Dictionary of Superstitions
edit
Dictionary of Superstitions from Thomas Hughes' A Dictionary of Islam [3][4]
Steps
- Seeking help in reconfirming following texts with A Dictionary of Islam Google book edition for better accuracy.
- Improving article Superstitions in Muslim societies with the help of these references.
| Page number | Dictionary of Superstitions from Thomas Hughes' A Dictionary of Islam | Page No wise reference |
|---|---|---|
| 133,136,
669 |
|
[5] |
Encyclopedic Para No. 1edit |
According to Thomas Hughes says the Prophet Muhammad sincerely believed in pre-Islamic superstitions of supernatural beings like Jinn, Ghoul, Shaitan, Iblis etc and same superstitions shared by later Muslims too. Some of these supernatural beings beloved to be good or bad, they can be Muslims or non Muslims, their principal places of resort, or of occasional abode are supposed to be baths,latrines, wells, , ovens, ruined houses, market places, the junctures of roads, the sea, and rivers. The Arabs, therefore, when they pour water &c on the ground, or enter a bath, or let down a bucket into a well, or visit the latrines, and on various other occasions, say "Permission!" or "Permission, ye blessed!" (Izn, or Izn ya Mubarrakun [5] What the Prophet said of Iblis in the following tradition applies also to the evil Jinn over whom he presides: His chief abode [among men] is the bath; his chief places of resort are the markets and junctures of roads; his food is whatever is killed without the name of God being pronounced over it; his drink, whatever is intoxicating; his Mu'azzin, the mizmar (musical pipe) ie any musical instrument); his Qur'an, poetry; his written character, the marks made in geomancy; his speech, falsehood; his snares are women[5]The injuries related to have been inflicted upon human beings by evil genii are of various kinds. Genii are said to have often carried off beautiful women, whom they have forcibly kept as their wives or concubines. Malicious or disturbed genii are asserted often to station themselves on the roofs or at the windows of house, and to throw down bricks and stones on persons passing by. When they take possession of an uninhabited house, they seldom fail to persecute terribly any person who goes to reside in it. They are also very apt to pilfer provisions &c. Many learned and devote persons, to secure their property from such depredations, repeat the words "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful!" On locking the doors of their houses, rooms, and on covering the bread-basket, or anything containing food. During the month of Ramazan, the evil genii are believed to be confined in prison; and, therefore, on the last night of that month, with the same view, women sometimes repeat the words above mentioned, and sprinkle salt upon the floors of the apartments of their houses. [5] Hughes says a special chapter is devoted to the Prophet's sayings with regard to the strong wind, as it appears that he had a superstition of it.The Zaubarah, which is a whirlwind that raises the sand or dust in the form of a pillar of prodigious height, often seen sweeping across the deserts and fields, is believed to be caused by the flight of an evil genii. To defend themselves from a Jinn thus "riding in the whirlwind," the Arabs often exclaim "Iron! Iron!" (Hadid! Hadid!), or "Iron! Thou unlucky!" (Hadid! Ya Mashum!) as the Jinn are supposed to have a great dread of that metal; or they exclaim, "God is most great!" (Allahu akbar!). A similar superstition prevails with respect to the waterspout at sea.[5] | |
| 142,
220. 226 |
|
[6] |
Encyclopedic Para no.2edit |
According to Thomas Hughes , The Prophet Muhammad having said that whoever calls upon God by this exalted name Ismul Azam, shall obtain all his desires, the various sects of faqirs and mystics spend much time in endevouring to ascertain what the name really is (Dawah), and the person who is able to assert that he has obtained this secret knowledge possesses great influence over the minds of superstitious people. And so Superstitious reverence for unclear exalted name leading to superstitious practices [6] | |
| 158,159,
191, 258, 382, 497, 511, 512 |
|
[7] |
Encyclopedic Para No.3edit |
