Did you know the final ARABIAN GODDESS WAS BLACK?
Read the finale:
"Destruction of al-‘Uzza" (Part 3/3)
Check it out!
Two decades after passing of the Lakhmid king, Muhammad undertook national conquest of Arabia, this time not in the name of Christianity, but Islam. This new world did not take kindly to goddesses.
After its desecration by Christian iconoclast...
..Zuhayr b. Janab al-Kalbi, destruction of al-‘Uzza’s shrine at Nakhlah came at hands of Khalid b. al-Walid; ‘Ali b. Abi Talib smashed idol of Manat at Qudayn, near the Red Sea & al-Mughirah b. Shu‘bah claimed Allat’s shrine in Ta’if
But it is the destruction of al-‘Uzza which is taken to be emblematic of the rupture between paganism and Islam. Ibn al-Kalbi states,
The ancient shrine of al-‘Uzza at Nakhlah was utterly different than its opulent golden counterpart in al-Hirah.
For it was contained within the palm tree grove of Nakhlah, staying true to the worship of the mother goddess and queen of heaven, belonging to the same tradition of the Nabataean Sulaymids, Canaanite Asherah groves outside Jerusalem, and Inanna’s Huluppu Tree of ancient Sumeria.
Although this account is clearly not without its fantastic elements, the demolition of three shrines, echoes the worship of the Arabian triple deity: Allat, al-‘Uzza and Manat. Nakhlah may have been the most ancient shrine among many.
Like Syriac accounts of al-‘Uzza at al-Hira, Ibn al-Kalbi’s account claims that al-‘Uzza at Nakhlah was a demon/ devil. Before Khalid dealt her the final blow she is said to have manifested as an “Abyssinian woman with disheveled hair…gnashing and grating her teeth.”
The racism/ misogyny behind this image is obvious, and its aim is to depict the final hour of pagan female power in Arabia in the most negative light: wild, black & evil.
However, behind “disheveled hair” is likely a demonization of coiled, African hair likening the woman to the tree. This hypothesis finds support in other reports suggesting at the center of the grove were fennel or acacia trees, whose sprouting leaves resemble hair.
More broadly, there is an abundance of scholarship on the Afroasiatic origins of Abrahamic religions and classical civilization. (eg) The connection between “sexual insult and female militancy” with respect to African women.
So, could al-‘Uzza’s human representative been an Ethiopian priestess, consorting with the priest Dubayyah al-Sulami? If so, it means that the manifestation of Arabia’s very last goddess—al-‘Uzza of Nakhlah—was black!
Thus was extinguished the divine female in Arabia... or was it??
Stay tuned for my upcoming book on female power in late antique Arabia. Shukran!
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