In this post I will be citing snippets from the fabulous work of epigrapher Ahmad Al-Jallad in respect to some of the pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions he and his colleagues have discovered, which prove quite devastating to the traditional Muslim narrative.

Ahmad Al-Jallad is a philologist, epigraphist, and historian of language. His work focuses on the languages and writing systems of pre-Islamic Arabia and the ancient Near East.

One of the interesting finds that Al-Jallad uncovered is an inscription to a deity called Ahad, who is invoked alongside the pagan goddess Allat!

Al-Jallad states:

1 Introduction

Under the lemma wḥd in the 2015 edition of my Safaitic lexicon,² I identified an invocation to a hitherto unknown deity, ḥd ‘One’. I left questions about how this deity, here seemingly referred to by the monotheistic epithet par excellence, ended up in an invocation beside Allāt, the ancient Arabian goddess. In this paper, I revisit this inscription to produce a new edition of the text and explore the circumstances that could have led to this curious example of shirk.³…

2 The inscription KRS 1131

This inscription was discovered in 1989 during the Basalt Desert Rescue Surveys, carried out by G.M.H. King in northern Jordan and remains, as far as one can know, in situ. It is published online in the OCIANA database without a philological commentary. Its author employed a thin instrument to carve the glyphs in the so-called fine script.⁴

Reading and translation

l Ꜥm[d] bn ḥd bn bgr bn sḫr bn śḥtr w ḥl ṣyr h-drmꜤdy w ḫrṣ hl-h ḥḍr f h ḥd w h lt slm w ġnmtl-ḏ dꜤy

‘By Ꜥmd son of Ḥd son of bgr son of sḫr son of sḥtr and he camped having returned to this place of water from a raid/having gone on a raid; and he kept watch for his family while camping near water so O ḥd and O Allāt may he be secure; and may he who would read (this writing) have spoil.’ (The ‘One’ God in a Safaitic Inscription [2021], pp. 37-38; emphasis mine)

Al-Jallad goes on to write:

The deity ʾḥd

Following the narrative, the author petitions two gods for security and the protection of those who read and invoke his text. The second deity, lt = /Allāt/, is the most frequently invoked deity in the Safaitic inscriptions.¹¹ She is called upon beside another god, a unique deity named ḥd, attested for the first, and as far as I know, only time in this text. The etymology is clear: one. While writers often invoke Allāt alongside other gods, especially Dusares, whom many scholars regard as her partner, it would be odd to take ḥd as an epithet of the chief Nabataean deity.¹² Dusares is invoked hundreds of times and there are no examples of him being referred to with an epithet. Moreover, there is no evidence from the Nabataean tradition that he was given such a title, or that oneness was a characteristic associated with him.

The ‘One’ is a known attribute of the Jewish deity, clearly reflected in the ShemaꜤ Deut. 6:4 ‘Hear, O Israel, YHWH is our lord, YHWH is “One”,’ and also Zechariah 14:9 ‘on that day, YHWH will be one and his name (is) “One”.’¹³ In Hebrew liturgical poetry of Late Antiquity, the most common literary form is the use of metonymy (kinnui), usually an allusion to scripture. In such a context, eḥad could be used as an epithet for God, and indeed an attestation of this is found in a Piyyut of ShimꜤon bar Megas.¹⁴ Quran 112, which Neuwirth convincingly argues is an engagement with the Jewish ShemaꜤ,¹⁵ recasts the declaration, naming Allāh as the ‘One’: qul huwa llāhu aḥad, which gave rise to the divine epithet: al-aḥadu ‘the One’.

