Hence it came to pass that (excepting the worship of idols, a plurality of
gods, the killing of daughters and other such evil practices), many of the ideas
and customs subsisting among the Arabs from the time of Abraham were retained by
the Prophet, and form part of his religion. Although some of the Southern and
Eastern tribes became mixed up with the children of Ham, yet we learn, as much
from the Torah as from Ibn Hisham, Tabari and others, that the North and West
of the country was occupied by the progeny of Shem. Some tribes were descended
from Joktan, others from Hagar, Ketura, and Ishmael. Among the latter was the
tribe of the Coreish, itself among the descendants of Abraham. Now, although the
children of Shem had greatly lost the purity of their faith from mixing with the
tribes of syria, yet when all the people of those parts, except the Jews, had
altogether forgotten the Unity of God, still the dwellers in the North and West
of the Peninsula retained a certain knowledge of the Unity divine. There is
every reason to believe that in the days of Job, the stars, sun, and moon were
worshipped in those parts of Arabia;1 and Herodotus, more than four centuries
before Christ, tells us that the Arabs of his day had only two gods, Orotal and
Alitat,2 evidently meaning Allah-taālā and Allat, though as a foreigner he was
not exactly acquainted with the local form of the names. The term Allah itself
is repeatedly found in the seven Moallaqāt, whose authors lived before the
ministry of Muhammad, and also in the Dewan of Labid.