192 CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS 



celebrated at the terms of the equinox and the sol- 

 stice : as we learn from Nonnosus, who, in the time 

 of Justinian, passed through that country on an 

 embassy to Ethiopia. 



It was the belief that the stars were the dispensers 

 of weather, which led to the idea of their being 

 inhabited by angels, or intelligences of an inter- 

 mediate nature between man and the Supreme Be- 

 ing; hence the Arabs paid them divine honours, 

 because of the alleged benefits they procured through 

 their intercession. Of these sidereal divinities the 

 Koran mentions three that were worshipped under 

 female names,— Al Lattah, Al Uzzah, and Manah. 

 The first had a temple at Naklah, near Taif ; the 

 second was adored by the Koreish ; and the third by 

 the tribes of Hodhail and Khozaah. Manah is de- 

 scribed as a rude vmshapely block of stone, of a 

 black colour, four feet high, and two broad, fixed on 

 a golden pedestal. Five other idols are specified in 

 the Koran: Wadd, worshipped under the human 

 figure by the tribe of Kelb ; Sawah, a female deity, 

 adored by the tribe of Hamadan; Yauk bore the 

 resemblance of a horse ; Nasr that of an eagle ; and 

 Yaghuth, a popular deity in Yemen, that of a lion. 

 Hobal was one of the most famous of these idols. 

 This statue, brought from Belka in Syria, was the 

 figure of a man made of red agate, and placed on the 

 top of the Kaaba, near the imag:es of Abraham and 

 Ishmael. Having by some accident lost the hand 

 that held the divining arrows, the Koreish substi- 

 tuted one of gold. Around him stood a swarm of 

 inferior deities, which had accumulated to the num- 

 ber of 360 ; so that at Mecca alone the Arabs might 

 approach a fresh object of devotion every day in the 

 year. The Hanifites had a lump of dough for their 

 god ; which, in cases of extreme famine, they used, 

 as the Egyptians did their leeks and garlic, "at 

 once for worship and for food." The images of 

 men, women, beasts and birds which crowded the 



