural for nouns which is the Jama' Taksir where the arrangement is not so much organized like other two plural forms for feminine and masculine in our articulation. As such, an Eastern Languages linguist known as Noldke has proclaimed that Arabic is a rich and vast language. 

Ahmad Amin from Fuad I University of Cairo however contested the statement of Noldke although he too admits that Arabic is a rich language. Arabic for him is still confined within metal stones, metal hills and desert surrounding the Arabs since ancient times. It is still original in the sense that the Arabs were largely associated to their camels and the day dream steaming in their veins due to the empty desert around them. The Northern Arabs were poor without any term to describe snow at the peak of mountains, sea and fishes, ocean and ships nor could they describe anything related to luxurious life in palaces of noble men. They only come across to these matters when North Arabian kingdoms came into contact with other nations and their languages.

The difference between Arabic and other languages that could not be compared is that it has special form of grammatical order which is divided into the grammar and the articulation where both of them are closely linked in term of word construction and forming sentences since Arabic just like other Semitic languages also depends on the three alphabets for basic root of the word. And this is some glances about our language, the Arabic language which is now used as communication tool in modern Arabic speaking world. It was the language of Northern Arabs : ) 

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!

Southern Arabia: Himyar Language

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

The language spoke by the Himyarite Arabs is definitely different to the Modern Standard Arabic which resembles the Classical Northern Arabic language. 

I remembered when I studied in Folk Religious School (SAR) where my Arabic language teachers said that I was good in Arabic either in the grammar or the pronunciation. I also had a vast vocabulary as compared to other native students, lol. Some of the religious academic teachers including the Arabic ones had tried to stop me from leaving the school just after I clashed with the discipline teacher simply because Sharia stream students were bunch of useless citizens and their classes was beside an unused toilet at the edge of the top level in the school building. Moral of the story, if you wanted your children to have Arabic education, never send them to study in SAR. There was a lack of qualified teachers and I am still following the news about the national "religious and Arabic" education. I believe the situation is still the same. Send your children right away to Arabic speaking schools or simply speak with them in the language at home. Education begins from home.

There were many different dialects spoken by ancient Arabs. The prominent ones in Southern Arabia was the Himyari language and the Sayhadi language. Little is known about the Himyari language and linguists could not find any relation between the Himyari language with Southern Arabic. While being a great kingdom, the knowledge about Himyarite language is very limited and could only be seen through inscriptions written in Sabaean script, which is an Old South Arabian language. The texts written in Himyar language seems to be rhymed. One of them is the Hymn of Qaniya. The language was only known from the statements made by Arab scholars from the first centuries after the rise of Muhammad s.a.w and his teachings. According to their description, the language was not mutual to Arabic speakers. They cannot understand the language at all. 

Differently to Old South Arabian languages, which were supplanted by Arabic in 8th century, if not much earlier, the Himyar language continued to be spoken in the highlands of southwestern Yemen after the rise of Islam. According to al-Hamdani (893-947), it was spoken somewhere in the highlands of western Yemen in 10th century, while the tribes at the coast and eastern Yemen spoke Arabic and most tribes in the western highland spoke Arabic dialects with strong Himyari influence. In the following centuries, Himyari was completely supplanted by Classical Arabic. But the modern dialects of the highlands seem to show traces of the Himyari substrate.

Linguistic Features

The most prominent feature of the Himyari is the definite article am-. It was shared, though with some Arabic dialects in the west of Arabia. Furthermore, the suffixes of the perfect (suffix conjugation) in the first person singular and the second person began with k-, while Arabic has t-.

This feature is also found in Old South Arabian, Ethiosemitic and Modern South Arabian. Both features are also found in some modern Arabic dialects spoken in Yemen, probably through Himyari substrate influence. The article am- is also found in other modern dialects of Arabic in the Arabian peninsula and in Central Africa.

Scholar such as Maryam Bayshak believes that the Shehhi dialect of northern cape of the UAE descends from the Himyari language. Some scholars also claimed that Yemenite Arabic sounds like Assyrian language. And the script of Himyari language is almost similar to the script used to write Ethiopian language, Amharic. Modern Arabic script is the script of North Arabs.

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin! 

Southern Arabia: Business and Trade

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

Southern Arabia located in between Africa and Asia and Indian Ocean. That makes them easier to contact other regions for business and commercial activities. They did business with ancient India where they imported jewelries, gold, precious stones, elephant tusks, pepper, stoves, sandalwood and agarwood to Assyrian empire, Egypt and Phoenicia. They sent ships to India and Far East in South East Asia (Further India) and bringing the stuffs from the sea through land routes by caravans.

