Amr ibn Luhayy
Arabian · mortal · pantheon era · Recorded classification
THE CORPUS HELD HUBAL AND NOT THE MAN WHO FETCHED HIM. In the tradition's own telling the entire Meccan idol-cult has a named author and a journey attached to it, and the registry had the idol without the story. His stated reasoning is recorded as the sources give it — that the idols could act as INTERMEDIARIES for God, not as replacements.
Domains
- introduction of idol worship to mecca
- chieftaincy of khuzaa
- the hajj season
Relations
- installed the idol of: HubalNon-symmetric, written from this end only; arabian_hubal is a pre-existing record and this batch mutates none. The corpus held the chief idol of Mecca and not the man its own sources say brought it there.Reference treatment of Amr ibn Luhayy: Amr ibn Luhayy al-Khuza'i was a chief of the Banu Khuza'a, a tribe of pre-Islamic Arabia; he went out of Mecca to the Sham lands, and when he came to Ma'ab in the Balqa he saw people worshipping idols, and they gave him an idol called Hubal, a huge idol in the shape of a man, which became Mecca's chief idol. Impressed by their idol worship, he became convinced that the idols could act as intermediaries for God, and was allowed to take one home, which he set up for the Arabs to worship during the Hajj season. (secondary)
Sources
- Chief of the Banu Khuza'a, who travelled from Mecca to the Sham lands and at Ma'ab in the Balqa saw people worshipping idols; convinced that idols could act as intermediaries for God, he brought back Hubal — a huge idol in the shape of a man — and set it up for the Arabs to worship during the Hajj season, and it became Mecca's chief idol.: Reference treatment of Amr ibn Luhayy: Amr ibn Luhayy al-Khuza'i was a chief of the Banu Khuza'a, a tribe of pre-Islamic Arabia; he went out of Mecca to the Sham lands, and when he came to Ma'ab in the Balqa he saw people worshipping idols, and they gave him an idol called Hubal, a huge idol in the shape of a man, which became Mecca's chief idol. Impressed by their idol worship, he became convinced that the idols could act as intermediaries for God, and was allowed to take one home, which he set up for the Arabs to worship during the Hajj season. (secondary); Ibn al-Kalbi, Kitab al-Asnam (early 9th c. CE) (primary); Ibn Ishaq, via Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-Nabawiyya (primary)