According to Thomas Hughes, while Islam in an attempt to remove traces of old superstition from their holy places denounces pre-Islamic idolatry and superstitions, still practically couldn't remove all of them even in their holiest pilgrimage place and reverence around black stone at Kabah, and Hajj rituals of running and throwing stones etc. virtually became alternate way of continuation of pre-Islamic superstitious practices. [7] Mr. Stanley Lane Poole attempts to reason how the prophet, the destroyer of idols could have reconciled his conscience to the circuits of the Ka'bah and the veneration of the black stone covered with adoring kisses. The rites of the pilgrimage cannot certainly be defended against the charge of superstition at the Hajj grafted on to a religion which professes to be both monotheistic in its principle, and iconoclastic in its practices.[7] Hughes further says that the Wahhabis, the Puritans of Islam, regard the circumambulation of the Prophet's tomb as superstition (as shirk, or associating something with God, in fact), but how could they justify the ceremonies of the hajj? If reverence for the Prophet's tomb is shirk, what are runnings at as-Safa and al-Marwah, the stoning of the pillars, and the kissing of the black stone? No Muslim has ever yet attempted to give a spiritual explanation of the ceremonies of the Makkan pilgrimage, for in attempting to do so he would be charged with the heresy of shirk!..[7]
|
|
| 221 |
|
[8] |
Encyclopedic Para no 4edit |
According to Thomas Hughes Some persons perform custom of Salat al-Istikharah for superstitious purposes they take recourse to the Qur'an for an answer to their doubts. This they call making an "istikharah", or application for the favor of Heaven, or for direction in the right course. Repeating three times the opening chapter, the 112th chapter, and the fifty-eighth verse of the sixth chapter, they let the book fall open, or open it at random, and, from the seventh line of the right-hand page, draw their answer. "The words often will not convey a direct answer, but are taken as affirmative or negative according as their general tenour is good or bad, promising a blessing, or denouncing a threat, &c. Instead of reading [8]
|
|
| 297 |
|
[9] |
Encyclopedic para no.5edit |
According to Thomas Hughes the superstitious feeling of the Muslim as to the polluted touch of the dead, debarred the orthodox from attempting the study of anatomy. The doctrine that even at death the soul does not depart from the body, and the popular belief that both soul and body must appear entire to undergo the examination by Munkar and Nakir in the grave, were sufficient reasons why the dissection of the dead body should not be attempted.[9] | |
| 303 |
|
[10] |
Encyclopedic para no. 6edit |
According to Thomas Hughes Although magic is condemned in Quran and the traditions, there are still many superstitious practices resembling occult sciences which are clearly permitted according to the sayings of Muhammad hence beliefs in the magical art are entertained by almost all Muhammadans, and there is a large number of persons who study it. Anas says, "The Prophet permitted a spell, (ruqyah) being used to counteract the ill effects of the evil eye; and on those bitten by snakes or scorpions." (Sahihu Muslim p. 238.) Umm Salmah relates "that the Prophet allowed a spell to be used for the removal of yellowness in the eye, which, be said, proceeded from the malignant eye." (Sahihu 'l-Bukhari, p. 854.) 'Auf ibn Malik says "the Prophet said there is nothing wrong in using spells, provided the use of them does not associate anything with God." (Mishkat, book xxi. ch. i.) The terms used to express the magical arts are da'wah, lit. "an invitation of the spirits," exorcism; 'azimah, an incantation; kihanah, divination, or fortune-telling: ruqyah, a spell; and sihr, magic. The term da'wah is held to imply a lawful incantation, in which only the assistance of God is invited by the use of either the Ismir 'l-A'zam, or great and unknown name of God.[10] | |
| 470, 471 |
|
[11] |
Encyclopedic Para No. 7edit |
According to Thomas Hughes irrespective of beauty of its devotional language, private or public performance, various facets of form of prayer, or rak'ahs, tantamount to superstitious practices for example custom of "When any one says his prayers, he must have something in front of him", "People must not lift up their eyes while saving their prayers, or they will become blind.", "When one stands up to pray, spit not ... spit on your right side, because an angel is there.[11] | |
| 643, 644 |
Superstitions credulity (?) |
[12] |
Encyclopedic Para 8edit |
|
|
| 578, 579,
580 |
|
[13] |
Encyclopedic Para 9edit |
Shia superstitions
|
|
| 704 | *
Zikra- Chishtiyah order
|
[14] |
Encyclopedic para 10edit |
|
A Critique by Thomas Hughes
editCritique by Thomas Hughes [3]
"As the tale of the Companions was thus taken up by their followers, distance began to invest it with an increasing charm, while the products of living faith and warm imagination were being debased by superstitious credulity.' This, second generation are termed in the language of the patriotic lore of Arabia, Tabiun, or SUCCESSORS'. Here and there a Companion survived till near the end of the first century; but, for all practical purposes, they had. passed off the, stage before the commencement of its last quarter. Their first Successors who were in some measure also their contemporaries, flourished in the latter half of the same century, though some of the oldest may have survived for a time in the second.
