Wolfman

It is hard to see how this tradition poses "problems" for Muslims. In fact, this tradition clearly refutes the missionaries' claim that Allah and Hubal were identical. Furthermore, Abu Sufyan, the chieftain of the Quraysh, became a Muslim in 8 AH just a few days before the liberation of Makkah, after a personal council with the Prophet.[15] He swallowed his pride and admitted that:

By God, I thought that had there been any God with God, he would have continued to help me.[16]

In other words, Hubal and al-‘Uzza which Abu Sufyan had proclaimed as gods neither assisted nor helped him to defeat the Muslims. He then accepted Allah as the one, supreme God beside whom there exists no other god. Furthermore, he was also personally involved in the smashing of the idol of Allat, one of the so called daughters of Allah.[17] It must also be added that if the idol of Hubal which occupied the Ka‘bah in Makkah represented the image of Allah, then why did Muhammad order it to be destroyed? He could easily have left the statue as it was and justified it as the image of Allah, thus making it far easier for those transitioning from polytheism to monotheism. History records this never happened, rather Muhammad ordered all the idols destroyed. It is not difficult to see why this is the case if one pays attention to the Islamic sources, especially those which inform us directly about the life and times of Muhammad. Consider the following. The most supreme delight in the afterlife is the ability to see Allah. Anticipating this humbling and blissful moment is a source of immense joy and happiness for all the believers.[18] We find narrated in the Sahih of al-Bukhari the following report:

On the authority of Abu Huraira: The people said, "O Allah's Apostle! Shall we see our Lord on the Day of Resurrection?" The Prophet said, "Do you have any difficulty in seeing the moon on a full moon night?" They said, "No, O Allah's Apostle." He said, "Do you have any difficulty in seeing the sun when there are no clouds?" They said, "No, O Allah's Apostle." He said, "So you will see Him, like that. Allah will gather all the people on the Day of Resurrection, and say, 'Whoever worshipped something (in the world) should follow (that thing),' so, whoever worshipped the sun will follow the sun, and whoever worshiped the moon will follow the moon, and whoever used to worship certain (other false) deities, he will follow those deities...

The importance of Prophet Muhammad's exposition cannot be underestimated. He is describing the single most pleasurable moment of the people of Paradise. Equally though we are reminded of the fate of those who worshipped other than God alone. It is amply clear the idol Hubal and those who worshipped him along with other false deities and their followers, are clearly distinguished from Allah and the worshippers of Allah – on this juncture Islamic tradition is very clear.[19]

In fact, a number of scholars have already noted that Hubal and Allah can't be one and the same entity. For example, over 100 years ago, Margoliouth had casted doubts on Wellhausen's identification of Hubal with Allah and dismissed it as a "hypothesis". He says:

Between Hubal, the god whose image was inside the Ka‘bah, and Allah ("the God"), of whom much will be heard, there was perhaps some connection; yet the identification of the two suggested by Wellhausen is not yet more than an hypothesis.[20]

Patricia Crone made an argument concerning Wellhausen's suggestion that Allah might simply be another name for Hubal. Commenting on the Islamic tradition she says:

One would have to fall back on the view that Allah might simply be another name for Hubal, as Wellhausen suggested; just as the Israelites knew Yahwe as Elohim, so the Arabs knew Hubal as Allah, meaning "God". It would follow that the guardians of Hubal and Allah were identical; and since Quraysh were not guardians of Hubal, they would not be guardians of Allah, either... When ‘Abd al-Mutallib is described as having prayed to Allah while consulting Hubal's arrow, it is simply that the sources baulk at depicting the Prophet's grandfather as a genuine pagan, not that Allah and Hubal were alternative names of the same god. If Hubal and Allah had been one and the same deity, Hubal ought to have survived as an epithet of Allah, which he did not. And moreover there would not have been traditions in which people are asked to renounce the one for the other.[21]

Similarly, while discussing Hubal and Allah in the context of the Battle of Uhud, Hayward R. Alker points out that they both can't be one and the same.

This seems, however, unlikely, especially as, at the battle of Uhud, in the course of the warfare between Quraysh of Mecca and Muslims of Medina, the clash between the Meccans' god Hubal and the Muslims' Allah is stressed.[22]

F. E. Peters makes a clear distinction between Hubal and Allah on the basis that the former was a newcomer and the Quraysh adopted Hubal to further their political alliance with the surrounding tribe of Kinana.

