OF THE ANCIENT ARABS. 191 



seemed linked by some mysterious affiniry. The 

 Bull and the Ox were the stars that indicated the 

 season for ploughing and preparing the soil ; the 

 Ram, the Lamb, and the Goat were the signs under 

 which these valuable animals brought forth their 

 young. The Lion and the Dog were venerated for 

 the same cause : the group of the Crab measured 

 the boundary of the tropic, when the sun, having 

 reached the limit of his southern journey, turned 

 backward on his amiual path. The Scorpion was 

 the terrible harbinger of the burning and poisonous 

 winds ; and the Balance marked the annual equinox, 

 Avhen the day and niaht are of an equal length, re- 

 sembling the equilibriimi of that instrument. Hence 

 the origin and the corruption of stellar worship, the 

 most obvious and innocent of all idolatries. 



The adoration of the stars was natural to the 

 lively and credulous Arabs ; but the strange diver- 

 sity of their idols seems a contradiction to the 

 imiformity of their habits in other respects. Some 

 faint traces of the patriarchal religion still lingered 

 among them, for they were not isniorant of the unity 

 and perfections of the Deity. This Supreme Being 

 they called Allah Taalah. or" the Most High God : but 

 their fantastic creed embraced a variety of subordi- 

 nate divinities. They had seven celebrated temples 

 dedicated to the seven planets : that at Mecca was 

 consecrated to Zohal or Saturn ; the Beit Ghama- 

 dan, at Sanaa, was built in honour of Zoharah or the 

 planet Venus. The Hamyarites chiefly worshipped 

 the sun : they had a famous edifice at Aden : and the 

 enthusiasm of the worshipper must have burned with 

 redoubled ardour when he saw from the rockv pre- 

 cipice that glorious luminary- rising like an orb of 

 fire from the bosom of the Indian Ocean. Some 

 tribes exclusively revered the moon, some the dog- 

 star, others the planets Jupiter and Mercun.-. The 

 religious festivities of these divinities were regu- 

 lated by the sacred constellatious, and generally 



