Note 348 — HISTORY OF GHARIB AND HIS BROTHER AJIB.[312]

Sale (sect. 1.) tells us all that was then known of these three which with Yá’úk and Nasr and the three “daughters of God,” Goddesses or Energies (the Hindu Saktis) Allát, Al-Uzzá and Manát mentioned in the Koran were the chiefs of the pre-Islamitic Pantheon. I cannot but suspect that all will be connected with old Babylonian worship. Al-Baydáwi (on Kor. lxxi. 22) says of Wadd, Suwá’a, Yaghus, Ya’úk and Nasr that they were names of pious men between Adam and Noah, afterwards deified: Yaghús was the giant idol of the Mazhaj tribe at Akamah of Al-Yaman and afterwards at Najrán Al-Uzzá was widely worshipped: her idol (of the tree Semurat) belonging to Ghatafán was destroyed after the Prophet’s order by Khálid bin Walíd. Allát or Al-Lát is written by Pocock (spec. 110) “Ilahat” i.e. deities in general. But Herodotus evidently refers to one god when he makes the Arabs worship Dionysus as Ὀροτὰλ and Urania as Ἀλιλάτ and the “tashdid” in Allát would, to a Greek ear, introduce another syllable (Alilat). This was the goddess of the Kuraysh and Thakíf whose temple at Táif was circuited like the Ka’abah before Mohammed destroyed it.