Epigraphy and Religion and Language in Pre-Islamic Arabia - Prof. Ahmad Al-Jallad
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2023
- For more of Prof. Al-Jallad's work:
Academia (leidenuniv.academia.edu/Ahmad...)
The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia (brill.com/display/title/61413...)
Safaitic Blog (web.archive.org/web/202301181...)
A special thanks goes to Dr. Joshua Little...
Twitter ( / islamicorigins )
Islamic Origins: Essays on History, Religion, and Politics (islamicorigins.com/) - Розваги
I like academic studies about Islam. Especially from unbiased scholars. It's always very interesting!
Most of traditional Islamic source is biased scholars since they did not apply the scientific research on primary source, but based on documents that were generated more than 150 hundreds years after Muhammad pass the way.
Hearing Prof. Al-Jallad vocalise these pre-Islamic Arabic prayers so beautifully is magnificent. It's probably as close as we'll get to hearing these people, whose place in popular imagination comes almost entirely from what others (including their distant descendents) said about them, actually speak for themselves.
thank you to your team for organizing wonderful interviews. May Allah grant you patience and wisdom, ameen.
Our pleasure!
@@skepsislamicaDo you have an email that so I can contact you please about some ideas which I think are important. I'm a philosophy student interested in the philosophy of religion of Islam
@@T_K_R_G tapoole87@gmail.com
Thanks
I've watched this 4 times since it dropped last night at 4am my local Time. I was unpatiently waiting for Dr Al jallad to return lol. Thank you for bringing this to us 🙏
A precious scholar. A great discussion. Almost like visiting the past. Would be great to make Netflix series on this.
An excellent interview.
I appreciate Mr. Terron and Ms. Roxanna’s thoughtful questions. They were well balanced and inclusive of those unfamiliar with his work.
I am intrigued that Dr. Al-Jallad’s findings regarding Pre Islamic worship, seem to be similar to those of the historian Dr. Ahmed Daoud. It is a marvel to wonder about a discussion between them.
I am glad to have found this channel, and look forward to exploring (and learning from) it!
Fascinating subject & good questions. Excellent explanation by Prof Al Jallad. Prof was decisive and confident in expressing opinions & answers that are based on archaeology, epigraphy and pre-islamic literary sources. In this video, I found the answers to a few things that bothered me for quite a while.
Ahmad thank you 👍👍✌️
fascinating
Thank you Terrone & Roxanne for this wonderful video
Congratulations on the wonderful work you are doing
Thank you so much!
One of the best interviews with him 👍👍
Another great interview!
I enjoy this because it much more calm and less hyped then mythvision
This is gold
Awesome interview!
Salam Alaykum, wow such enthusiastic scholar, I guessed professor Ahmad al Jallad loved his jobs so much. It's a great interview. Thanks 😀
Many many thanks
great scholar
1:49 that’s the punch line. Well done prof Ahmed ‼️
I always understood the folk idea of southern Arabians being the "real arabs" coming from medieval Islamic scholars as being more related to ethnicity rather than language, as in the Arabs recognized the south Arabians as natives to Arabia and viewed them to be of purer Arabian stock, recognizing themselves as later arrivals with a closer connection to the Semites in the North
52:59 the is gold...
I wish this was 10 hours
best chanel on youtube related to actual scholarship and scholar and not those akh bros anf bints channel lol.
01:59:19 But the question is....are there definitive archeological evidence of settlements, farms, etc. to prove mecca existed long before pre-Islamic times??
There's a syrian historian called suhail zakkar, did mention that he found a rock in persia did have a inscription mentioning mecca long time ago before 600 AD.
I wish he were asked that based on the number of inscriptions found what his estimation of the population of Mecca and Hijaz in the early days of Islam is?
The accepted scholarly estimate was about 500 people lived in Mecca at the time
@@DelaTheCynic
That means just 50 households. Which I guess is false. If Prophet Muhammad had 10000 army to capture the City, then the city must have had quite sizable population. Probably between 20,000-30,000
And the meccans in their first battle with Muhammad called Badar, put 4000 men just to protect a caravan from Syria to Mecca which Muhammad and his companions of 300-400 men intended to hijack.
@@saidhashi2856 so the surrounding converts from multiple tribes and cities in the Hijaz took part in the conquest of Mecca thus the huge numbers recorded that day. As for the 4000 sent to fight in Badr it was multi-tribe agreement to put a stop to the plans of the Muslims to intercept the Caravan, so it wasn’t just the Meccans alone. Caravans were sent twice a year and would carry the products of trade of multiple cities in the Hijaz so the Muslims were threatening the whole regions economy and that’s the reason for the huge numbers of opposition on the day of Badr.
