Qedar, a tribe or confederation which existed between about the 8th to 5th centuries BC, is only scantily understood, but may in fact be the first known exercise in Arab history in forging a unity larger than the kinship-based tribe. This unity was formed around a center of cultic pilgrimage and worship; Dumat, in the north of the peninsula, sacred to a number of tribes. It became the seat of their confederation and the base of their religion. Later on other centers of pilgrimage would be founded such as Sia', Khirbet Et-Tannur, Mecca and Petra.

The Gods worshipped at Dumat are mentioned in the Esarhaddon Prism from the 7th century BC: For the return of his gods he prayed me and I showed him favour and the gods Atarsamain, Dai, Nuhai, Ruldaiu, Abirillu, Atarkuruma, the gods of the Arabians, their ruined [effigies] I restored and the might of Ashur, my lord, and the writing of my name upon them I wrote and gave them back to him. The reduced phonology of Akkadian resulted in loss of information when the deities' names were transliterated. Therefore reconstructing the original Arabic names can be tricky and error prone.

The worship of Atarsamain was widespread among Arab tribes except in Nabataea. Atarsamain ("Morning Star of Heaven" عثتر سمين), which I will now call by the more accurate Arabic ʿAṯtart Samay (عثترة السمي/السماء), is associated with Venus. Some have proposed that Athtart Samay could be equivalent to Allat but this identification is difficult because under Hellenistic influence Allāt was identified with Athena/Minerva and not Aphrodite/Venus. But before the Hellenistic era Herodotus does identify Her with Aphrodite: "They believe in no other gods except Dionysus and the Heavenly Aphrodite... They call Dionysus, Orotalt; and Aphrodite, Alilat." (Histories, Book 3) Herodotus also associates Astarte with Heavenly Aphrodite saying: "The great goddess (Mother of Heaven and Earth) worshipped by Eastern nations under various names—Mylitta in Assyria, Astarte in Phoenicia: called Heavenly Aphrodite, or simply the Heavenly One, by the Greeks." (Histories, Book 1) The identification of Allāt with Astarte and thus Heavenly Aphrodite is found in Palmyra where Arab families would sometimes invoke their patron deity as Allāt, and sometimes as Astarte/Ishtar.

The worship of a Venusian deity by Arabs is further confirmed by the remark of Jerome that Saint Hilarion "arrived at Elusa on the very day that a solemn festival had brought all the people of the town to the temple of Venus; for the Saracens worship this Goddess as the Morning Star and their race is dedicated to Her cult." The Arabs also worshipped a male deity associated with Venus known as Azizos/ʿAziz. ʿAziz was identified as Ares by emperor Julian in his work 'Hymn to King Helios'. He says: "The inhabitants of Emesa, a place from time immemorial sacred to Helios, associate with Helios in their temples Monimos and Azizos. Iamblichus, from whom I have taken this and all besides, a little from a great store, says that the secret meaning to be interpreted is that Monimos is Hermes and Azizos Ares, the assessors of Helios, who are the channel for many blessings to the region of our earth." This might explain why Allāt was identified with Athena instead of Aphrodite in the Hellenistic era; the Arabs understood the personification of Venus to have a warrior aspect. It also explains what happened to ʿAṯtarat Samay, She was simply referred to as "the Goddess" which is what Allāt means.

The second deity mentioned is Da'y (دأي) most likely to mean crow. Da'y occurs only three times in personal names in Sabaean inscriptions and is a bird deity according to Knauf. They occur in the names hyt'd'y and whbd'y, the latter following the same formula found in the name WahbAllat. The terms d'y and d'yt are also found in Safaitic inscriptions in Wadi Ramm and in Qatabanian inscriptions where d'yn seems to be a clan name. It is difficult to say anything about the nature of this God.