Another explanation, however, of this divine name presents itself. In a forthcoming publication, M. Gorea edits a Palmyrene graffito from the Jordanian Ḥarrah that contains an invocation to a deity called mrn ḥd ‘our lord, (who is) one’, dated to 159 CE.¹⁶ This—she convincingly argues—is an Aramaic rendition of the Greek formula εἷς θεός ‘one God’, which was popular in the first centuries of the Common Era. While scholars in the past have sometimes labelled artefacts bearing this title as Jewish or Christian, Di Segni demonstrated that the title was more often employed in a pagan context.¹⁷ Meerson argues convincingly that εἷς θεός was originally an epithet of a pagan cult, appearing in the 2nd century CE.¹⁸ The unity of ‘god’ is attested at Palmyra, ἑνί, μόνῳ ἐλεήμον[ι] θεῷ ‘the one, only, merciful god’, and so, following the suggestion of Gorea, the present Palmyrene inscription may attest an Aramaic rendition of this Hellenistic divine epithet.¹⁹ At the same time, we cannot rule out Jewish influence in the present case.

So then, the connection between the Palmyrene text and our Safaitic inscription is undeniable but what exactly does this divine title reflect? A Hellenistic divine epithet rendered in Aramaic and Arabic, respectively, or the impact of Jewish monotheism on neighbouring pagan cults? I will consider both scenarios in the next section…

The fact that our author invokes ḥd beside Allāt prevents us from regarding this text as a monotheistic Jewish inscription. The polytheistic climate of the Ḥarrah allowed the petitioner to seek favour from any source, both local and outside deities. Many of the gods, and certainly the most common, belong to the familiar ancient Arabian stock, lt (Allāt), rḍw/y (roṣaw/y), yṯꜤ (yayṯeꜤ), lh (Allāh), etc., other gods originate among neighbouring peoples. Nabataean deities are popular, such as Dusares and ShayꜤhaqqawm BaꜤalsamīn, whose temple was located in the town of SeꜤīꜤ, was the primary god invoked for rain. While these deities came from beyond the Ḥarrah, they seem to have been fully assimilated into the local pantheon as evidenced by their popularity.²⁷ (Ibid., pp. 39-40; emphasis mine)

The foregoing shows that the term Ahad, which is used for Allah in Q. 112:1, does not in and of itself rule out the existence of other divine beings. It merely highlights the uniqueness of a particular deity over against the rest.

THE PAGAN ALLAH

Al-Jallad has also shown that the name Allah was used for a pagan deity:

A deity known simply by smyʾ is attested in two Nabataean inscriptions, and the Arabic equivalent ʾl- smʾ is found in two personal names from Darb al-Bakrah, NW Arabia.³⁶ It is possible that smyʾ / smʾ is an abbreviated form of an epithet like rabbu l- samāʾ ‘lord of heaven’. A similar divine title is attested in Ancient South Arabian, ḏ -s ’mwy, the patron god of the tribe of ʾmr.³⁷ While the deity is attested in a polytheistic context, the name appears to survive into the monotheistic period, perhaps suggesting that it was reappropriated as an epithet of the monotheistic deity or even the name of the deity itself, similar to the name allāh .³⁸

³⁸ The deity ḏ-s’mwy is marginally attested in the monotheistic period on day-to-day documents in personal names. Stein, “Ḏū-Samāwī”, has taken this as evidence for the marginal survival of the pagan cults into the monotheistic period. While possible, a number of other interpretive possibilities are available. Personal names with pagan elements are found in Christian contexts, suggesting a disconnect between the literal meaning of a name and the confession of its bearer. Former pagan deities can be reconfigured as angelic figures or minor supernatural beings within a monotheistic framework; see the important ideas of P. Crone, “Qur’ānic Pagans”. As for the re-appropriation of a former pagan divine name, we can compare the situation to the history of the term allāh, Nabataean ʾlh. While Allāh first appears in a pagan Nabataean context, and occasionally in the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions, see Al-Jallad and Jaworska, Safaitic Dictionary, p. 43, it becomes the name of the monotheistic deity by the 6^th CE in West Arabia. (The pre-Islamic basmala: Reflections on its first epigraphic attestation and its original significance, [2020], p. 9; emphasis mine)

THE PRE-ISLAMIC RISE OF ARABIAN MONOTHEISM

In regards to the prominence of monotheism in Arabia before Islam’s rise, Al-Jallad states:

