If historian Dan Gibson’s theory is correct, then Petra, a center of religion and trade just one hundred miles from Jerusalem, was a perfect location for the Fallen to launch their new cult. It could also explain how Muhammad traveled to Jerusalem and back on his famous Night Journey.
A good endurance horse can cover a hundred miles in a day. The Tevis Cup is an annual one-hundred-mile endurance ride through the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, and winners usually complete the rugged course in fourteen to seventeen hours.[1] With two good horses and some strong coffee, it would have been possible for a rider to leave Petra one day and return the next.
Setting aside whether Muhammad’s horse Buraq (“Lightning”) really had wings and legs that supernaturally lengthened according to the terrain (rear legs longer uphill, front legs longer downhill),[2] Mecca is 940 miles from Jerusalem. Barring divine intervention, Muhammad did not cover that distance in a single night.
It’s possible the supernatural horse was invented by later Islamic writers to explain the journey after Petra was written out of the religion’s official history. It’s also possible Muhammad really did experience something supernatural that night. Still, it’s worth noting that locating the original holy place of Islam at Petra may shed light on more questions than we think.
Anyone who visits Petra can’t help but notice the large sandstone “djinn blocks” along the path to the Bab as-Siq, the narrow gorge that leads into the city itself. These stone cubes, which measure roughly fifteen to twenty feet square and stand up to twenty-six feet high, are tombs.[3] Their shape, however, may be inspired by the cube that represented the chief god of the Nabataeans, Dushara, the way so many Christian funerary monuments feature a cross.
Walking through the Siq into Petra, visitors pass by niches for betyls carved into the walls along the grand caravan entry to Petra, but there are niches with betyls all over the city. These betyls are symbolic forms representing their gods, a practice called “aniconism.”
The Israelites practiced a strict aniconism, allowing no graven images of Yahweh. Nabataean aniconism was more relaxed. They allowed anthropomorphic representations of their gods, although aniconic symbols, such as the betyls, are far more common. An archaeological expedition in the late 1990s identified a total of nearly five hundred and thirty betyls at Petra![4]
The word “betyl” (sometimes spelled “baetyl”) comes from the Greek baitylia. Philo of Byblos, who claimed he translated an earlier work by a Phoenician historian named Sanchuniaton (now lost), wrote in the early second century AD that the sky-god Ouranos created betyls (“animated stones”) to help him when his children, led by the Titan Kronos, rebelled.[5] It was believed these stones fell from the heavens, possessing magical powers.[6] Other Greek and Roman writers describe “round or spherical, red or black meteorites that were especially venerated as sacred stones in the Roman East.”[7] Roman coins with images of betyls were minted from the late third century BC through the fourth century AD.[8]
Here’s the connection between Petra and the Bible: The Greek word baitylia derives from the Hebrew bytʾl—“beth-el,” or “house/temple of El/God.”[9]
Well, now. Remember the story of Jacob’s “ladder”?
Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel.
Genesis 28:10–19 (ESV)
Archaeologist Robert Wenning connects the dots:
It was but a small step to connect “beth-el” with the sense of the “dwelling of the god” as the presence of the god in the stone. That is precisely what a betyl represents.[10]
Jacob’s divine revelation may have inspired the pagans around ancient Israel to worship the stone on which he experienced his dream vision instead of the God who created the stone.
So, who was this god of Petra, Dushara? His name is a contraction of Dhu-Shara, “The One (or Lord) of Shara.”[11] That’s a reference to the Shara mountains that run along the east side of the Aravah rift near Petra, south of the Dead Sea. Shara is the biblical Seir,[12] a fascinating link to the mountain from which Yahweh began the conquest of Canaan.
The Lord came from Sinai
Deuteronomy 33:2 (ESV)
and dawned from Seir upon us;
he shone forth from Mount Paran;
he came from the ten thousands of holy ones,
with flaming fire at his right hand.
Wait—what? Is Mount Sinai in Seir—Edom? It’s possible. Paran is another name for Sinai,[13] which suggests that all three places named in that verse point to the same location. The only one we can locate with some degree of certainty of is Seir, which is Edom, the land south of the Dead Sea and mainly north of modern Saudi Arabia.
That’s an intriguing question. Friends of ours have devoted entire books to it. Hold on to that idea for now because it would rabbit-trail us off point.
