Religion
For more details on the ancient Semitic religion, see Arabian mythology.There are some materials on which to base a description of pre-Islamic religion, particularly in Mecca and the Hejaz. The book originally compiled by Ibn Ishaq around 740 A.D "The biography of the Prophet" passed on through notable transmitter Ibn Hisham translated by A. Guillaume 1st edition in 1955 gives an insight into the conditions pervailing in Mecca around Prophet's time. The Qur'an and the hadith, or recorded oral traditions, give some hints as to this religion. Islamic commentators have elaborated these hints into an account that, while coherent, is doubted by academics in part or in whole.
Many of the tribes in Arabia had practiced Judaism. Christianity is known to have been active in the region before the rise of Islam, especially unorthodox, possibly gnostic forms of it.
Read more about this topic: Pre-Islamic Arabia
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to children by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the philosophers celebrate in vain. And nothing stands between the people and the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“By 1879, seven churches of various denominations were holding services, which led the local Chronicle to comment, “All have but one religion and one God in common; it is the Crucified Carbonate.””
—Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)