Nuha is mentioned in inscriptions found in the vicinity of Dumat, written in a similar language and script to those of Tayma, which offer prayers to Nuha and a number of divinities. One requests "help in the matter of my love" from Ruḍaw, Nuha and ʿAṯtart Samay, all three known to the Assyrians as Gods of Qedar. None are dated, but they most likely belong to the period of Qedar’s prosperity in the 8th to 5th centuries BC. In Nejd we have inscriptions that point out that emotions are a gift of the Gods, some from Nuha and Ruḍaw: "by Nuha is the flying into a rage", "by Nuha is the jealousy of a lover", "by Ruḍaw is weeping." The name Nuha/NHY seems to mean "the wise" or "the ultimate." One early Thamudic B inscription mentions Nuha with the epithet "the elevated sun" thus Nuha could be associated with the Sun. The word could, however, also refer to a divinity connected with a special kind of wisdom. In the Old Testament there are traditions of wisdom in Teman, which may be a region south of Edom, such as Tayma, and Nuha could have some connection with these traditions.

Ruldaiu could be identified with the god Orotalt mentioned by Herodotus. The theory goes that at the time of Herodotus (5th century BC) the ض in Ruldaiu/Ruḍaw was pronounced by Greeks as 'ld' leading eventually to Orotalt. Ruḍaw appears together with Allāt in Thamudic B and Safaitic inscriptions. In the latter, Allāt and Ruḍaw appear together as the main divinities, invoked more than any other deity, and invoked together frequently. Interestingly, Ruḍaw is absent from Hismaic, Dadanitic and Nabataean inscriptions and is not associated with Allāt in Thamudic B inscriptions, this is perhaps because Allāt was called by Her original name, Athtart Samay. Ruḍaw's identification with Dionysus by Herodotus is a clue to the nature of His cult among the Arabs. According to Herodotus, the Arabian Dionysus had his hair cropped. This is a ceremony performed on bridegrooms in many parts of the Middle East to this day, and its also well documented among modern Bedouin as an initiation into adulthood. It's likely that the cropping of hair, like circumcision, originally belonged to the rites of puberty, wedding and entrance into adult society. Dionysus was not only the god of wine, there is also a myth about his birth. The story of Dionysus’ second birth from the thigh of Zeus hints at an initiation ritual, and it might have a connection with the Sacred Band of Thebes. This makes the connection between Arabs and Dionysus more understandable and it should be kept in mind that the role of Dionysus as the God of wine isn't a complete picture of his true nature in the 5th century BC.

Ḏušarē was also associated with Dionysus. Knauf assumes that Ruḍaw and Ḏušarē were two names for the same God but Ḏušarē's connection to Dionysus has more to do with Dionysus as a vegetation God while Ruḍaw's/Oratalt's identification with Dionysus has more to do with Dionysus as an initiatory God. Additionally, the two Gods are linked to different locations. Ḏušarē, as the name suggests, was linked to the Shara (Seir) mountain range and was also called the "God of Gaia," Gaia being an area in modern-day Wadi Musa. Dushara was also said to be mn rqm "from Petra," while Ruḍaw was given the epithet "from Chaldea." Here we seem to have two cults, that of Dushara and Alʿuzza in the core Nabataean area and that of Ruḍaw and Allat. Ruḍaw's cult originated in the southern extremity of Babylon, where Arab settlements are reported in cuneiform sources, and later spread to Dumat. In Dumat, Ruḍaw became associated with ʿAṯtart Samay and understood to be Her father, and the cult further spread around the region, particularly to the Hawran. The astral significance of ʿAṯtart Samay may also imply that Ruḍaw was also astral and some have proposed a connection between Ruḍaw and the divine astral pair ʿZZ/ʿAziz/Azizos and 'RSW/Arsu/MNʿM/Munʿim/Monimos found in Palmyra and Emesa. Here Ruḍaw is identified as Arsu/Munʿim and would be paired with ʿAziz, representing the evening and morning stars respectively. It thus seems that the Arabs were linked to the cults in Syria through the God Ruḍaw as the guardian of ceremonies of initiation and passing from one state to another. The Arabs were also linked to the cults in Mesopotamia with Ruḍaw and Allat paralleling Ishtar and Sin.