Ahmad Al Jallad makes the Levant the center of the universe.
So if the goddess Alat is not found in Arabia but only in the Nabatean realm, where does the Quran get alat from ?
Nabataean territory went all the way down into the Hijaz.
they called Ishtar, Alat.
I know that the Quran speaks of Alat but I believe that there is not epigraphic evidence for the existence of Alat in the Hedjaz! Is there ?
Nabatea is a part of Arabia.
Nabateans themselves were ancient Arabs and gave rise to current Arabs. Like those in Petra were Nabateans and their rock inscriptions was more or less archaic Arabic.
does Alif Khijariyah in ٱللَّـٰتَ can mean something else? he said the word ٱللَّـٰتَ does not exist but it is used as an epithet for a goddess , but isn't Alif Khinjariyah is to elongate and not add an alif? (ex : اللات).
can it mean "the denier / opponent"?
Fantastic, I only have one note, the Quranic terminology is different than pre-islam terminology, A'raab "أعراب" in the Quran doesn't mean bedouins, because there is the word "bedouins" in the Quran, A'rab in the Quran means: those who became Muslims from the arabs but didn't made hijrah to madinah due to their strong loyalty to place or tribe over Islam, whether they were city settlers or Bedouins. In pre-islam it used to mean to Arabs in general because droughts affects towns and bedouins; after the Abbasid empire, the meaning of A'rab changed whith the influence of persian writers and poets who tend to disguised Arab elements after the ummayad empire. So the word A'rab changed, it's meaning become "bedouins".
So your point is? That the Quran was writen by Abbasids and Not revealed during the time of Muhammad. You may have loved it to be like that in order to explain away the Quran and Islam due to your biases. But it isn't like that. The Sanaa manuscript and Birmingham manuscripts will prove you wrong.
@@saidhashi2856 What I meant is there was a semantic change of the word A'rab after the Abbasid empire, if you read the contexts in which the word A'rab used in the Quran and Hadith, you will find different meaning than the later meaning "bedouin".
@@nadera1830
Read Quran 9 verses 97, 98 and 99.
The word A'rab is used to refer to the Bedouin people.
97) The bedouin Arabs (literally A'rab) surpass all in unbelief and hypocrisy and are most likely to be unaware of the limits prescribed by Allah in what He has revealed to His Messenger.
99) And among the bedouin Arabs (A'rab) are those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and regard their spending (in the Way of Allah) as a means of drawing near to Allah and of deserving the prayers of the Messenger. Indeed, this shall be a means of drawing near to Allah. Allah will surely admit them to His mercy. Allah is All-Forgiving, Ever Merciful.
It's clear from those verses that the word A'rab means Bedouins and desert dwelling wandering people who are most likely Not aware of religious matters and very few of them are God fearing.
So to claim that the Quran does Not use A'rab to refer to Bedouins and that it's later addition is False.
A'rab are desert dwelling wandering folks in the Quran as opposed to towns folk.
@@saidhashi2856 ua-cam.com/video/eGhWCGH13_Y/v-deo.htmlsi=GBo1ZmKOkBHUJKv8
Read the book "نزع لثام الأعرابية".
If A'rab means bedouins in the quran, what is the meaning of Badow in the quran account of the story of Yousuf?
So we are now fairly certain that Kaba wasn’t a major idol house. Except for what the Islamic sources say. The question is why the Islamic sources had so much insistence on portraying the Quranic mushrikun as idolators? At best it shows that they had no idea about the context of the Quran (which sheds doubt on the rest of their narratives) but also it could show they had some intention in changing certain aspects of Quranic meaning and context.
It is due to conflating shirk with idol worship and/or polytheism
But I don't think we are fairly certain the Ka'ba didn't contain idols. Why do you say that? It most likely would have even if Quraysh were all monotheist as there doesn't seem to be any antagonism to idols.
@@QuranicIslam That's exactly my point, this conflation b/w idolatry and shirk was committed by the earliest Islamic writers. But why did they do that? I think from Al Jallad's research it is clear that Kaaba in 7th century was not an idol house, as he stressed in the interview there is no indication of the so-called idols in the inscriptions post 4th century AD. While we have stories in the tradition that Ali went up on Muhammad's shoulders to throw down the idols in Kaaba after the conquest of Mecca! You can say this a fabrication but the that fact it exists still means that the early muslim writers had no idea what they were talking about.