I guess from South East Asia, the Arabs might also brought the weapons such as sword since the archeologists from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) had founded ancient iron-smelting sites in Sungai Batu in Bujang Valley of Kedah state which dates back to the 3rd-5th century. I had seen some of the findings in the new library of the USM when I was a postgraduate student but unfortunately I did not capture the picture, haha. 

From Eastern Africa, they imported perfumes, ostrich feathers, gold, meat and calamondin. From Socotra, they imported sandalwood and from Bahrain, pearls. Yemenite traders brought all of these stuffs to the markets in Yemen. They trade those stuffs with people from around the regions. The ancient Arabs and people from Middle East prefer land routes over the maritime routes because waves in Persian Bay was so terrible for them.

It is reasonable for Strabo to mention that Yemen could be equally compared with Egypt and Byzantine city-state in term of their development besides they rarely engage themselves in wars since violence could slow the progress for development and turning a state into the poor one. We could see this during the World Wars and it was not so much fun even when we just hear the experience of those who live at that time.

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!

South Arabia: Kingdom and Nation

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

Development to a Kingdom

In Arabia, what is understood as a kingdom actually consists of few halls and houses owned by a Sheikh (elder) or an Amir (prince). In those halls, there were altars for worship addressed to the owner of that particular hall or palace. 

Later, an influential chief of a clan becomes prominent and the clan expanded its families around so other smaller groups will approach them and associating themselves to the one which is prominent although they are not related by blood. Sooner or later, a small kingdom emerged slowly into a larger one. This is how the kingdoms such as the Mo'inites, Sheba, and Himyarites were established in Southern Arabia. All of them were actively involved in international trade and their influence was based on their record in trading and mercantile. 

Kingship

The head of the kingdom was a king. His order is an order and nobody disregard his order. The kings reigned in the palace and seldom went out from their palace in Ma'arev or in other places. The king usually do not supervise the soldiers and army since the war seldom happened between Southern Arabia with other kingdoms. Their soldiers only protect their trading caravan and defending their states from foreign invasions. Soldiers in Southern Arabia were involved in public works such as building houses for the citizens, paving roads, maintenance of the roads and maintenance of the Dam of Ma'arev.

The succession of kingship was by inheritance from a father to a son and from a son to his son. If the king has no son then the kingship would go to the nephew of the king. The Hadramawt region has rather a different way in the succession of kingship and it happens since before the arrival of Christianity there. The kingship is not by family succession but to the son who born first of any feudal lord who ruled the regions within the kingdom. When the king feels like he needs a successor, he would order the names of feudal lords' wives who are pregnant to be presented before him. They would be brought under special care until they deliver their babies. Once a baby son was born then the baby would be nominated and nurtured as the future king although he is not from the king's family (Jurji Zaydan; Pre-Islamic Arabia). The kings also possess their own royal design with the titles such as Basta' and Rayyam in Mo'inites kingdom. While in Sheba kingdom, the kings were called as Yablin, Yawf and Watār. 

They had their own currency with the image of the king, his name, the name of the state and the detail on the location of the coin being stamped was carved at the coins. Yemenite old coins could be seen in European exhibition centers but I am not sure which place kept the old currencies... Maybe they could be seen in British Library because Europeans and Japanese are better than us in South East Asia in term of keeping those world heritage stuffs. I have heard that the ancient Hindu stupa and other ancient archeological sites in our sultanate had been razed to the ground without any attempt by the state government to protect those historical sites. What a shame... You had lost one of the witness for your civilization and you behave just like those "stupid" uneducated Arabs in Jordan who sold the Qumran scrolls to American researchers in 1940's without checking on what benefit that you could get by analyzing those stuffs yourselves. The money that you receive would last in the period of time but the knowledge that you have could be passed to others around you and be benefited for humanity...

Situation in the Kingdom

The proofs about Southern Arabian lifestyle could be deciphered from their ancient coins. Their kings usually would mat their hair and letting the hair flowing from their left and right sides. Some of them released their matted hair at the back of their head. There was no proof that they prefer to have bushy beard. Even I could tell this when looking at my grandfather picture and also other relatives of my father. They do not like to have bushy beard. They only keep their sidelocks and some of them have light beard with mustache.

Ancient southern Arabs mostly riding horses but they also developed their preference toward elephants or chariots after they mingled with the Ethiopians from Africa.

