Wine and Beer in the Daily Life and Religion of the Ancient Orientals, i r 5 



and strength. They committed all sorts of evil deeds. Fi- 

 nally God sent the prophet Hud un to them, to preach repen- 

 tance. The Adites, however, disregarded the warning of this 

 messenger of God and answered: "O Hud, thou hast brought 

 us no evidence, and we will not abandon our gods for thy 

 saying, nor will we believe in thee. We say: 'One of our 

 gods has afflicted thee with madness'" (Koran, XI, ^, 57). The 

 divine punisment at last overtook the evil 'Adites. A fearful 

 draught fell upon the land. A number of 'Adite chiefs were 

 sent to Mecca to pray for rain. Mu'awiya ibn Bakr, an Ama- 

 lekite prince sent his envoys on their arrival to the city and 

 he received the 'Adites hospitably. They were entertained 

 by him with wine and music. Two famous singing-girls, known 

 as al-Jaradatan, took part in these entertainments. For an 

 entire month they neglected their mission. When they, at 

 last, executed it, there appeared three clouds in the sky, one 

 red, one black and one white. However, by choosing the 

 black cloud 1, they brought about the destruction of their 

 people, for God drove the cloud unto the land of 'Ad and 

 from it issued a roaring wind, which consumed all the people, 

 except a few who had listened. 



The prohibition of wine-drinking by Muhammed brought 

 about a great change in the attitude towards wine and other 

 intoxicants. This prohibition was never felt to be very severe 

 in a country, such as Arabia, since wine was always expen- 

 sive and often difficult to procure. And in Syria, the chief 

 wineland of the Orient, it never vitally affected the culture of 

 vine, on account of its strong Christian and Jewish population, 

 A\hile amongst the Persians the new conquering religion of Islam 

 very seldom took a great enough hold on the people in order 

 to break them away from the customs of their wine-growing 

 country. The prohibition of wine in Sura V, 93 is stated as being 

 due to the fact that ^atan causes dissentions in the consfre- 



i) The Adites quite naturally choose the black cloud, sfnce it was con- 

 sidered to contain much M-ater. Compare here: i;33> "Tlirh S<a"i2.'n3 i"i^S< 



(c"p bxvjffi uip^i .a"i- '1 n'^ryn) ^r\\o p-i'^yt p33S' -11,13 ini's -^'^^'^yo 



"In Palestine it is said : The dark clouds contain much water, the white clouds 

 contain little water." 