By the sixth century CE, the pagan gods had completely disappeared from the inscriptions of North Arabia. Those in the Arabic script, spanning from Nagrān in the south to near Aleppo in the north attest ONLY ONE DEITY…⁵⁷ The name is found rendered into Sabaic as ʾlh-n /ʾilāh-ān/ ‘the god’ in Sabaic inscriptions from the area of Nagrān and further to the north, perhaps already reflecting a sensitivity to the local name of the monotheistic god.⁵⁸

In contrast to South Arabia, the North Arabian monotheistic traditions of the 5^th and 6^th CE invoked al-ʾilāh / allāh. While al-ʾilāh is attested in clear Christian contexts, allāh is rarer and found in confessionally ambiguous contexts.⁵⁹ It is impossible at this moment to decide whether the distinction between the two was simply regional or whether it betokened a confessional split. What is clear, however, is that “Raḥmān” was not used in pre-Islamic times in North Arabia. (The pre-Islamic basmala: Reflections on its first epigraphic attestation and its original significance, p. 14; emphasis mine)

And:

In addition to style, the ASA [Ancient Southern Arabian] inscriptions contain many parallels in content. By the fourth century CE, references to the pagan gods disappear almost entirely from the inscriptions, ushering in what scholars have termed the ‘monotheistic period’. In their place, a new, single god is venerated, Rhmnn, literally ‘the merciful’, which finds a direct Arabic equivalent in al-rahmān, who is equated with All a ̄ h in the Qur’an (Q. 17:110). Other literary phrases common to monotheistic South Arabian inscriptions, specifically the Jewish ones, and the Qur’an are found. An epithet of Rhmnn, mr ʾs’myn w-ʾrdn ‘lord of the heavens and the earth’, has a transparent Qur’anic equivalent: rabbu s-samā wāti wa-l-ʾardi ‘idem’. In another Jewish inscription, the following is attested: [b]rk w tbrk sm rh mnn ‘may the name of Rhmnn bless and be blessed’, which is essentially equivalent to Q. 55:78 tabāraka smu rabbika ‘blessed is the name of your lord’. While religious terms such as ‘prayer’ slt =Qur’an slwh, vowelled salāh, and ‘aid/assistance’ zkt = Qur’an zkwh, vowelled zakāh, are also attested in Jewish South Arabian inscriptions, their spellings in the Qur’an preclude a South Arabian origin (see Jeffery 2007).

A remarkable graffito recently published in the minuscule South Arabian script (Al-Hajj and Faqʿas 2018) attests a late pre-Islamic variant of the Basmala and a prayer to God in using vocabulary and style strikingly similar to the Qur’an, and later Islamic phraseology, but not identical to it.

bsmlh rhmn rhmn rb smwt 

‘In the name of Allah, Rahman; Rahman lord of the heavens’

rzq-n m-d  ̣l-k w-ʾt r-n mh-h śkmt ʾymn

‘Bless us from your favor and grant us the best of it: the gift of faith. (The Linguistic Landscape of pre-Islamic Arabia — Context for the Qur’an [2020], pp. 122-123; emphasis mine)

Hence, the claim that it was Islam that eradicated the predominance of Arabian polytheism is refuted by the epigraphic data, which shows that monotheism was already well established throughout Arabia from the end of the 5^th century AD.

It is also quite interesting to see how two of the pagan gods worshiped by the Arabs, namely Rahman and Allah, end up becoming one and the self-same deity even before the time of Muhammad.  

