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Until Muhammad ended polytheism in Arabia, a wide variety of gods were believed in. The chief idol at pagan Mecca was the moon god, named Hubal, had three daughters named al-Lat (simply "the goddess"), al-Uzza and Manat, who carried the shears of fate, and thus was has been read by some Westerners as a counterpart in Arabia of Atropos. Each daughter had a separate shrine near Mecca (Makkah), where the chief god Hubal (for the pagan Meccans al-ilah or "the God") had his shrine, the Kaaba. The most prominent shrine of al-'Uzza was at a place called Nakhlah near Qudayd, east of Mecca towards Taif (Hitti 1937). Uzza is one of the three goddesses allegedly inserted into, and then removed from, the Qur'an, according to Ibn Ishaq's account of the Satanic Verses (q.v.)
Cult of Uzza
It is not simple now to get glimpses of the deities of pre-Islamic Arabia. Al-Lat, according to recent study (source) of the complicated evidence, is believed to have been introduced into Arabia from Mesopotamia, and to have been the moon goddess of North Arabia. If this is the correct interpretation of her character, she would be the female counterpart of the moon deity of South Arabia, Almaqah, Wadd, 'Amm —or Sin as he was also called to the north, in Sumer, if the difference were only the oppositeness of gender. By further speculation, Mount Sinai— solely based on an etymology as a feminine form of Sin— would then have been one of the centers of the worship of this northern moon god or goddess (Finnegan 1952).
Origins of deities have to be suggested with caution, butinscriptions related to Uzza among the Nabataeans at Petra have been interpreted to associate Uzza with the planet Venus.
Other tribes of Medina were more prominent worshippers of the fatal goddess Manat, while the Quraish of Mecca,the tribe to which Muhammad belonged, paid more reverence to Allat and al-`Uzza. The Quraysh used to chant as they circumambulated the Ka'ba: "Al-Lat, and al-Uzza and Manat, the third, the other; indeed these are exalted (or lofty, ‘ula gharaniq); let us hope for their intercession." (F. E. Peters, The Hajj, pages 3-41). Ibn al-Kalbi states that before the prophet began to preach his own message he himself once offered a white sheep to al-`Uzza, as was his tribal custom.
"The Arabs had developed a number of subsidiary Ka'bas (tawaghit), so to say, at different places in the land, each with its presiding god or goddess. They used to visit those shrines at appointed times, circumambulate them and make sacrifices of animals there, besides performing other polytheistic rites. The most prominent of these shrines were those of Al-Lat at Ta'if, Al 'Uzza at Nakhlah and Manat near Qudayd. The origins of these idols are uncertain. Ibn al-Kalbi says that Al-Lat was "younger" ( 'ahdath) than Manat, while Al-'Uzza was "younger" than both al-Lat and Manat. But though Al-'Uzza was thus the youngest of the three; it was nonetheless the most important and the greatest ( 'azam) idol with the Quraysh who, along with Banu Kinanah ministered to it." (Muhammad Mohar Ali).
A Triple Goddess, including a youngest (Uzza) and a crone carrying the shears of fate, is a widespread primal deity at the oldest levels of religion.
References
Jack Finegan, The Archeology of World Religions, 1952, pages 482-485, 492
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