"Meanwhile a new cause was at work, which gave to the tales of Mahomet's companions a fresh and an adventitious importance.
"The Arabs, a simple and unsophisticated race, found in the Coran ample provisions for the regulation of all their affairs, religions, social, and political. But the. aspect of Islam soon underwent a mighty change. Scarcely was the Prophet dead when his followers issued forth from their barren peninsula, armed with the warrant of the Coran to impose the faith of Mahomet upon all the nations of the earth. Within a century they had, as a first step to this universal subjugation, conquered every land that intervened between the banks of the Oxus and the furthest shores of Northern Africa and. of Spain; and had enrolled the great majority of their peoples under the standard of the Coran. This vast empire differed widely indeed from the Arabia of Mahomet's time; and that which well sufficed for the patriarchal simplicity and limited social system of the early Arabs, became utterly inadequate for the hourly multiplying wants of their descendants. Crowded cities, like Fostat, Kufa, and Damascus, required an elaborate compilation of laws for the guidance of their courts of justice; new political relations demanded a system of international equity: the speculations of a people before whom literature was preparing to throw open her arena, and the controversies of eager factions upon nice points of Mahometan faith, were impatient of the narrow limits which confined them all called loudly for the enlargement of the scanty and naked dogmas of the Coran, and for the development of its defective code of ethics.
"'And yet it was the cardinal principle of early Islam, that the standard of Law, of Theology, and of Politics was the Coran and the Coran alone.' By it Mahomet himself ruled; to it in his teaching he always referred; from it he professed to derive big opinions, and upon it to ground his decisions. If he, the Messenger of the Lord, and the Founder of the faith, was thus bound by the Coran, much more were the Caliphs, his un-inspired substitutes. New and unforeseen circumstances were continually arising, for which the Coran contained, no provision. It no longer sufficed for its original object. How then were its deficiencies to be supplied?
"The difficulty was resolved by adopting the CUSTOM or SUNNAT of Mahomet, that is, his sayings and his practice, as. a supplement to the Coran. The recitals regarding the life of the Prophet now acquired an unlooked for value. He had never held himself to be infallible, except when directly inspired of God; but this new doctrine assumed that a heavenly and unerring guidance' pervaded every word and action of his prophetic life. Tradition was thus invested with the force of law, and with some of the authority of inspiration. It was in great measure owing to the rise of this theory, that, during the first century of Islam, the cumbrous recitals of tradition so far outstripped the dimensions of reality. The prerogative now claimed for Tradition stimulated the growth of fabricated evidence, and led to the preservation of every kind of story, spurious or real, touching the Prophet. Before the close of the century it had imparted an almost incredible impulse to the search for traditions, and had in fact, given birth to the new profession of Collectors. Men devoted their lives to the business. They travelled from city to city, and from tribe to tribe, over the whole Mahometan world; sought out by personal inquiry every vestige of Mahomet's biography yet lingering among the Companions, the Successors, and their descendants; and committed to writing the, tales and reminiscences with which they used to edify their wondering and admiring auditors.
"The work, however, too closely affected the public interests, and the political aspect of the empire, to be left entirely to private and individual zeal. About a hundred years after Mahomet, the Caliph Omar II, issued circular orders for the formal collection of all extant traditions. [He committed to Abu
645
Bacr ibn Muhammad the task of compiling all the traditions he could meet with. This traditionist died A.H. 120, aged 84. Sprenger's Mohammed, p. 67.] The task thus begun continued to be rigorously prosecuted, but we possess no authentic remains of any compilation earlier date than the middle or end of the second century. Then, indeed, ample materials had been amassed, and they have been handed down to us both in the Shape of Biographies and of genera1 Collections, which bear upon every imaginable point of Mahomet's character, and detail the minutest incidents of his life.
