Arabia’s Religious Geography in Ancient Times
This is according to Mohammad Ali Khavaninzadeh, a Kharazmi University scholar, addressing a forum on religions in ancient Arabia. Following are excerpts from his remarks at the forum:
Identifying the religious geography of Arabia before the advent of Islam has special importance. There are pieces of evidence about this period, including inscriptions, coins and papyrus scrolls.
If we have a quick glance at these items, we can find signs, for example on a coin, that reveal it belongs to Arabia in a certain period and that can help us better understand the developments in that period.
Or there are papyrus scrolls from which we can extract historical information.
Then there are Quran manuscripts that can help us in the field of Islamic studies and reveal changes in the scribing of the verses, Quran readings, etc.
Another type of data-x-items that we pay attention to is inscriptions, which are data-x-items containing a text. Some inscriptions were written by the ruling class and feature major political events of the time. They reveal the views and outlook of the ruling class regarding the developments of time and are important documents.
As for the languages and scripts in Arabia, there were two language groups:
1- The language spoken in southern Arabia, which is called Old Arabian language.
2- The language spoken in northern Arabia, which is divided into Northern Old Arabian and Old Arabic languages.
The important point is that the languages spoken in northern Arabia were mostly written with the script of southern Old Arabian, which shows a kind of cultural domination. It also shows a cultural bond between the south and the north.
There were four kingdoms in the Arabian Peninsula: Saba, Qutban, Hadhramaut and Muin.
In the Himyarite Kingdom, numerous gods are mentioned in inscriptions. After their rule until about the year 400, gods are named in inscriptions. Usually there was a senior god in each kingdom and people would visit that god. But in these years we can see a steep reduction in the number of gods and in about half of inscriptions there is no mention of gods. This shows polytheism was in decline and religious developments were underway in that period.
Another important point is that from the year 300, the kings wrote no inscriptions. One justification is that there were differences among the upper classes due to a crisis in polytheism.
In the year 380, we see an inclination toward monotheism and support for Judaism in inscriptions. This shows that Arabia, especially the Himyar had contacts with the currents and developments around them.
In about the year 380 that we see monotheism in inscriptions until the year 420 there is no specific name for God and mostly descriptions like lord of heaven, owner of heaven and earth, and lord of Jews are used. These are descriptions used for the One God and this shows inclination toward Judaism.