Or, to put the question more directly, was Hubal rather than Allah, "Lord of the Ka‘ba"? Probably not, else the Qur'an, which makes no mention of Hubal, would certainly have mentioned the contention. Hubal was, by the Arabs' own tradition, a newcomer to both Mecca and Ka‘ba, an outsider introduced by the ambitious ‘Amr ibn Luhayy, and the tribal token around which the Quraysh later attempted to construct a federation with the surrounding Kinana, whose chief deity Hubal was. Hubal was introduced into the Ka‘ba but he never supplanted the god Allah, whose House it continued to be.[23]

Similar conclusions have been reached by von Grunebaum.

It seems quite a defensible suggestion that even before Muhammad the Ka‘ba was first and foremost the holy place of Allah and not that of the Hubal deriving from the Nabataeans and 359 other members of the astrological syncretic pantheon assembled there.[24]

What now becomes the clutching of straws for the missionaries is the tenuous claim that ‘Abd al-Muttalib's praying to Allah whilst standing next to the statue of Hubal[25] shows that "Allah to whom Muhammad's grandfather vowed and worshiped was none other than Hubal". As to how standing next to the statue of Hubal and praying to Allah is equivalent to Hubal actually being Allah is a great mystery. By this "logic", a Christian standing next to the cross and praying to the Trinitarian deity makes him a cross-worshipper. Moreover, the text in English and Arabic clearly distinguishes and differentiates between Hubal and Allah. The Qur'an acknowledges that the Makkans were aware of Allah as one true God;[26] yet they worshipped deities other than Him who will act as intercessors.

They serve, besides Allah, things that hurt them not nor profit them, and they say: "These are our intercessors with Allah." [Qur'an 10:18]

IS HUBAL = HA-BAAL? AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL ENQUIRY

The missionary Nehls says:

Interesting is the name HUBAL (in Arabic and Hebrew script the vowels were not noted). This shows a very suspicious connection to the Hebrew HABAAL (= the Baal). As we all know this was an idol mentioned in the Bible (Num. 25:3, Hosea 9:10, Deut. 4:3, Josh. 22:17 and Ps. 106:28-29).

In fact, such an argument, albeit in a more sophisticated way was also made by Sergio Noja.[27] Noja hypothesis can be summarized like this. Hubal consists of hbl (ھُبَل). The h- or hn- article in Ancient North Arabian was the forerunner of the al- of Arabic. As for bl, it was modified with time from b‘l (بَعْل). With the loss of ‘ayn in the middle of b and l, b‘l became bl. Furthermore, since ha-b‘l means "the lord", or "the god" (Ba‘al was an ancient Canaanite deity) and in classical Arabic it can be written as al-b‘l which would still mean the same thing. Hubal would, therefore, be the ancient correspondent of Allah.

Noja's argument, seductive as it appears, has some serious problems. The inscriptions in the Arabian peninsula can be classified into two groups according to the form of definite article used: h- or hn- on the one hand and on the other ’l-, the precursor of classical Arabic al-.[28] Chronologically speaking, the latter group is regarded as late, since its epigraphic evidence dates only from late 1st century BCE onwards and have been found in central, north and eastern Arabia, Syria and the Negev region. The former group, on the other hand, is evidenced from the middle of the 1st century BCE.

However, the al- group appears to be more ancient as Herodotus stated that the Arabs worshipped a goddess name Alilat, Al-ilat (or Allat, "the goddess").[29] This tells us that this form of Arabic definite article was used as early as the 5th century BCE. However, this does not give us any idea about the dialect in which such an article was used.[30] The idea that the h- or hn- article found in Ancient North Arabian is the ancestor of Arabic ’l- has been suggested by scholars over a long period.[31] This view has come under criticism due to the lack of epigraphic evidence for the transformation of h- or hn- to Arabic ’l-.[32] Theoretically, it can be argued that it could have happened in a number of ways, the problem always come back to the lack of epigraphic evidence for the actual process.[33] Noja assumed a similar transformation from the Ancient North Arabian h- to Arabic ’l-.[34] Not surprisingly, he did not furnish any proof either.