"It thus appears that the traditions we now possess remained generally in an unrecorded form for at least the greater part of a century. It is not indeed denied that some of Mahomet's sayings may possibly have been noted down in writing during his life-time, and from that source copied and propagated afterwards We say possibly, for the evidence in favour of any such record is meagre, suspicious, and contradictory. The few and uncertain statements of this nature may have owed their origin to the authority which a habit of the kind would impart to the name of a Companion, supposed to have practiced it…. It is hardly possible that, if the custom had prevailed of writing down Mahomet's sayings during his life, we should not have had frequent intimation of the fact with notices of the writers, and special references to the nature contents, and peculiar authority of their records. But no such references or quotations are anywhere to be found. It cannot be, objected that the Arabs trusted so implicitly to their memory that they regarded oral to be as authoritative as recorded narratives, and therefore would take no note of the latter; for we see that Omar was afraid lest even the Coran, believed by him to be divine and itself the subject of heavenly care, should become defective if left to the memory of man. Just as little weight, on the other hand, should be allowed to the tradition that Mahomet prohibited his followers from noting down his words, though it is not easy to see how that tradition could have gained currency at all, had it been the regular and constant practice of any persons to record his sayings The truth appears to be that there was in reality no such practice; and that the story of the prohibition, though spurious, embodies the after-thought of serious Mahometans as to what Mahomet would have said, had he foreseen the loose and fabricated stories that sprang up, and the real danger his people would fall into of allowing Tradition to supersede the Coran. The evils of Tradition wore, in truth, as little thought of its value was perceived, till many years after Mahomet's death.
"But even were we to admit all that has been advanced, it would prove no more than the some of the Companions used to keep memoranda of the Prophet's sayings. Now unless it be possible to connect such memoranda with extant Tradition, the concession would be useless. But it is not, as far as I know demonstrable of any single tradition or class of traditions now in existence, that they were copied from such memoranda, or have been derived in any way from them. To prove, therefore, that some traditions were at first recorded will not help us to a knowledge of whether any of those still exist, or to a discrimination of them from others resting on a purely oral basis. The very most that could be urged from the premises is, that our present collections may contain some traditions founded upon a recorded original, and handed down in writing; but we are unable to single out any individual tradition and make such affirmation regarding it. The entire mass of extant tradition rests in this respect on the same uncertain ground, and the uncertainty of any one portion (apart from internal evidence of probability) attaches equally to the whole. We cannot with confidence, or even with the least show of likelihood, affirm of any tradition that it was recorded till nearly the end of the first century of the Hegira.
"We see, then, now entirely tradition, as now possessed by us, rests its authority on the memory of, those who handed it down; and how dependent therefore it must have been upon their convictions and their prejudices. For, in addition to the common frailty of human recollection which renders traditional evidence notoriously infirm, and to the errors or exaggerations which always distort a narrative transmitted orally through many witnesses, there exist throughout Mahometan Tradition abundant indications of actual fabrication; and there may everywhere be traced t he indirect but not less powerful and dangerous influence of a silently working bias, which insensibly save its colour and its shape to all the stories of their Prophet treasured up in the memories of the believers.
"That the Collectors' of Tradition rendered an important service to Islam, and even 'to history, cannot be doubted. The vast flood of tradition, poured forth from every quarter of the Moslem empire, and daily gathering volume from innumerable tributaries, was composed of the most heterogeneous elements; without the labours of the traditioniats it must soon have formed a chaotic sea, in which truth and error, fact and fable, would have mingled together in undistinguishable confusion. It is a legitimate inference from the foregoing sketch, that, Tradition, in the second century, embraced a large element of truth. That even respectably derived traditions often contained much that was exaggerated and fabulous, is an equally fair conclusion. It is proved by the testimony of the Collectors themselves, that thousands and tens of thousands were current in their times, which possessed not even a shadow of authority. The mass may be likened to the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, formed by the unnatural union of gold, silver, of the based metals, and of clay; and here the more valuable parts were
646
fast commingling hopelessly with the bad," (Muir's Life of Mahomet, vol. i., Intro. p. xxviii.)
References
edit- ^ "Scientific Errors in the Qur'an - WikiIslam". wikiislam.net. Retrieved 2020-10-08.
- ^ Welford, Mark; Welford, Mark (2018-04-09), "Geographies of Plague Pandemics: The Spatial-Temporal Behavior of Plague to the Modern Day", 6, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-315-30741-1, retrieved 2020-10-08
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ a b Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen.
- ^ "The "Dictionary of Islam" by Thomas Patrick Hughes". www.answering-islam.org. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
- ^ a b c d e Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. pp. 133, 136, 137, 669.
- ^ a b Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. pp. 142, 220, 226.
- ^ a b c d Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. pp. 158, 159, 191, 258, 382, 497, 511, 512.
- ^ a b Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. p. 221.
- ^ a b Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. p. 297.
- ^ a b Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. p. 303.
- ^ a b Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. pp. 470, 471.
- ^ a b Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. pp. 643, 644.
- ^ a b Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. pp. 578, 579, 580.
- ^ a b Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1885). A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopædia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion. W.H. Allen. p. 704.