@@traveleurope5756
What Al Jallad's research can't show though is what specific shrine/structure contained or did not contain. Especially one in a city where he no one has surveyed for inscriptions and which is impossible to do now since practically 100 times the area of what Mecca used to be has now been convered over with buildings and and construction.
So no, Jallad's research can only show a macro view at best, and even that only with enough data. It certainly doesn't say anything about what the Ka'ba housed or didn't house. So i think you are extrapulating where you can't.
Besides which, the tradition itself barely mentions any idols in Mecca by name. The tradition says there were hundreds ... and seemingly all insignificant enough to never be named. No one argued really for any specific idols. These idols weren't ancient. They didn't have mythology around them it seems. And why would Mecca have so many insignifcant idols in the Ka'ba? The answer seems much simpler to me; they just played host, accepted and housed any idols anyone brought. And people/tribes would keep their truly venerated idols but bring to Mecca little idols, insignificant throwaways used for the journey perhaps, and the Quraysh would honor the pilgrims by honouring those idols in the Ka'ba. But no one really venerated them.
That there were idols in Mecca also seems obvious from the Qur'an's narrative and discourse with the Meccan's ... and that is "eye-witness" testimony. Inscriptions only get you so far. They will never give you the complete history or tell you why. Jallad's work and others can only be used to construct one.
@@QuranicIslam I disagree. If you consider Mecca in the larger context of Arabia of 6-7th centuries, the picture is quite clear. We know that Arabia was mostly (if not entirely) Christian by that time. As far as I know only in the city of Harran there were some pagans left. Who were these tribes making pilgrimage to Mecca to bring and worship their idols? Where were these pagans coming from? We should find a trace of them in other regions. There are none! If they were coming from faraway for Hadj shouldn't we find at least few inscriptions on their paths indicating their travel to Mecca and naming some of their gods/idols? Not only in Mecca but in other areas? There are none!
@QuranicIslam Maybe the idols that qur'an alludes to were statues of jesus, mary, crosses and other christian symbols?
@1:39 Prof. Ahmad Al-Jallad mentions Baal & his association with the rains/healing waters. Its not insignificant that the word ""water" occurs 722 time in the Christian Bible.....more than faith, hope, worship or prayer. These Semitic pple were all preoccupied with access to water @Sképsislamica ! :)
Very exiting material that shows there iwas no such thing as arabs until very late in history and ina very specific area
sounds like you weren't paying attention
huh? Arabs are mentioned as far back as 8th century bc
They are mentioned in the ancient texts of Sumeria and Babylon. In the pretty much where they are today.
Go educate yourself.
Also Arab is Not ethnicity but rather diverse groups of people who assimilated and shared culture and geography. Even today who is Arab and who is Not is debatable matter.
There are real Arabs and Arabized Arabs. Like Yemen was Not originally Arab.
1:02
يتطابق مع ما ورد فى الاثر ان بن لحى اتى بالاصنام من الشام
اذن الالهه الوثنيه للعرب لم تكن اختراع عربى بل وارد الشام
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy"
timestamp 1:44:07
2:06:04 wow 😲😳😲😳😲 wow. .😅😊😂.......
@1:52 Prof Ahmad Al-Jallad is reaching for the term "Henotheist"...these are monotheists in principle and polytheists in practice. They acknowledge the existence of other delegates from a principal deity, even if they dont worship them
sooo Monolatry?
Actually Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Wahhab argues that the people of the (former) Jahiliyya did not so much deny that Allah is the Lord, but that they in practice ascribed his attributes to creatures and asked them for intercession. Just as the qubûriyyûn do.
I respect Jallad, but I don't think his arguments against Peter Webb are particularly convincing. Nonetheless, this was a fascinating interview- thank you!
How so?
Both Jallad and Webb are correct. There is a way to reconcile both of their ideas on Arab identity.
When we sick we go to hospital see doctor and eat medicine, didn't this intercessors
Secondly the argument that the tradition admits that there were Christians is not even an argument is that same traditions tells us all kind of things about the Jahikiyyah which are according to Al jallad evidently false !
No serious historian says you discount all Islamic literature just because some aspects are wrong. Josephus got lots of things wrong. Because of that, do you believe nothing he said?
Arab tribes in 6th or 7th century are well known in Islamic sources. They lived in places like Doumat Jandal, Yarmouk, Yamamah and Yemen. Most of these places except Yemeb are on the borders of Roman Syria. They were clients of the Roman empire. But the inner deserts of Arabia had 0 influence Roman or Christianity. There are No any archaeological or ruins to proof it. The readon is due to inaccessibility and inhospitable desert environment. But there were Jews in Madina. Islamic sources don't lie.