The Islamic tradition is ignorant of Ruḍaw's nature. We are told that "Ruḍaw" belonged to the clan of Rabiʿa bin Saʿd of Tamim. Verses are given attributed to a certain Mustawghir of this clan referring his "destruction of Ruḍaw." The importance of Ruḍaw's cult is indirectly stressed by Al-Mustawghir's rage, though the idea of the Muslim tradition being a reliable reference point to inscriptions has been challenged. We are further told that "some of the narrators" have reported that Ruḍaw was a sanctuary or stele (baeytl). Ruḍaw seems to play no part in the stories about Muhammad or the "jahiliyya" and little can be gleaned from the verses about Ruḍaw's nature. It is not obvious whether "Ruḍaw" in Islamic-period texts refers to a deity, a sanctuary, a statue or even a person. It seems unlikely that Ruḍaw was actually worshipped on the even of Islam and inscriptions in West Arabia written in the centuries prior to Islam show no trace of Ruḍaw's cult and he is not mentioned in the Quran. There is nothing to suggest the survival of Ruḍaw's worship past the 4th century AD. There is, in fact, no evidence of any sort of paganism surviving past the 5th century in the epigraphic record. It is of course possible that Ruḍaw remained venerated among marginal groups who did not write any inscriptions, or none that we've found yet.

The nature and identity of the two remaining Gods of Dumat, Abirillu and Atarkuruma, are difficult to grasp. We don't even know what the name Abirillu looked like in Old Arabic. Knauf has speculated that Abirillu might be a deified king but admits that it's difficult to say anything about them. Atarkuruma might be a second local manifestation of ʿAṯtart Samay. Kuruma might come from quram قَرَم meaning camel calf or qarm قَرْم which refers to a horse that's left to graze freely. Finally, there's qorm قُرْم which is a mangrove tree found in the Gulf.

Dusares or Dushara, being a mountain God, is also a storm God as is custom in the Ancient Near East, which would give Him a fertility aspect. A parallel can be drawn with Dhu-Ghābat, “He of the thicket”, the supreme God of the Lihyanites, Dushara is in the same way a God of vegetation and fertility. This fertility aspect allowed for the identification of Dushara with Dionysus as God of fertility but the evidence for this is inconclusive. Several ancient writers, including Herodotus from the 5th century BC, Strabo from the 1st century AD, and lexicographer Hesychius from the 5th century AD, all say that the Arabs worshipped Dionysus. Hesychius in particular directly equates Dushara and Dionysus but this is not attested in Nabatean inscriptions. Nor is there any evidence for Dushara being depicted as Dionysus in Petra. The Hauran, which became the center of Arabia Petraea, is known for its agriculture including grapes. Sia’, a temple of pilgrimage known from Safaitic inscriptions is full of grape and vine imagery though it was probably a temple to Ba’al Shamin not Dushara nor Dionysus. There are depictions of Dionysus in Petra but none are linked to Dushara. Dushara’s identification with Dionysus might have to do with the cult of the dead and resurrection, linking Him with Osiris. It’s interesting to note that Dushara’s consort Al-'Uzza was associated with Osiris’s consort, Isis. More on this later.

Dushara as supreme storm God was more often compared with Zeus. His assimilation with Zeus seems natural as both are the respective heads of Their pantheons and are storm Gods. Evidence for this pairing can be found on a 1st century BC bilingual inscription from Miletus, Greece at the temple of Apollo: “Syllaeus, brother of the king, on behalf of king Obodas, dedicated to Zeus Dusares Soter (Savior).” Another inscription in the island of Delos mentions Zeus Dusares. Eagle and lion imagery in His temples might show a link with Zeus-Hadad though this can also imply a solar aspect, power or protection without a direct link to Zeus. Dushara was called Zeus Hypsistos in Petra and this title was also given to Ba’al Shamin in Palmyra, another supreme storm God, though this does not mean that Dushara is Ba’al Shamin. The cult of Zeus Hypsistos was widespread and could be attached to the local supreme God of many places. One coin depicts a deity’s bust above thunderbolts and thunderbolts are found in many temples though not directly linked to Zeus nor Dushara. Another coin has a bull on the obverse side which might suggest a link with Zeus-Hadad but this is local money and it probably doesn’t refer to a deity in Syria. It rather expresses the fertility aspect of Dushara. An altar dedicated to Zeus Hagios was found on the northern bank of Gaia, today Wadi Musa, opposite the Temenos of Dushara’s temple (Qaṣr al-Bint) and there’s another one in Siq. There is also a terracotta relief of Zeus Ammon found at the Temple of the Winged Lions.