“Dhu-Shara” is a title, similar to the various baalim of the Bible like Baal-Peor (“lord of Peor”), Baal-Berith, Baal-Hermon, and so on. Scholars have tried to identify the god behind the title for decades. Guesses have included the Semitic storm-god, Hadad (Baal), the moon and sun gods, and the Greek deities Zeus, Ares, and Dionysus, the god of wine and madness.
It’s likely that Dushara was a local god adopted by the Nabataeans when they moved into the region after the Babylonian army crushed Edom in the middle of the sixth century BC. Logically, this makes the most sense. Sources outside the Bible confirm that a god named Qôs was the national deity of Edom. Egyptian texts place Qôs in the Transjordan as early as the thirteenth century BC,[14] and he was worshipped as late as the third century AD, long after the Nabataeans had taken the place of the Edomites in the land.[15] Even though he isn’t mentioned in the Bible, with his fifteen-hundred-year track record, “‘The One of the Sharâ-Mountains’ can hardly refer to any deity other than Qôs.”[16]
And if the original Kaaba was indeed at Petra, then the national god of Edom, Qôs, was probably the one who occupied the place of honor at the shrine of the black stone.
Ah, but wait! Not so fast. Later Islamic sources tell us that a god named Hubal was “Lord of the Kaaba” right up until the time that Muhammad received his revelation.
So, who was Hubal?
Evidence points to Hubal originating in the north, maybe in Syria but possibly with the Nabataeans themselves, sometime in the third century AD.[17] Histories of Islam describe Hubal as the most prominent of three hundred and sixty idols in the Kaaba, which may have represented the days of the year.[18] Muslim tradition recalls that Muhammad’s grandfather, Abd al-Mutallib, received an oracle in the Kaaba by praying to Allah while standing next to the idol of Hubal,[19] which sat near a well owned by Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh.[20]
Muslim apologists argue that this doesn’t mean al-Mutallib was praying to Hubal; he was just standing next to an idol that was later smashed by Muhammad. Frankly, this sounds like another example of rewriting history. This event took place long before Muhammad had his “epiphany,” so it seems unlikely that al-Mutallib would have been praying to a god he did not yet know.
If Muhammad’s grandfather did, in fact, pray to Allah, then another inconvenient fact rears its ugly head: Islamic sources call Hubal “the greatest” of the images in the Kaaba.[21] And if Hubal was in the house, then Allah was not—unless Hubal was Allah. Here’s why:
Naturally Quraysh were polytheist, but the deities of polytheist Arabia preferred to be housed separately. No pre-Islamic sanctuary, be it stone or building, is known to have accommodated more than one male god, as opposed to one male god and female consort.… If Allah was a pagan god like any other, Quraysh would not have allowed Hubal to share the sanctuary with him—not because they were proto-monotheists, but precisely because they were pagans.[22]
There is no evidence in existence today to prove that three hundred sixty idols were present or worshiped inside the Kaaba at Mecca. We remind you that Mecca is not mentioned in any extant text written before the mid-seventh century AD, more than a hundred years after the death of Muhammad, even though the religion he founded had conquered most of the world from Afghanistan to Spain by that point.
Petra, however, was filled with more than enough idols in the form of betyls to last for more than eighteen months if one paid homage to only one god per day.
So, Hubal, a god who emerged in Syria or northern Arabia sometime in the third century AD, became the main deity at Petra, a religious center important to the Nabataean Arabs. Thus, Hubal was probably one and the same as Edom’s patron god Qôs, called Dushara, the Lord of Shara (Seir), who was worshiped at Petra in the form of a ka’ba, a stone cube.
Nearly two thousand years before Hubal arrived at Petra, Jacob’s divine revelation inspired him to set up the stone he used as a pillow to commemorate his dream vision at bytʾl, Bethel, the “house/temple of El/God.” His act of anointing a stone with oil was twisted over time into the veneration of sacred stones called baitylia (betyls). These were often the remnants of meteorites, which were believed to house the presence of a god.
By the Islamic era, the veneration of a cube-like betyl, a ka’ba, was a centuries-old practice at Petra, a city that fits the descriptions of Islam’s holiest site far better than Mecca. Petra even appears to be the place to which early Muslims directed their prayers, based on the Qibla of the oldest mosques.
