Maimonides on the Pagan Roots of Islamic Practice

Maimonides as is well known, emphatically affirmed that Islam as practiced is undoubtedly monotheistic, however what is less known is that he understood several Islamic practices to be rooted in an ancient paganism. That the practitioners of Islam had effectively adopted and subverted idolatrous practices and used it towards their own religious ends. Undoubtedly this is an idea that most traditionally minded Muslims would find offensive, however as we shall see in the context of Maimonidean thinking it is a pattern that one can discern within Judaism as well. In the following responsum he addresses himself to Obadiah the Proselyte:

אלו הישמעאלים אינם עובדי ע"ז כלל, וכבר נכרתה מפיהם ומלבם והם מיחדים לאל יתעלה יחוד כראוי, יחוד שאין בו דופי, ולא מפני שהם משקרים עלינו ומכזבים ואומ' שאנו אומרים שיש לאל יתעלה בן נכזב, כך אנחנו עליהם ונאמר שהם עובדי ע"ז. התורה העידה עליהם: "אשר פיהם דבר שוא וימינם ימין שקר". והיא העידה עלינו "שארית ישראל לא יעשו עולה ולא ידברו כזב ולא ימצא בפיהם לשון תרמית". ואם יאמר אדם שהבית שהם מקלסין אותו בית ע"ז הוא, וע"ז צפונה בתוכו שהיו עובדין אותה אבותיהם באותו הבית, מה בכך? אלו המשתחוים כנגדו היום אין לבם אלא לשמים. וכבר פירשו רז"ל בסנהדרין (דף ס"א ב) שאם השתחוה אדם לבית ע"ז [והוא] סבור שהוא בית הכנסת הרי לבו מסור לשמים. וכן אלו הישמעאלים היום כולם טף ונשים נכרתה ע"ז מפיהם וטעותם וטפשותם בדברים אחרים היא שאי אפשר לאומרו בכתב מפני פושעי ורשעי ישראל, אבל ביחוד השם יתעלה אין להם טעות כלל ובאמת שהיה לישמעאלים מקודם באותם המקומות שלשה מיני ע"ז פעור ומרקוליס וכמוש, והם עצמם מודים בדברים אלו היום וקוראין להם שמות בלשון ערבי. פעור (עי' ה עבודה זרה פ"ג ה"ה) עבודתו שיפעור עצמו לפניו או שיניח ראשו ויגביה ערותו למולו כמו שאלו הישמעאלים משתחוים היום בתפלתם, ומרקוליס עבודתו ברגימת האבנים, וכמוש עבודתו בפריעת הראש ושלא ילבש בגד תפור ודברים אלו כולם מפורשים וידועים אצלנו (עי' גמ' ע"ז ס"ד א') מקודם שתעמד דת הישמעאלים, אבל הישמעאלים היום אומרים זה שנפרע ראשנו ושלא נלבש בגד תפור בתפירות הוא כדי להכנע לפני האל יתעלה ולזכור היאך יעמוד האדם מקברו, וזה שנשליך האבנים בפני השטן אנו משליכים אותם כדי לערבב, ואחרים מפקחיהם נותנים טעם, ואומרים צלמים היו שם ואנו רוגמים במקום הצלמים כלומר שאין אנו מאמינים בצלמים שהיו שם, ודרך בזיון להם, אנו רוגמין אותן, ואחרים אומרים מנהג הוא כללו של דבר אע"פ שעיקר הדברים יסודם לע"ז אין אדם בעולם משליך אותם האבנים ולא משתחוה לאותו המקום ולא עושה דבר מכל הדברים לשם ע"ז לא בפיו ולא בלבו אלא לבם מסור לשמים  