Al-Jallad further mentions inscriptions which refer to Allah, al-Uzza and Manat, the three goddesses that are specifically named within the Quran itself:

Several of the deities mentioned in the Qur’an are encountered in the inscriptions. The three goddess mentioned in Q. 53:19–20, allāt, al-ʿuzzā, and manāt, were worshipped in Nabataea, and with varying degrees of popularity in north-west Arabia. Allat was the most popular deity in North Arabia, invoked in almost all of the epigraphic corpora, and was probably the most ancient; she is found in theophoric names dating back to the early first millennium BCE. Al-ʿUzza is also encountered in the inscriptions, but her worship was more restricted. She is limited to theophoric names in the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions, but was especially popular among the Nabataeans (Healey 2001: 114 ff.), and is found in theophoric names at Dadan with the hn article, that is, hn–ʿzy.

After a meticulous study of the distribution of Lt and ʾlʿzy/ʾ in the Nabataean inscriptions, Healey suggests that the latter was an epithet of Alla ̄t, meaning ‘the mightiest’ (Healey 2001: 114). There is also some evidence to suggest that Lt was a mother goddess, if Healey’s interpretation of the inscription on an altar of Lt (CIS II, 185) as ʾm ʾlhy dy m ʾrn ʾrbʾl ‘the mother of the gods of our lord, Rabbel’ is correct (Healey 2001: 109–10). In Safaitic, Alla ̄t was regarded as the daughter of Rdw/y, defied ‘satisfaction’ (AWS 283, 291). (Ibid., p. 124)

PRE-ISLAMIC BASMALA

Just as remarkable is the discovery of the Basmala formula found in a pre-Islamic inscription:

Part I: The inscription, its reading and interpretation 1.1

The original edition

The two-line graffito was carved vertically on a side of a cliff near a small cave. Unlike most rock inscriptions, the text is written in the minuscule variant of the South Arabian script, the hand typically reserved for writing day-to-day documents on sticks.⁵ The ed.pro. contains an in- depth discussion of the inscription’s paleography; it suffices to say that the letter shapes of the text date to the very latest stage of South Arabian documentation, sometime after the 5^th CE.⁶ We will return to the matter of its date following a discussion of its contents, which ultimately must bear on this question.

The editio princeps ( ed. pro. ) reads the text as follows and provides two interpretations.⁷

Line 1: bsmlh | rḥmn | rḥmn | rb | s’mwt

Line 2: r(z)(q)n | mf ḍlk | wʾṯrn | mḫh | s’kmt ʾymn (The pre-Islamic basmala: Reflections on its first epigraphic attestation and its original significance, [2020], pp. 1-2)

Al-Jallad indicates that this inscription most definitely comes from a period before the rise and spread of Islam:

The script combined with its language supports a date towards the very end of South Arabian documentation. Its contents, rather distinct from the standardized Arabic phraseology of the Islamic period, speak to a late pre-Islamic or perhaps even a paleo-Islamic dating, that is late 6^th or early 7^th CE.⁵² At the same time, these irregularities speak against a mid- or late 7^th CE date as the text deviates from the heavily standardize pietistic language of this period.

1.5 Genre and confessional background

The contents, as suggested above, most likely reflect a local monotheistic tradition rather than strictly Jewish or Christian background. The invocations are clearly inspired by the Psalter but have been reworked and paraphrased in the local vernacular. The invocational style is reminiscent of Islamic-period duʿāʾ literature, as found in the Hadith material quoted above, and may be an antecedent of it (Ibid., p. 12; emphasis mine)

Al-Jallad even thinks that the Quran’s tripartite Basmala formula may be a direct polemic against the Christianity Trinity:

The earliest attestation of the tripartate Arabic basmala occurs in the Quran, where it takes the form bismi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm. Traditional exegetes understand the final two components as adjectives explaining the merciful qualities of the deity.⁵⁴ Jomier, however, problematizes the understanding of ar-raḥmān as an adjectival divine epithet in the Quran.⁵⁵ Through a close study of the text, he suggests that al-Raḥmān remained a proper name. Indeed, this was the name of the deity of Maslamah, the Yamamite prophet and rival of Mohammed.⁵⁶ This understanding is supported by the broader Arabian context, where raḥmānān – which is rendered ar-raḥmān in Arabic – was the name of the monotheistic deity of ancient Ḥimyar. With this in mind, we may ask what light the bipartate basmalah attested here may shed on the background and original sense of the invocation.