As Lord of Heaven with solar features Dushara could be associated with Helios. This goes back to Strabo (or rather his informer Athenodoros) informing us that the Nabataeans “worship the sun, building an altar on the top of the house (or temple?), and pouring libations on it daily and burning frankincense.” The presence of eagles in many temples might imply solar imagery and the epithets of Dushara include aspects of Sol Invictus like one from Suwayda set up by a priest of Dushara which honors Him with the title aniketos (invincible), an epithet normally reserved for Sol Invictus. In Hegra an inscription describes a God “who separates night from day,” which might refer to Dushara. If it does it might mean Dushara is a creator God. Solar deities were common throughout the Near East such as Elagabal of Emesa and Heliopolitanus of Baalbek. Palmyra had three distinct solar Gods, Shamash, Yarhibol and Malakbel. Either Elegabal or one of the Palmyran Gods became Sol Invictus though scholars are in disagreement as to which one. In Petra there are approximately 15 to 19 high places, many of which may be associated with the worship of Dushara, based on the presence of betyls and the simplicity of architecture atop each space. These could also link Dushara to the sun. If Helios was assimilated with any deity in Nabataea it would’ve been Dushara but there’s no direct link. There are depictions of Helios in Petra, like there are of Dionysus, but usually as part of façades with other Olympian Gods or as part of the 7 classical planets without any association with Dushara. Dushara definitely has solar features but as Lord of Heaven and not as a sun God in a triad with a moon deity and Venusian deity as seen in Duma and Tayma.

Epiphanius of Salamis talks about the birth of Dushara from a virgin (Panarion 4th century AD) and some scholars have concluded that the figurines could represent Al-‘Uzza and Her son Dushara, although this suggestion was not adopted by other scholars. Its more likely that Epiphanius's account is of Dushara and His mother Allat, not Al-'Uzza, since Allat was given the epithet "Mother of Gods" and Al-'Uzza seems to be Dushara's consort, not mother. That being said, here is Epiphanius's report:

"The leaders of the idolaters … in many places hold a great feast on the very night of Epiphany… First of all, in Alexandria they hold festival in what is called the Coreum, which is a great temple, namely the sacred precinct of Core. They stay awake the whole night singing hymns to the idol to the accompaniment of flutes. They keep it up the entire night, and after cockcrow torchbearers descend into an underground shrine and bring up a wooden statue seated naked on a litter… They carry the statue in a circle seven times around the very center of the temple to the accompaniment of flutes, kettledrums, and hymns and thus reveling carry it back down to the place underground. Asked what the rite means, they say: Today at this hour Core (meaning the virgin) engendered Aeon. This is also done in the city of Petra ... in the temple of the idol there. They sing hymns to the virgin in Arabic, calling her in Arabic “Chaamu”, which means Core or “virgin”, and the one born from her “Dusares”…The rite is also performed in the city of Elusa on that night as in Petra and Alexandria."

The festival occurred at the winter solstice on the 6th of January and was celebrated as a mystery in several Mediterranean cultures. The birth of Dushara can be compared with the birth of Jesus as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ took place on the 6th of January in the East until Justinian, who in 560 AD urged the Christians in Jerusalem to adopt the earlier Roman date. This brings us back to solar imagery for the cult of Christ was often identified with the Sun among early Christian Arabs; Christ had risen at sunrise and the resurrection was equated with the rising, the second coming was expected from the east, early churches often faced the east. The birth of Mithras also occurred that night. The winter solstice was a birth of light and expressed fertility, the rebirth of vegetation. The continual rebirth of deities makes Them immortal. The concept of rebirth and resurrection was common to many ancient Semitic religions. This was particularly prevalent in Phoenician religion, where it was a part of the cult of Melqart. Melqart was often Hellenized as Adonis, and was related to the ancient Sumerian Dummuzi, biblical Tammuz, where rebirth and resurrection figured highly.

Like the mysteries at Eleusis and those of Isis and Osiris the festival must've been a profound experience. Gathering at the temple of Dushara in the evening of the 5th of January, staying the whole night, and singing hymns to the accompaniment of flutes and drums. Perhaps they partook in some entheogens or fasting or perhaps the long hours of singing and music was enough to induce a mystical experience or trance. After many hours, the first light, the Morning Star, and the rising of the sun announces the birth and epiphany of Dushara, indicated also by revealing the baetyl, which then is carried seven times in a circumambulation around the temple to be presented to all worshippers, making the epiphany public.

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