The Ishmaelites are not at all idolaters, it has already been eradicated from their lips and their hearts and they attribute to God a oneness that is fitting, a flawless conception of oneness, and just because they lie about us and engage in deceit by claiming that we attribute to God a son we should not also lie about them and say that they are idolaters. The Torah testifies concerning them: “Whose mouth speaketh falsehood, and their right hand is a right hand of lying.” And it testifies concerning us: “The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies, neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth.” And should a person say that the house which they extol is one of idolatry, and that in that very house there are idols within which their ancestors worshiped, of what matter is it? Those that prostrate before it today, their minds are not directed towards anything but heaven. And our Sages already explained in the tractate Sanhedrin (61b) that if a person prostrated before a house of idol worship having mistakenly reasoned that it was a synagogue, surely his mind was [nevertheless] surrendered to heaven. And similarly the entirety of the Ishmaelites today, including their women and children have eliminated idolatry from amongst them though their errors and stupidities concerning other matters cannot be discussed in writing due to the transgressors and evil ones (who may inform on us), however concerning the oneness of God may He be exalted they do not possess any error at all and in truth the Ishmaelites of these places formerly committed themselves to three different kinds of idolatry – Pe’or, Merqulis and Kamosh, they themselves even admit of this today and call them names in Arabic. The service of Pe’or consisted of exposing one’s self before it or lowering one’s head and raising one’s privates above just like the Ishmaelites prostrate today in their prayers, the service of Merqulis consisted of pelting it with stones and the service of Kamosh consisted of uncovering one’s head [i.e. shaving it] and not wearing ornate [lit. woven] garments, and the all of their practices were already known to us previously [i.e. through rabbinic tradition] that such is the religious practice of the Ishmaelites, but the Ishmaelites today say that the uncovering of their heads and their refrain from embroidered clothes is in order to humble themselves before God and as a reminder of how man will find himself in his grave, and the stones they cast before Satan in order to confuse him, and some of their enlightened ones give a rationale to the effect that there had once been graven idols there and so they are stoning a place of graven idolatry as if to say “we do not believe in these graven idols and as a means of rendering them despised we pelt them,” and others say simply that it is a custom. The general principle of the matter is that even though the root of these matters and their foundation is that of idolatry, no man will ever cast stones, prostrate towards the place or anything else in the name of idol worship, not in his mouth and not in his mind, rather his mind is surrendered to heaven.

The practices that Maimonides alludes to are extant within Islam today – and are generally considered to be normative amongst most orthodox expressions of Islam. The first one he mentions is the method of their prostration. Though he does not go into very great detail concerning the method of their prostration, he does give a rough description of it which he correlates to the obscene gestures made before the idol Ba’al Pe’or, with a lowered head and a raised genital region that is exposed. While I do not know how he would differentiate it from the כריעה על ברכים (the bending down upon one’s knees) which he prescribes for tefillah, it is not difficult to see a parallel between his description and the Islamic form of worship as it stands today. 

The second practice which is a part of the Hajj that he mentions is the removal of hair (taqsir – trimming or halaq - shaving) and the wearing of simple clothes which originates with a worship of Kamosh. In the Sefer HaMiswoth (NC#6) he also ties the paganism of Kamosh to the removal of hair (in explaining liability for kareth in the case where one worships the idol in its regularly prescribed fashion): 

בדבר שדרכה להעבד בו, כגון פוער לפעור וזורק אבן למרקוליס, ומעביר שערו לכמוש

In the matter of the normal method of whorship, such as one who exposes one’s self to Pe’or, one who throws stones to Merqulis and the one who offers one’s hair to Kemosh.

I have been unable to locate a Hazalic text that explicitly ties the shearing of one’s hair directly to service of Kemosh. However Plutarch (Greek historian, 1^st century CE) records the following concerning Theseus (the purported founder of Athens) in Parallel Lives: 

When Æthra was delivered of a son, some say that he was immediately named Theseus, from the tokens which his father had put under the stone; others that he had received his name afterwards at Athens, when Ægeus acknowledged him for his son. He was brought up under his grandfather Pittheus, and had a tutor and attendant set over him named Connidas, to whom the Athenians even to this time, the day before the feast that is dedicated to Theseus, sacrifice a ram, giving this honour to his memory upon much juster grounds than to Silanio and Parrhasius for making, pictures and statues of Theseus. There being then a custom for the Grecian youth, upon their first coming to man's estate, to go to Delphi and offer first-fruits of their hair to the god, Theseus also went thither, and a place there to this day is yet named Thesea, as it is said, from him. He clipped only the fore part of his head, as Homer says the Abantes did. And this sort of tonsure was from him named Theseus. The Abantes first used it, not in imitation of the Arabians, as some imagine, nor of the Mysians, but because they were a warlike people, and used to close fighting, and above all other nations accustomed to engage hand to hand; as Archilochus testifies in these verses:-- "Slings shall not whirl, nor many arrows fly, When on the plain the battle joins; but swords, Man against man, the deadly conflict try As is the practice of Euboea's lords Skilled with the spear.--" Therefore that they might not give their enemies a hold by their hair, they cut it in this manner. They write also that this was the reason why Alexander gave command to his captains that all the beards of the Macedonians should be shaved, as being the readiest hold for an enemy.