Putting aside later Islamic-period traditions and approaching the present text from what came before it, the invocation of lh and rḥmn together seems to have had another significance. “The Raḥmān” was much more than an epithet – it was the proper name of Ḥimyar’s deity, and was not used in North Arabia. Gajda brings into relief this distinction, even in the monotheistic period, in her discussion of CIH 543:

[b]rk w-tbrk s¹m Rḥmnn ḏ -b-s¹myn w-Ys³ rʾl w – ʾlh -hmw Rb-Yhd ḏ – hrdʾ ʿbd -hmwS²hrm w- ʾm -hw Bdm w-hs²kt-hw S²ms¹m w- ʾwld -hmy. . . .

‘Blessed and praised be the name of Raḥmānān who is in Heaven and Israel (Yisrāʾīl) and their God, Lord of Jews (Rb -Yhd) who helped Shahrum, his mother Buddum, his wife Shamsum and their children. . . . ’ (Ibid., p. 13; emphasis mine)

⁵⁷ This spelling is found, for example, in the Christian Arabic inscriptions of Ḥimà; see Robin et al. “Ḥimà”; the Zebed inscription; the Christian Arabic inscription of Dūmat al-Jandal; see Nehmé, “Dumah”; and in the Yazīd inscription; see Shdeifat et al. “Yazīd”. The spelling with two lām ’s is attested in an unpublished inscription from the Higāz – known informally as the ʿAbd-Shams inscription by its author’s name, in the invocation bismika llāhumma, which is known from traditional Islamic sources as well as an alternative opening formula used by the Quraish; see Nöldeke, “the Basmala”. The spelling ylh is attested once in an unpublished pre-Islamic Arabic-script inscription from the Tabūk area in the phrase: lʾ ʾwṣ km b-br ylh ‘I indeed urge you to obey God’. The spelling likely reflects the phonetic writing of the pronunciation bi-birri illāh, where the hiatus between both i vowels was rendered with y. The text is monotheistic but it is impossible to say more. On the etymological relationship between al-ʾilāh and allāh, see Testen, “Definiteness”. (Ibid., p. 14)

Finally:

The Islamic innovation is therefore the addition of the epithet raḥīm ‘merciful’ to the innovation, producing, In the name of Allāh, (who is) the Raḥmān, the merciful. The adjective raḥīm therefore applies to both divine names, which are in apposition.⁶² The addition of the third element may have been motivated by, and perhaps even regarded as a response to, Christian invocations of the trinity. Such invocations would have been widely known as they are displayed on public royal inscriptions. The tripartate form may have been a response to South Arabian: b s¹m Rḥmnn w-bn-hw krs³ts³ ġ lbn w-mnfs qds ‘In the name of the Raḥmān, his son Christ, the victorious, and the Holy Ghost’ or b- ḫ ylw-r dʾ w -rḥmt Rḥmnn w-Ms¹ ḥ -hw w-Rḥ qds¹ ‘by the power, aid, and mercy of the Raḥmān,his Messiah, and the Holy Ghost’. Over time, this cultural context was forgotten and “the Ra ḥmān” was reinterpreted as an adjective, giving rise to the common Islamic-period interpretation of the invocation. (Ibid., p. 16; emphasis mine)

FURTHER READING

“ALLAH ONE OF”: REVISITING THE ISSUE OF AHAD

Ahad: Monotheism vs. Eloquence of the Quran

As-Samad: The Quran’s Teaching on Islamic Monotheism

Rahmanan (RHMNN) – An Ancient South Arabian Moon God?  

Ar-Rahman of the Quran: A Pagan Deity or the God of the Bible?

 Did the Meccans Believe in Allah as the Most High?

Did the Meccan Polytheist Believe That Allah Was The Supreme Being?

Worshiping the Same or a Different God? 

Is the Quran An Implicit Endorsement and Continuation of Arab Paganism?

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