Ancient Allah: An Epigraphic Reconstruction

Abstract

The identity of the pre-Islamic Arabian deity, Allāh, has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Opinions vary from regarding him as the primary creator deity of the pre-Islamic Arabs to seeing him as a minor, peripheral superbeing with no associated cult. While the epigraphic evidence confirms that Allāh was worshipped across pre-Islamic Arabia, the texts known until now offered limited information about his role in ancestral Arabian religion. This article presents the discovery of a new archaeological site from the northeastern Jordanian Ḥarrah (MH09), which comprises a mortuary installation and a considerable number of Safaitic inscriptions. One of these carvings provides our first glimpse into Allāh mythology among the nomads east of Ḥawrān roughly two thousand years ago. This complex text proffers strong evidence for Allāh's role as a light-giving creator deity, called upon to act against death, represented by darkness. After a detailed analysis of this inscription, key to interpreting a number of other challenging Safaitic expressions and terms, the article concludes with a discussion of how this text informs our understanding of ancestral Arabian cosmology and how the ancient Arabs might have received biblical ideas about creation in late antiquity.