Though Plutarch attempts to provide a rational spin on the practice of hair shearing, it is openly stated as a part of a cultic offering of the “first-fruits of their hair to the god” and akin to though not in direct imitation of the Arabian practice (this is perhaps also the origin for the Lurianic practice of Halak/Upsherin which perhaps we will explore in another article). From his statement we see that Arab hair sacrifice was well known. Indeed Lucian of Samosata attests to the worship of the goddess Ataratha at Hierapolis Bambyce (modern Manbij, Syria) through similar means (De Dea Syria, §55):

As soon as a man comes to Hierapolis he shaves his head and his eyebrows; afterwards he sacrifices a sheep and cuts up its flesh and eats it; he then lays the fleece on the ground, places his knee on it, but puts the feet and head of the animal on his own head and at the same time he prays that the gods may vouchsafe to receive him, and he promises a greater victim hereafter. When this is performed he crowns his head with a garland and the heads of all those engaged in the same procession. Starting from his house he passes into the road, previously bathing himself and drinking cold water. He always sleeps on the ground, for he may not enter his bed till the completion of his journey.

Here we see that a pilgrim shears his head, engages in various ascetic practices (cold water, sleeping on the ground) and the sacrificial offering of an animal. In Surat Al-Baqra (2:196) one detects a similar program being prescribed for the pilgrim by Muhammed which involves the readying of an animal sacrifice, the shaving of the head, and ascetic fasting: 

And complete the Hajj and 'umrah for Allah . But if you are prevented, then [offer] what can be obtained with ease of sacrificial animals. And do not shave your heads until the sacrificial animal has reached its place of slaughter. And whoever among you is ill or has an ailment of the head [making shaving necessary must offer] a ransom of fasting [three days] or charity or sacrifice. And when you are secure, then whoever performs 'umrah [during the Hajj months] followed by Hajj [offers] what can be obtained with ease of sacrificial animals. And whoever cannot find [or afford such an animal] - then a fast of three days during Hajj and of seven when you have returned [home]. Those are ten complete [days]. This is for those whose family is not in the area of al-Masjid al-Haram. And fear Allah and know that Allah is severe in penalty.

I similarly have not been able to identify a rabbinic text that associates Kamosh with the preparatory pilgrimage practice of donning ihram clothing, however it is interesting to note the parallel between what Maimonides reports as the Islamic rationale for it (כדי להכנע לפני האל יתעלה ולזכור היאך יעמוד האדם מקברו) and the halakha as codified in Avel 4:1:

 מנהג ישראל במתים ובקבורה, כך הוא:  מאמצין עיניו של מת, ואם נפתח פיו, קושרין את לחייו; ופוקקין את נקביו, אחר שמדיחין אותו, וסכין אותו במיני בשמים, וגוזזין שיערו.  ומלבישין אותו תכריכין תפורין של פשתן לבנים, ולא יהיו דמיהם יקרים; נהגו חכמים בצודר שווה זוז, שלא לבייש את מי שאין לו.  ומכסין פני המת, שלא לבייש את העניים שפניהם מושחרין ברעב

These are the customs observed by the Jewish people with regard to corpses and burial. We close the eyes of the deceased. If one's mouth hangs open, we tie the jaw close. After washing the corpse, we stuff close the orifices, anoint it with different fragrances, cut its hair, and dress it in shrouds of white linen which are not expensive. Our Sages followed the custom of using a cloak worth a zuz, so as not to embarrass a person who lacks resources. We cover the faces of the deceased so as not to embarrass the poor whose faces turned black because of hunger.