But becoz of your biased eyes, you are trying to explain away the Quran and Islamic history. You somehow wish the whole Quran and Islam thing is just bad dream that you try to forget it ever happened. Very funny indeed.
The way Al Jallad is pronouncing ض is weird
He's using the reconstructed pronunciation of the letter as it would have been pronounced by the nomads who wrote the Safaitic inscriptions around 2000 years ago
No, he had a recording of himself reconstructing it on his former Twitter account and it sounded fine to me. Just when he says it in his normal speaking voice@@hamzzaahmed1794
لا ادري من اين اتى الجلاد بمعلومة ان حضارات اليمن تطلق اسم الاعراب على منهم شمالا
الفرق انتا عم تفسر من سير شعبية و تأريخ أنتج ما بعد ظهور الاسلام عن هوية اليمن بكل ما تحمله هل تفسيرات و التأويلات من محدودية نتيجة القيود المعرفية لهديك العصور. واضح انك مانك اكاديمي و لا عندك اي مقاربة للمنهج العلمي بالتأريخ او الاركيولوجيا
Arabs didn't come from Yemen, they came from Syria/Jordan, this is where assyrians inscriptions mention the first known arabs, which are the qedarites, traditionally considered one of the ismaelite tribes and in some way ancestors of the nabateans
السؤال اللي ما فهمته للآن هل الدكتور أحمد مسلم أم لا؟ أعلم أنه يبحث بالآثار بشكل موضوعي ويفرق بين التراث الإسلامي وبين الآثار الجيولوجية ولكن هل وجد في الآثار ما جعله ينفي الإسلام كاملاً؟!
the comments on the samad article are out of place. how else would an Islamic historian who doesn't specialize in epigraphy access that field except through a database? people not allowed search a database now? the point about the Tayma usage is surely correct in terms of it not being related to s-m-d, and it would have been better not to mention it, but it hardly deserves the gatekeeping disdain seen here. and the s-m-d cases found in The Database do indeed appear to be relevant and informative. not good.
! How else to access? Look up the occurrences in the actual studies where terms are discussed rather than cherry picking from a website. Maybe also asking the specialist if you are not knowing the material. That’s no gatekeeping at all; it is an important point about the use of easy-to-access data.
Not true. Ever heard of research footnotes citing others work? That’s how it operates, and necessarily so since no one can do everything.
Exact I am in agreement with you.! one must turn to other people’s work so one must be looking to the other people’s work who have discussed these terms not a website. The database provides references to the studies.
@@brothersgrim07 we’re just talking about a reference book that happens to be online that one can cite like anything else
The reference book (website) allows for searching S-m-d, yes? But does not provide interpretations, so it is not enough it is not replacement for consulting works whcih is easy because the website gives references. To go past existence of S-m-d to understand what this word means, one has to consult original studies of whcih database is taking. I have understood Jallad’s point in this way. Database is dangerous if consulted without examination further.
Ahmad Al Jallad and his fanatics spread Levantocentric theories about the origin of the Arabic language and the ancient Arabs.
CRY L
That's what the evidence points to, no need to get angry about that just because you hold opposing beliefs.
Somehow, I didn’t feel comfortable with the information he gave, I don’t know where he comes from but his method is very much like what they call orientalists of the Middle East.
you mean because he doesn't accept Islamic "tradition" at face value? Well no historian should, since much of it is is bullshit. This isn't controversial though. Muslims themselves know not everything in the hadiths, biographies, tafsirs, etc are true. So what's the issue? Inscriptions on rock don't lie.
Ahmad Al Jallad propagates the Levantine origin of Islam
You completely misunderstand Dr Al-Jallad’s work
No he doesn’t. Islam as a movement definitely came from Hijaz. Arabs on the other hand did come from the leveant.
@@TheUnique69able why are the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula genetically different from the Levantines?
No, his and the work of others have confirmed that the Arabic language originated in northern Arabia, and the earliest written references to "Arabs" originate in the north as well. He doesn't say Islam originated in the Levant/N. Arabia. You might want to work on your listening comprehension skills.
@@pheeel17 if the ancient Arabs come from the Levant, why are the Arabians not like the Syrians and Lebanese and Jordanians?
Ahmad Al Jallad hate Islam and Arabia.
That is demonstrably untrue
CRY L
Ahmad Al Jallad Christian and Levantine Nazi
You are just hurling slander
fear Allah , stop slandering.
awww... an offended muslim has always been the cutest. Surprised that knowledge is larger than islam and islam is not perfect do you?
CRY L
Wtf is wrong with you ?
52:17 this is important...