Jurji Zaydan quoted the statement of Theophatus regarding the transportation used by Himyarite king, "King Justinian I had sent a group of emissaries to the Himyarite kingdom. The chief of the emissaries was Julian. Julian reported that the Himyarite king sit on a huge golden chariot pulled by four elephants. The king wears loincloth and covers his body with a cloth sewn with golden thread. He also wears rings made of precious stones at his fingers, holding lances and a golden shield. People singing praises behind him while they travel around. In the palace meeting hall, the emissaries presented the king with the royal letter from the Eastern Roman empire. The king welcomed the letter and kissed it before opening it. Later, he kissed the eyebrows of every person in the Roman emissaries and everything which has been sent by Eastern Roman emperor to him. The letter called the Himyarite kingdom to expel Persians from his country and from the border of the country besides to make sure that Eastern Roman traders from Alexandria could safely moving here and there for their business trip. The king granted all the wishes of the Eastern Roman emperor since they were good friends".

Society

The social strata of the people in Southern Arabia could be divided into four classes. They are:

1. Warriors and soldiers who protect the state, maintaining the fort and guarding the safety of business caravans in the trading routes.

2. Farmers who were involved with agricultural activities.

3. Skilled workers.

4. Businessman, merchants and traders.

Everything which was mentioned by Julian, the chief of Roman emissary to the Himyarite kingdom and the classes of society could still be seen up to now. The Yemenites especially from Hadramawt has this custom of kissing the eyebrows of their guests and kissing the presents given to them. I used to practice this custom too but later on I feel that the norm is quite weird since nobody around me practice that as they are non-Arabs so it automatically stops.

People of Hadramawt were distributed into four classes too... It is almost comparable to ancient Indian social system and I believe that this system will never cease to exist until the doomsday but it only transforms into another form here and there...

1. Sayyids or religious people from the lineage of Ali r.a and Fatima r.a which is known as the Ahl Bayt and Hashemites since the inter-marriage was only within family member and tribal system. It is most comparable to Bramha-Kshatriyas and Brahmins of ancient India.

2. Soldiers, kings and warriors who protect the state. Mostly comparable to ancient Indian Kshatriyas.

3. Farmers and merchants which are comparable to the Vaisyas.   

4. The weak and paupers which are grouped as the dhu'afa. Comparable to the Sudras in ancient Indian social strata.

Those from the lower group are strictly prohibited from marrying the women from the higher classes. It happened in our communities too. I guess some people already talked about this and even condemned us, lol. There were lack of Arab women here so Arabs in South East Asia actually inter-married with local women. So, the children speak in their mothers languages but are still Arabs as according to their father ethnicity. There are Sayyids, Sheikhs and Sharifs in South East Asia but my grandfather family do not use the title because of family and clan issues. I guess all of those title stuffs are weird. The God the Highest do not recognize us with that but only with taqwa. I hate some of those fellow Sayyids too, hahaha...

In India there were people who were so strict even they refuse to have child with the women from lower social classes though both of them were married just like in the case of Hindi movie actress, Madam Meena Kumari and her husband, Mr. Kamal Amrohi. Mr. Amrohi refused to have children with Madam Meena Kumari because she is not from Sayyid class. I guess that, it is the most crazy thing that I have ever heard. Why a man bother to marry a woman if he does not want to have a family with her???!    

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!

Arab Civilization

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

There are differences between the Arabs in the North and the South. The Southern Arabs were more to conservative nomadic lifestyle or known as Bedouins. Northern Arabs were city-dwellers and they engaged themselves with people from around the world so they were quite open and well-developed as compared to the Southern Arabs. This is what some people said. However, I do not agree with them. This is actually more dependent to the geography of the people there. Some places had a lack of resources for development and that makes the people moving here and there or having lack development. We cannot generalize people or attached to the perception based on what we see or hear.

Southern Arabs

Southern Arabs were quite civilized and stated by Mahmud al-Alusi (1802-1854) who says, "The Qahtanites who are native to Yemen lived in prosperous states and their lands were fertile. They build up huge and strong fortresses and their buildings were extremely beautiful. Their grandeur was mentioned by historians throughout centuries. Their achievement is also recorded in the Glorious Quran in Surah Sabā' (No. 34)".