In Smith’s Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (p. 451) he suggests that: 

The Meccan custom is explained by saying that they would not perform the sacred rite in garments stained with sin, but the real reason is quite different. It appears that sometimes a man did make the circuit in his own clothes, but in that case he could neither wear them again nor sell them, but had to leave them at the gate of the sanctuary (Azrael, p. 125; B. Hisham, p. 128 sq.). They became taboo (harim, as the verse cited by Ibn Hisham has it) through contact with the holy place and function.

Which is to say that through contact with the cultic activity the clothes one wore would have become sacralized, accordingly the practice of donning simple clothes was simply precipitated by a need caused by the doffing clothes for fear that they would be rendered otherwise unusable for mundane purposes.

The third ritual Maimonides mentions that he claims the Muslims have co-opted and given new meaning to is the pelting of Merqulis. Maimonides states that “all of their practices were already known to us previously” and indeed the Talmud is indeed replete with many references to it. One such occasion in which Maimonides makes reference to Hazalic knowledge of Merqulis is in H. Talmud Torah 4:1:

אמרו חכמים, כל השונה לתלמיד שאינו הגון, כאילו זרק אבן למרקוליס, שנאמר "כצרור אבן, במרגמה--כן נותן לכסיל, כבוד" (משלי כו,ח):  ואין "כבוד" אלא תורה, שנאמר "כבוד, חכמים ינחלו" (משלי ג,לה

The Sages said, whoever teaches a student that is not fit, it’s as if he throws a stone to Merqulis, as [Proverbs 26:8] states: "As one who winds a stone in a sling, so is he who gives honor to a fool." There is no "honor" other than Torah, as [Proverbs 3:35] states: "The wise shall inherit honor."

Today the ritual is known amongst Muslims as the stoning of the three jamarāt (رمي الجمرات‎) at Minna and has become an integral component of the Hajj pilgrimage. In recent years Saudi authorities have replaced the pillars with wall like structures and re-designed the entire plaza in order to mitigate against pilgrims getting trampled to death. Maimonides states that one of the rationales for the practice that they suggest is that it is intended to confuse Satan. This “stoning of Satan” is according to Al-Azraqi’s (9^th c. Arab historian) Kitab Akhbar Makka a re-enactment of  Abraham’s activities: 

When he [Abraham] left Mina and was brought down to (the defile called) al-Aqaba, the Devil appeared to him at Stone-Heap of the Defile. Gabriel said to him: "Pelt him!" so Abraham threw seven stones at him so that he disappeared from him. Then he appeared to him at the Middle Stone-Heap. Gabriel said to him: "Pelt him!" so he pelted him with seven stones so that he disappeared from him. Then he appeared to him at the Little Stone-Heap. Gabriel said to him: "Pelt him!" so he pelted him with seven stones like the little stones for throwing with a sling. So the Devil withdrew from him. (F.E. Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam, p. 21)

Maimonides' detail to the effect that the stoning is intended to confuse Satan (, וזה שנשליך האבנים בפני השטן אנו משליכים אותם כדי לערבב) is reminiscent of the Talmudic rationale for practices associated with blowing the Shofar (RH 16a-b):

ואמר רבי יצחק למה תוקעין בר"ה למה תוקעין רחמנא אמר תקעו אלא למה מריעין מריעין רחמנא אמר זכרון תרועה אלא למה תוקעין ומריעין כשהן יושבין ותוקעין ומריעין כשהן עומדין כדי לערבב השטן

Isaac said: Why do we sound the horn on New Year? — [You ask], why do we sound? The All-Merciful has told us to sound! — What he means is, why do we sound a teru'ah? [You ask] why do we sound a teru'ah? The All-Merciful has proclaimed ‘a memorial of teru'ah! — What he means is, why do we sound a teki'ah and teru'ah! — sitting and then again sound a teki'ah and teru'ah standing? — It is so as to confuse the Satan

Notably Maimonides does not explicitly record this reason in the Mishneh Torah, however we know that in the Hazalic tradition that Maimonides follows, that Satan is simply another epithet for the Yeser HaRah (Guide 3:22):

According to our Sages the evil inclination, the adversary (satan), and the angel [of death], are undoubtedly identical; and the adversary being called "angel, "because he is among the sons of God, and the good inclination being in reality an angel, it is to the good and the evil inclinations that they refer in their well-known words, "Every person is accompanied by two angels, one being on his right side, one on his left." In the Babylonian Gemara (Shabbath 119b), they say distinctly of the two angels that one is good and one bad. See what extraordinary ideas this passage discloses, and how many false ideas it removes.

