Dawn Rituals in Pre-Islamic Arab Culture and Their Reflection in Islamic Worship

Document Type : Research Article

Author

Hamed Khani (Farhang Mehrvash)

Associate Professor, Department of Theology and Islamic Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Gorgan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Gorgan, Iran

10.22067/jhistory.2026.94288.1385

Abstract

Dawn has held ritual significance since the beginning of the Islamic era and was particularly regarded as an important time for worship and prayer. The relationship between this perception of dawn and the myths and ritual practices of the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period remains unknown. Nevertheless, a small number of reports suggest that, on the eve of the advent of Islam, Arab idolaters performed certain acts of worship at dawn. This raises the question whether a form of reaction to these dawn rituals can be identified in the practices, beliefs, and positions of prominent figures of Islam, early Muslim scholars, and other surviving evidence from the Islamic era. Answering such a question may lead to a better interpretation of Islamic verses and narrations, as well as a deeper understanding of the religious and cultural transformations of early Islam. The present study is undertaken with this objective. The study seeks to pursue a genealogical investigation of dawn worship in the early Islamic period through a cross-cultural analysis of ritual traditions. To this end, it examines Islamic hadiths and narrations, the statements of early Qurʾanic exegetes, the poetry of Arab poets living in periods close to the advent of Islam, and surviving evidence from various ancient Semitic cultures. By drawing on this body of evidence, the study seeks to reconstruct an understanding of the ritual practices of the Arab idolaters contemporary with Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and, based on parallels between evidence from antiquity and the early Islamic period, to reconstruct the intervening period between them. The study assumes that if the accounts of the Islamic period and the statements of prominent figures of Islam in the first century A.H. are interpreted on the basis of surviving evidence concerning myths and rituals prevalent in various Semitic cultures, they can reflect important information about dawn rituals in the pre-Islamic period. The hypothesis of the study is that various morning acts of worship in the Islamic period emerged as a kind of reaction to the dawn rituals of the idolaters; such an inter-ritual relationship can be identified, for example, in the recommendation to eat the suḥūr, the words of the ʾazān and ʾiqāmah, the dawn prayer, and the prescribed time for performing it.

Keywords

Dhū al-Sharā (Dusara/Dushara)

Shaḥar

Manāt

Iḥdā al-Kubar

Prayer (Salat)

History of Islamic Rituals

History of Ideas

Subjects

• History of Islamic culture

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