Hubal
- "Hubal" was also the pseudonym of Henryk Dobrzanski, a Polish partisan from World War II
Hubal (Arabic: هبل) was a god worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia, notably at the Kaaba in Mecca.
[edit] Hubal in Mecca
Hubal most prominently appears at Mecca, where an image of his was worshipped at the Kaaba. According to Karen Armstrong, the sanctuary was dedicated to Hubal, who was worshipped as the greatest of the 360 idols the Kaaba contained, which probably represented the days of the year.[1] According to Julius Wellhausen Hubal was regarded as the son of al-Lāt and the brother of Wadd.[2]
Hisham Ibn Al-Kalbi's Book of Idols describes the image as shaped like a human, with the right hand broken off and replaced with a golden hand.[citation needed] According to Ibn Al-Kalbi, the image was made of red agate, whereas Al-Azraqi, an early Islamic commentator, described it as of "cornelian pearl". Al-Azraqi also relates 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.[citation needed] According to Al-Azraqi, a man coming back from a journey would shave his hair and then circumambulate the Kaaba before going to his family.
According to Ibn Al-Kalbi, the image was first set up by Khuzaymah ibn-Mudrikah ibn-al-Ya's' ibn-Mudar, but another tradition, record by Ibn Ishaq, holds that Amr ibn Luhayy, a leader of the Quraysh, put an image of Hubal into the Kaaba, where it was worshipped as one chief deities of the tribe.[3] The date for Amr is disputed, with dates as late as the end of the fourth century CE suggested, but what is quite sure is that the Quraysh became the protectors of the ancient holy place, supplanting the Khuza'a. There may be some foundation of truth in the story that Amr travelled in Syria and had brought back from there the cults of the goddesses ʻUzzāʼ and Manat, and had combined it with that of Hubal, the idol of the Khuza'a.[4] According to Al-Azraqi, the image was brought to Mecca "from the land of Hit in Mesopotamia". Philip K. Hitti, who relates the name 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.[5] Hubal may have been the combination of Hu, meaning "spirit" or "god", and the Maob god Baal meaning "master" or "lord". Outside South Arabia, Hubal's name appears just once, in a Nabataean inscription;[6] there hbl is mentioned along with the gods Dushara (ذو الشراة) and Manawatu — the latter, as Manat, was also popular in Mecca. On the basis of such slender evidence, it has been suggested that Hubal "may actually have been a Nabataean".[7]
According to Islamic legend, record by Ibn Al-Kalbi, Muhammad's grandfather Abdul Mutallib had vowed to sacrifice one of his ten children and consulted the arrows of Hubal to find out which child he should chose. The arrows pointed to his son Abd-Allah, the father of Muhammad. According to Tabari, Abdul Mutallib later also brought the infant Muhammad before the image.[8] When Muhammad conquered Mecca in 630, he smashed the statue of Hubal along with the other 360 images at the Kaaba, and re-dedicated the structure to Allah.[9]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Karen Armstrong (2000,2002). Islam: A Short History. pp. 11. ISBN 0-8129-6618-x.
- ^ Wellhausen, 1926, p. 717, quoted in translation by Hans Krause
- ^ Hafiz Ghulam Sarwar, Muhammad The Holy Prophet (1969).
- ^ Maxime Rodinson, 1961.
- ^ Hitti, History of the Arabs 1937, p. 96-101.
- ^ Corpus Inscriptiones Semit., vol. II: 198; Jaussen and Savignac, Mission Archéologique en Arabie, I (1907) p. 169f.
- ^ Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed, 1961, translated by Anne Carter, 1971, p 38-49
- ^ Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The History of the Prophets and Kings, 1:157.
- ^ Armstrong, p. 23