Thus we see in the MT he frames the shofar blasts in psychological terms: 

אף על פי שתקיעת שופר בראש השנה גזירת הכתוב, רמז יש בו:  כלומר עורו עורו ישנים משינתכם, והקיצו נרדמים מתרדמתכם; וחפשו במעשיכם וחזרו בתשובה, וזכרו בוראכם.  אלו השוכחים את האמת בהבלי הזמן, ושוגים כל שנתם בהבל וריק אשר לא יועיל ולא יציל--הביטו לנפשותיכם, והטיבו דרכיכם ומעלליכם; ויעזוב כל אחד מכם דרכו הרעה, ומחשבתו אשר לא טובה.

Even though the sounding of the shofar on Rosh HaShanah is a Scriptural decree, it contains an allusion: it is as if to say, wake up you sleepy ones from your sleep and you who slumber, arise. Inspect your deeds, repent, remember your Creator. Those who forget the truth in the vanities of time and throughout the entire year, devote their energies to vanity and emptiness which will not benefit or save: Look to your souls. Improve your ways and your deeds and let every one of you abandon his evil path and thoughts.

Though Maimonides understood the stoning of the jamarāt to be rooted in paganism, he nevertheless did not see it as invalidating Muslims as being pure monotheists – perhaps he even saw a parallel to the Talmudic rationale for the shofar blasts and understood the Islamic practice similarly in a psychological fashion. 

That Maimonides understands the ritualism of Islam to be rooted in paganism is not intended as an offense, though conceivably the Muslim traditionalist would have been taken aback if confronted with such knowledge. This tact though of determining the pagan roots of a ritual practice associated with a strictly monotheistic religion is as we know one that he reserves not just for Islam, but rather for his ancestral faith as well. According to Maimonides, the entire sacrificial cult of the Tabernacle and consequently the Temple was based off of a primitive pagan practice. It was only due to the Israelites unpreparedness to abandon the practice altogether that it was transfigured, subverted and given new meaning such that it could properly be of service within the Torah’s religion. He states in the Guide (3:32): 

Many precepts in our Law are the result of a similar course adopted by the same Supreme Being. It is, namely, impossible to go suddenly from one extreme to the other: it is therefore according to the nature of man impossible for him suddenly to discontinue everything to which he has been accustomed…  the custom which was in those days general among all men, and the general mode of worship in which the Israelites were brought up, consisted in sacrificing animals in those temples which contained certain images, to bow down to those images, and to burn incense before them; religious and ascetic persons were in those days the persons that were devoted to the service in the temples erected to the stars, as has been explained by us. It was in accordance with the wisdom and plan of God, as displayed in the whole Creation, that He did not command us to give up and to discontinue all these manners of service; for to obey such a commandment it would have been contrary to the nature of man, who generally cleaves to that to which he is used… For this reason God allowed these kinds of service to continue; He transferred to His service that which had formerly served as a worship of created beings, and of things imaginary and unreal, and commanded us to serve Him in the same manner... By this Divine plan it was effected that the traces of idolatry were blotted out, and the truly great principle of our faith, the Existence and Unity of God, was firmly established; this result was thus obtained without deterring or confusing the minds of the people by the abolition of the service to which they were accustomed and which alone was familiar to them… God refrained from prescribing what the people by their natural disposition would be incapable of obeying, and gave the above-mentioned commandments as a means of securing His chief object, viz., to spread a knowledge of Him [among the people], and to cause them to reject idolatry. It is contrary to man's nature that he should suddenly abandon all the different kinds of Divine service and the different customs in which he has been brought up, and which have been so general, that they were considered as a matter of course…

Once we understand that Maimonides sees the same sort of paradigm of the absorption of a pagan practice as not being intrinsically a psul (defect) but that rather as actually representative of wisdom, then we may suggest that in his own esoteric fashion beyond simply attesting to the purity of Islamic monotheism, he was also complimenting the religion insofar as it utilizes what he understands to be a similar model to that of the Torah’s in the dissemination of knowledge of God.