The Qahtanites were the offspring of Joktan the son of Eber. Qahtan is the Arabic rendition for a person who was known as Joktan. Joktan is the younger brother of Peleg who is the ancestor of Abraham a.s. Qahtan has 24 sons who were the progenitor of Southern Arabs who live in Yemen, Southern Arabian Peninsula and some parts of Oman. During the period of Solomon a.s who ruled Judea, the Queen who ruled the kingdom was of Sheba dynasty and they worshiped the Sun. The same thing also happened in Vedic India and in Assyria within Mesopotamian region. In Assyrian religion, the Sun is known as Shamas just like in Arabic we call the Sun as Shams. Vedic Indian worship the Sun as Surya. The Sun was associated with Saturn in their astrology system. The same thing too in Indian nine planets system where Surya (the Sun) is associated with Shani (Saturn). Southern Arabs had built Sun Tower in their kingdom for religious purposes.

In this matter, we could see that Southern Arabs were quite civilized because they know how to build up buildings, they practiced some kind of planet worshiping religion and that means that they studied the heavens. They had kingdoms within their region and it shows that they know how to manage a government and its political system. They had irrigation system, forts and trained their own soldiers for peace-keeping and security. All of these would not happen if they were stupid, block-headed or illiterate like what religious teachers in our country said to us as the reason for why prophet Muhammad s.a.w was sent among Arab nations. 

How many times, people had encountered the statement that prophet Muhammad s.a.w is a mercy toward the universe but some of them repeatedly throwing racist remarks on us and they are Muslims just like us. It would not hurt if they are non-Muslims because we know that non-Muslims would have different way of viewing the world. I never look down on Malays nor anyone... Instead I learned their history and their achievements since Hindu-Buddhism period down to the period they become Muslims. I believe we could learn and taking lessons from our past for better future. We cannot change people mind-set in just a blink of eyes....

As such, the religions of Southern Arabs are of various practices. The kings were skilled in astronomy and astrology. All of these could be traced through archeological findings and not only through oral narrations. 

Northern Arabs

Northern Arabs are of various backgrounds. Mahmud al-Alusi mentions that, "The offspring of 'Adnan and Qahtanite Arabs who moved and lived around the Ishmaelites after the breach of Ma'arev Dam followed the norms which they received from their ancestors. Those norms were the traditions of ancient sages there and based from what they heard from other realms".

Celestial path was inherited from Abraham a.s. and Ishmael a.s. but due to the changes of time, the "path" could not maintain its pure teachings. Later on, many foreign influences infiltrated people's traditions and customs and they claimed that those practices were the teachings of Abraham a.s. until younger generations could not differentiate things no more. Later on, there were new migration from down south to Mecca and Hejaz region and one among the migrants was a figure who was known as Amr bin Luhay. He was a shaman and also a chief of the Khuza'a tribe of the larger Azdites which is a sub-branch of Qahtanite Arabs from Yemen. His father is of Ka'ab clan. 

Amr bin Luhay performed charity and he respects everything related to customs and religion. Then, he joined a caravan and traveled to Syria and saw the people at the sea, which happened to be the Phoenecians or Levantines worshiped the elements of the universe which were represented by the statues. He thought that it was a righteous deed since Syria was known to him as the land of sages, prophets and revelation. He brought back the Hubal statue and placed it inside the Cubicle Shrine. Hubal was a chief deity worshiped by the people after they were persuaded by Amr bin Luhay to accept the religion. Later the practices widely spread among Arabs of various lineages.

People were so fond of poetry and delivering sermons in beautiful way. Then, Arabs also memorized their ancestral lineage, wars and battles that their ancestors had engaged, checking astrology before starting the war and battle and practicing warrior rites for swords, lances and others because of their life were surrounded with battles and wars. More or less like the warrior caste of ancient India...

Ancient Arab Achievements  

Gustave Le Bon says, "Those authors since biblical times recorded in their literature works that the Arabs especially in Yemen had reached their zenith in trading and businesses".

Herodotus (4 BC) says that, "Arabia was a prosperous and fertile land". Strabo further said, "The Dam of Ma'arev was an amazing creation of man-kind". Modern archeology has shown that Yemen was a developed region during its ancient time and it was cultural center in which is comparable to ancient Egypt. Modern researches have discovered large amounts of ancient artifacts in Southern Arabia and other regions related to Arabia just like those founded in Nineveh and Babylon in the region of Assyrian empire.

