6 - The daughters of God

Summary

Central to the traditional image of the idolatry of the jāhiliyya are the three deities or idols Allāt, al-'Uzzā and Manāt, said to have been viewed by the Meccan opponents of the Prophet as daughters of Allāh. Apart from the five gods of the people of Noah, and the more marginal Sirius, these are really the only names appearing in the Koran (53:19–20) which the tradition is able to identify as objects of worship by the mushrikūn. None of the many other names of jāhilī gods, idols or objects of worship that the tradition provides appears in the Koran.

The traditional material has references to these three entities in many reports about pre- and early Islam, and the Kitāb al-Aṣnām and other works give details about them, their locations, the tribes associated with their worship, and their destruction. In addition the names are attested outside Muslim tradition, in inscriptions and literature from north Arabia and places around the Mediterranean. It remains to be considered how far the relative prolixity of traditional material may result from speculative elaboration of the koranic reference, how far it reflects the prominence of the names in the ideas about pagan religion in the circles from which Islam emerged, and how far it indicates real knowledge about cults involving the three.