Animals in the religious life of ancient Arabia

Thesis

Animals played a central role in the life and cultures of pre-Islamic Arabia and are reflected in practically every form of evidence from this world. The inhabitants of the region performed sacrifices of both domestic and wild creatures. They drew them, decorated temples with their images, and composed poetry about them. Animals clearly played ritualistic roles in ancient Arabia—but what can we know about these roles?

The primary aim of this thesis is to explore a range of religious/ritualistic understandings of and attitudes towards animals in pre-Islamic Arabia. In order to do so, it uses a wide range of evidence—including epigraphy, rock drawings, zooarchaeological remains, pre-Islamic poetry, Graeco-Roman and early Islamic textual sources, and later ethnographic research. Given the difficult nature of this evidence, a central question it explores is the degree to which we can really know anything about ancient Arabian religion given the evidence that is available to us. Whilst the conclusions are unavoidably restricted by the total lack of an explanatory mythology from ancient Arabia, the thesis presents a number of religious practices from which we gain a degree of understanding of ancient Arabian religious attitudes towards animals.

Chronologically, the thesis is primary concerned with pre-Islamic Arabia, but it also examines the shifts brought about by the Islamic period. It shows that the coming of Islam did not immediately affect the practice of certain rituals. It also presents a preliminary study of ‘animal-feeding sacrifices’ which originated in the pre-Islamic period but seem to have continued into the late-twentieth century, albeit in an Islamicised form.

This is the first study to provide a large overarching picture of human-animal religious interactions across pre-Islamic Arabia. This thesis is written primarily for fellow specialists in the field of ancient Arabian studies, but it contains arguments that will also interest academics who work on the ancient Mediterranean, Near East, the rise of Islam, and environmental/animal history.

Authors: Bloomfield, J

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-da712nyg2
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: animal history; wild animals; epigraphy; pre-Islamic Arabia; domestic animals; early Islamic period; Roman Arabia; rock art; ancient Near East; Arabian religion; sacrifice
• Subjects: Ritual; History, Ancient; Art, Ancient--Middle East; Animal sacrifice; Religion