Moreover, for the name b‘l to become bl with the loss of ‘ayn, it would have to have been transmitted through a language such as Akkadian or Punic in which the ‘ayn had disappeared. This would give in Akkadian Bel and in Punic Bol. Both forms were present at Palmyra, but Palmyrene does not use the Ancient North Arabian definite article h- or hn-. Since the word b‘l, with the ‘ayn, exists in Arabic as a common noun, and as the name of a pre-Islamic idol, it would be very difficult to argue that Arabic had received the word or name by this route, let alone why it had been given an Ancient North Arabian definite article.

The Christian missionaries have insisted that according to Islamic sources Hubal was brought from Moab to Arabia. Moab is situated on the east side of the Dead Sea, which is now a part of Jordan. What does the archaeology from this region tells us about Hubal and Ba‘alshamin which originated from Ba‘al? To examine this, let us turn our attention to the Nabataean inscriptions in Arabia, Jordan and Syria where the deities Hubal and Ba‘alshamin are mentioned.



Figure 1: Nabataeans and their trade routes.[35]

The god Hubal, whose name is known from early Arabian sources, was also known apparently to the Nabataeans. Hubal in a Nabataean inscription dated to c. 1 BCE / CE from Mada'in Salih (Hijr or Hegra, Figure 1), north-west of Madinah, appears as hblw. The final -w is typical of Nabataean divine and personal names. The inscription is funerary in character and Hubal's name appears with Dushara and Manōtu (i.e., Manat). The inscription reads:

... p’yty ‘mh ldwšr’ whblw wamnwtw šmdym 5 ...

... [he] shall be liable to Dushara and Hubalu and Manotu in the sum of 5 shamads ...[36]

Despite Hawting's misgivings,[37] there is no doubt about this reading.[38] Another possible occurrence of the name Hubal is in the Nabataean inscription (dated 48 CE) from Pozzuoli near Naples.[39] The reading of J. T. Milik was reported by Starcky, although some doubt remains.[40] The name appears as bnhbl, without the final -w and therefore an exact correspondent of the Arabic form. It was interpreted by Starcky as "son of Hubal".[41] But it can also be interpreted as "Hubal has fashioned".[42] Interestingly, bnhbl also appears in a "Thamudic" inscription from Northern Arabia.[43] Milik and Starcky reported that the name Hubal also appears in a personal name, brhbl, "Son of Hubal", in a dedicatory text dated to 25 BCE.[44] The authors Milik and Starcky regarded it as an Aramaic version of the name found in the Pozzuoli inscription. Based on the epigraphic evidence, Healey says that the cult of Hubal was restricted in Nabataean inscriptions to Hegra. Therefore, Hubal can be considered as a local god and his cult did not spread at all among the Nabataean élite, despite its Arabian origins.[45]

Ba‘alshamin (or Baalshamin, as written in popular literature), b‘lšmn, was a Syrian deity who was incorporated into the Nabataean pantheon. Ba‘alshamin has a long history going back to the second millennium BCE. His origin lies in the great storm and fertility god Ba‘lu of the Ugaritic texts.[46] His specific name appears to be a title of the storm god Hadad whose worship was widespread in Syria and Mesopotamia. He was popular in Palmyra, Hatra and the Edessa region, where he was identified with the local deity Maralahe.[47] Ba‘alshamin was worshipped over a wide area and his popularity gradually spread south.[48] He had a late 1st century BCE temple dedicated to him at Si‘ in Syria. Littmann published a major inscription from Si‘ dedicated to Ba‘alshamin.

In the pious remembrance of Maleikat, the son of Ausū, the son of Mo‘aierū who built for Ba‘al Samīn the inner temple and the outer temple and this theatron and [the (or these watch towers],... and departed from (?) life in peace![49]

From Salkhad in Syria, we have an altar from 72 / 73 CE, dedicated to Ba‘alshamin, god of mtnw. The inscription reads:

This is the cult-stone which was made by ‘Ubaid, the son of ’Utaifik (?) for Ba‘al-Shamīn, the god of Matan (?), in the year 33 of Malik the king, the king of the Nabataeans.[50]

The Nabataean inscription from Bosra dated to the 1st century CE is again dedicated "to Ba‘alshamin, the god of Shu‘aydu" (lb‘lšmn ’lh š‘ydw).[51] Moving further down south in Wadi Musa, near Petra in Jordan, an inscription from the reign of Aretas IV is dedicated lb‘lšmn ’lh mnkw, "to Ba‘alshamin, god of mnkw".[52]