Late Antique Allāh: Ancestral Arabian Religion and the Monotheistic Zeitgeist

Abstract

This essay addresses the ongoing scholarly tension between the monotheistic interpretations of late pre-Islamic Arabian religion, pioneered by G. Hawting and P. Crone, and the traditional accounts of rampant Arabian polytheism found in later Islamic literary sources. By integrating the analysis of the Quran and Islamic literary sources with the rapidly growing body of Paleo-Arabic epigraphy from Late Antique West Arabia, the authors propose a synthesis that resolves this apparent contradiction.