And the description of the Kaaba as the “House of God,” the bayt allah, connects the sacred stone of Mecca back to its likely inspiration, bytʾl—the stone on which Jacob dreamt of a stairway to heaven. Is it a coincidence that many Nabataean tombs, especially those at Petra, feature crowsteps—an ascending and descending stairstep pattern that became “one of the most significant features” of Nabataean architecture?[23]
Maybe. But we’re not coincidence theorists. Now let us add one more bit of speculation for you to consider.
Christians have tried to identify Islam in prophecy ever since the first Muslim raiders rode out of the Arabian desert. Bible teachers have pointed to the four horsemen of Revelation 6, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. Recently, Joel Richardson made a case for Islam as the fourth kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2, the one with the toes of iron mixed with soft clay.
Let us suggest another verse that has gone unnoticed until now, to the best of my knowledge:
The oracle of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.
“I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.” If Edom says, “We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins,” the LORD of hosts says, “They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called ‘the wicked country,’ and ‘the people with whom the LORD is angry forever.’”
Malachi 1:1-4 (ESV)
The word translated “jackals” is the Hebrew tannôt, based on a root it shares with the Hebrew word for “dragon,” tannin. (In fact, the translators of the King James Bible chose “dragons” over “jackals” for this verse.)
Petra was in the heart of Edom. It was the site of a bloody battle between the Judean king Amaziah and the Edomites sometime in the 790s BC.[24] The city was called Sela in the Old Testament, which—like petra in Greek—simply means “rock.”
If Petra is the true birthplace of Islam, as the evidence suggests, is it possible the prophet Malachi was shown a vision of “dragons of the desert”—dark angels who commandeered Esau’s heritage to launch a religion that aspires to conquer the holy mountain of God?
[1] http://www.teviscup.org/results/official-results-of-the-tevis-cup-100-miles-one-day-trail-ride, retrieved 1/12/19.
[2] Sayyid Muhammad Ibn Alawi al-Maliki and Dr. Gibril Fouad Haddad, The Prophet’s Night Journey and Heavenly Ascent (United Kingdom: Aqsa Publications, 2010).
[3] Lucy Wadeson, “The Funerary Landscape of Petra: Results from a New Study.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, Vol. 42, Supplement: The Nabataeans in Focus: Current Archaeological Research at Petra. Papers from the Special Session of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held on 29 July 2011 (2012), 99–125.
[4] Robert Wenning, “The Betyls of Petra.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 324 (2001), 79.
[5] Augustine Pagolou, Patriarchal Religion as Portrayed in Genesis 12–50: Comparison with Ancient Near Eastern and Later Israelite Religions. PhD thesis (Open University, 1995), 99.
[6] Wenning, “The Betyls of Petra,” 80.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Pagolou, op. cit., 100.
[9] Wenning, “The Betyls of Petra,” 80.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Jane Taylor, Petra and the Lost Kingdom of the Nabataeans (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 124.
[12] Zeyed Mustafa al-Shorman, “The Assimilation of Dushara – Ḍwšara in Greco-Roman Period.” Arabia, Greece and Byzantium: Cultural Contacts in Ancient and Medieval Times, ed. Abdulaziz Al-Helabi, Dimitrios Letsios, Moshalleh Al-Moraekhi, Abdullah Al-Abduljabbar (Riyadh: King Saud University, 2012), 43.
[13] See also Habakkuk 3:3.
[14] Knauf, E. A., “Qôs.” In K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, & P. W. van der Horst (Eds.), Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible (2nd extensively rev. ed.) (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 674–675.
[15] Ibid., 676.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Timothy W. Dunkin, “Ba’al, Hubal, and Allah.” StudyToAnswer.net(https://web.archive.org/web/20180428231312/http://www.studytoanswer.net/islam/hubalallah.html#ha20), retrieved 1/5/19.
[18] Karen Armstrong, Islam: A Short History (New York: Random House, 2002), 11.
[19] The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah. Translated by A. Guillaume (Oxford; New York; Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1955), 64.
[20] Ibid., 37.
[21] Ibid., 64.
[22] Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press), 193.
[23] Shaher Rababeh & Rama Al Rabady, “The Crowsteps Motif in Nabataean Architecture: Insights into Its Meaning and Use.” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 25 (2014), 22–36.
[24] 2 Kings 14:7.