As such, I do not agree with those teachers who taught their students that ancient Arabs were barbaric people and plainly ignorant so the God the Highest has sent prophet Muhammad s.a.w among the Arab nation so other nations such as Malays in South East Asia could respect the Arabs. The Arabs were already actors involved in world political affairs since before the emergence of the Romans and it is proven in the record of the Old Testament. Arabs had also contributed to the world civilization since ancient times and the recent ones in Medieval period of AD was just the re-branded ones. This is the excerpt that scholars have got from La Civilization des Arabes by Gustave Le Bon (1884).        

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!

Arabia: Foreign Invasions

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

Many people talked about Arab or Saracen invasions over other regions but never bother to talk about Arabia was also a subject of foreign colonial powers in ancient times. Even, Arabia was also a subject of Ottoman empire and it is not an Arab empire. I do not want people to regard colonialism, tyranny or enslavement of other creatures as a righteous deed nor wanted people to view Arabs as a nation of "angels" but I just wanted people to stop clinging to perceptions. Perception is a non-self but we created it as an ego which turns to be a root of unwholesome acts. We listen to whatever that we wanted to listen and we avoid whatever that we do not want to listen. We are selective. That is human-being. I am aware that we are human-being. We possess weaknesses of mortal human-being.  

Egypt

King Ahmas was the earliest foreigner who tried to bring Arabia into Egyptians sphere of influence. This king is from the 13th dynasty. They drove out the Hyksos from their border to Sinai and attacked them without stop around 1700 BC. Later, the Nubians and Ethiopians attacked their country and the king has to return to his country in order to protect it from the raids so Arabia was safe for the time-being.

1600 BC, Tahotamas III tried to attack Arabia.

1200 BC, Ramses III brought his armada and landed along the beach of Red Sea. He wanted to attack Somalia, Ethiopia and Arabia for their trading purposes with Far East countries. He also established diplomatic relation with Yemen and states along the beach. Later he paved the passage for traders' business trip in Arabia to connect Egypt with Indian Ocean. He also sent people to Sinai in order to check the gold and treasures kept by his ancestors there when their states were raided by the Hyksos.

1167 BC, Ramses IV opened a new road from Egypt to Arabia but this time a little shorter than the previous one.

Assyria

9th BC King Blazar II had attacked Arabia after a battle in Syria. He met an Arab tribe at the border of Egypt-Syria.

8th BC The Arabs tried to attack Samaria and coincidentally Samaria was a vassal city of Assyrian empire. King Sargon II was so angry and he largely attacked Arabia in 715 BC. The raid even reached the rural areas of Arabian peninsula at its edges.

Later, King Sennacherib (705-681 BC) attacked Arabia just after he raided Cyprus, Ashkelon, Sidon, Arwād and other city-states in Western Arabia to the South closer to Sinai.

King Esarhaddon (681-668 BC) engaged in wars with Egypt, Phoenicia, Ogal, and Arabia.  He died in Egypt while going there in person for the campaign to bring down rebellious Egypt into submission to Assyria.

King Ashurbanipal (668-605 BC) who later ruled as the King of Assyrian empire attacked Arabia because they sided with his enemy. He seized Barta' and Mo'ab. A great battle happened in between Euphrates and Persian Bay because the King of Babylon, Shamash'sum'ukin rebelled in 652 BC. The King of Babylon actually formed a powerful coalition with Nabubel Shumate, the King of Mesopotamia Sealand, the Elamites, the Chaldean tribes of the South, the kings of Guti, Amurru and Meluhha and Arab tribes from Arabia and that was how Arabia was also involved in the raid of Ashurbanipal.  

Babylon

Nebuchadnezar II (605-562 BC) of Kasdim dynasty had defeated Arabia and many were killed and brought back to Babylon as prisoners. There was rumors that he even reached Hejaz in his raid. It is also mentioned in Old Testament in the Prophecy of Jeremiah 49:28, "Of Kedar, and of the kingdoms of Hazor, which Nebuchadnezar of Babylon smote. Thus said the Lord, 'Arise you, go up against Kedar, and spoil the children of the East". Kedar is one of our ancestor. He is the second son of sage Ishmael a.s. The Kedarites suffered greatly at the hands of Nebuchadnezar II.

Persia

Shahpur I (240-270 CE) of Sasan dynasty had also attacked Arabia, Syria and Egypt. There were two Roman wars where Persians were involved in it. King Shahpur I also has good relation with Jewish communities in Babylon and Arabia although he was a Zoroastrian. Persian vassal states in Arabic speaking world was in Yemen, Eastern Arabian Peninsula and some parts of Iraq.

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!