Satih

THE KAHIN IS A RELIGIOUS OFFICE, NOT A CURIOSITY, and the sources are emphatic: the kahins were the religious leaders of Hijazi pre-Islamic spirituality, gave imprecations and benedictions, alone offered the rain-prayer istisqa with its peculiar ritual, and had garments and saliva with healing power and sacred, potent hair. The corpus held eight pre-Islamic poets and not one of its priests.

Domains

• divination
• prophecy of dynastic change
• the office of the kahin

Relations

• fellow kahin of: Shiqq

Sources

• Reference treatment of Satih and Shiqq and of the kahins: Satih ibn Rabi'a and Shiqq al-Yashkuri were two prominent South Arabian soothsayers (kahins) of the Jahiliyya, mysterious old fortunetellers whose accounts are heavily steeped in lore, reported by Muslim akhbaris to have predicted major historical events leading up to and including the rise of Islam; in a tradition stemming through Ibn Ishaq they foretold to the South Arabian chieftain Rabi'a ibn Nasr, progenitor of the Lakhmid dynasty, of the Abyssinian conquest of the Yemen, its subsequent reconquest by a native Yemeni dynasty, and the rise of Islam. The kahins, often uncharitably translated as soothsayers, were the religious leaders of the pre-Islamic spirituality of primarily the Hijaz: they gave imprecations and benedictions, they alone offered special prayers for rain (istisqa) with peculiar ritual, their garments and saliva had healing power, and their hair was sacred and potent.
• Ibn Ishaq, via Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-Nabawiyya