Superstition
and Credulity
They believed in the existence of
jinns, demons and fairies. They also believed that fairies could fall in love
with human males, and jinn could form physical contacts with human females.
Although they considered jinn as invisible creature, they believed that the
union of the material and immaterial could bear babies. The Arabs believed that
Jurhum was born as a result of union between a human and an angel. This was
their belief also about the Queen Bilqis of Saba (Queen of Sheba). About Umar
bin Yarbu they thought that he was born with the union of a human and a fairy.
The she-camel bearing five calves
and the fifth being a male, was called Bahirah and they left it free by piercing
its ears. She was at liberty to go and graze anywhere and nobody objected to
it. In case any sheep bore a male, it was offered to the idols; and if it
happened to be female, they kept it for themselves. In case of a male and
female, they held back from sacrificing them and called them Wasilah. The male
camel that had fathered ten calves was held in great honor. They neither loaded
it nor made it a mount and left it free like a bull. It was called Hâm.
They used to keep three arrows
before the idols or at the threshold of the temples. They wrote La (no) on one
arrow and Na'm (yes) on another. The third would be blank. In case of any
problem they would take out one arrow from the quiver. If the arrow with La
written on it came out, they dropped the plan of doing what they wanted, and if
the arrow showing Na'm was picked, they thought themselves permitted to do
whatever they had planned. If the blank arrow came out, they continued the
exercise until the arrow with either La or Na'm came out. While setting out on
a journey they would tie a knot on a thin branch of a certain type of tree
called Ratm. On coming back they would notice whether the knot was intact or
untied. If they found the knot untied, they believed that their wives must have
committed adultery while they were away. At the death of a person, his she- camel
was fastened to his grave with her eyes closed until she died there or the head
of the she-camel was pulled towards her breast and tied to it, and they would
left her until she died. It was done in accordance with the belief that the
dead person, when raised from his grave, would find the she-camel and have it
as his mount. They believed that if a person went to a settlement and was
afraid of an epidemic there, he would be saved if he cried loudly like an ass
standing at the gate of the settlement. When the number of camels in one's
possession would reach more than one thousand, he would take out both the eyes
of the bull among them to save all the other camels from calamity. When a camel
would develop mange, the healthy one, instead of the sick, was branded with the
belief that the sick one would restore its health. The famous poet Nâbighah
says in his couplet:
"You left the stranger and
loaded his burden upon me, as they leave the camel suffering from mange and
brand the healthy camel grazing peacefully instead."
Similarly, they would beat the ox if
a cow refused to drink water. They believed that the ox was possessed by a jinn
who would stop the cows from drinking water. They believed that if the killer
of someone went unpunished, a bird named Hamah would come out of the skull of
the dead person and would go on crying: "Give me water, give me
water," until the crime was avenged. They believed that some person had a
snake in his stomach and when it was hungry it would tear and eat away the
flesh from the ribs of the person. They had a belief that if the children of a
woman kept dying, they could be saved from dying if the woman concerned
trampled the dead body of a noble and wealthy person with her feet. They also
believed that the jinn feared rabbits and so they suspended rabbit bones from
the neck of their children to keep them safe from the ill effect of the jinn.
Killing
of Daughters
The custom of killing their
daughters was rampant among the Banu Tamim and the Quraish. They took pride in
killing their daughters and it was for them a status symbol. This heartlessness
reached such a height in some tribes that when the daughter became five or six
years old and start uttering sweet words, the stone-hearted father would take
her in beautiful garments to a place outside his settlement where he had
already dug a deep ditch. He would then make his daughter stand beside the
ditch and then push her into the ditch stoning her to death while she called for
her father's help. No screaming and crying could melt his heart and he would
return after filling the ditch. They took pride in burying their daughters
alive. Qais bin Asim (رَضِيَ ٱللَّٰهُ عَنْهُ),
a man from Banu Tamim, buried his ten daughters alive in this manner. Although
no tribe of Arabia was free from this inhuman custom, some tribes did it more
than others.
Gambling
The Arabs were very fond of gambling
too. They gambled with arrows which had no feathers. They were ten in number,
and their names in order were: (1) Ghadh, (2) Tawam, (3) Raqib, (4) Nâfis, (5)
Hals, (6) Mabal, (7) Mualla, (8) Fasih, (9) Manih and (10) Waghd. Each of them
had its own share, for instance, Ghadh had one, Tawâm had two, and Raqib had
three, and it kept increasing in this way till Mualla had seven shares, while
the last three arrows had no share. Ten wealthy persons would buy fat goats and
divide them into twenty-eight shares. The arrows would be handed to a
designated person who would take out and give each person an arrow one by one,
and each person got his share according to their arrow's share. They played
such games of chance before Hubal at the Ka'bah. Another form of gambling was
that they collected some sand and hid something in it. Then after dividing the
sand into two heaps they asked the players to tell in which heap was the hidden
object. The one who guessed it correctly was declared the winner and those
guessing incorrectly were declared as the losers.
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