Manāt

Introduction

Manāt (مناة), Old Hejazi: Manōt (منوٰة), Palmyrene: Manawat (مناوات), is the goddess of fate, fortune, time, death, and destiny and She also plays an important role in the Ancient Arabian understanding of time and fate. 53:19-20 "So have you considered Allāt and Alʿuzza? and Manōt, the third - the other one?" Well, let us consider Manāt, who was revered by Arabs, particularly by the Aws and Khazraj tribes as well as Quraysh. The adherents made sacrifices to Manāt and had their own family idols of Manāt in their homes. She's pretty similar to the Greek Moirai, the three sister goddesses who represent fate. She represents manāyā (destiny) and She visits those who are dying or brings death closer to people. This isn't exactly dahr, it's more about individual fate or the preordained death of each individual while dahr or zamān is universal fate, or the impersonal fate of everyone. Dahr is fate-as-time that changes and wears things down while manāyā is fate-as-death. In the Greek tradition destiny was represented as a thread spun from a spindle while in pre-Islamic poetry we also see the archetype of rope connected to destiny as previously discussed. The poet Ṭarafa bin al-‘Abd stressed that human beings are linked to death by rope:

By your life, swear that Death, so long as he misses a strong man, is surely as the loosened halter, both folded ends of which are in the hands of the owner of the animal.

So that, if he wishes, on any day, he leads him off his life by his reins. And he who is tied by the rope of death, will have to submit.

History and Etymology

Although manāyā itself was seen negatively and could not be pleaded with, the Goddess of manāyā, Manāt, was worshipped and respected. The name Manāt is generally thought to be derived from the same root manāyā comes from, m-n-y, which is often associated with counting or portioning out, implying individual fate has a determined portion for each person, and eventually reckoning the days of one's life and death across Semitic languages. This portioning out of days is mentioned by Abīd ibn al-’Abras:

The days of man are numbered to him, and through them all, the snares of Death lurk by the warrior as he travels perilous ways.

And he who dies not today, yet surely his fate it is, tomorrow to be ensnared in the nooses, his fate it is

The root itself means predestinate and is also cognate with Meni, a Canaanite deity. Manāt finds Her Hellenistic counterparts in the Greek Tyche and Latin Fortunae, Goddesses of fortune. In Palmyra, Allāt is found seated with Tyche and in the Nabataean temple of Khirbet Et-Tannur we find Nike holding up a bust of Tyche. Manāt is also similar to the Greek Moirai and Latin Parcae, personifications of destiny. The Moirai personified the inescapable destiny of each individual and spun, measured, and cut the thread of life. Although they came to be synonymous with death and ruin they were still popular figures of cultic worship with sanctuaries where people made offerings and sacrifices at festival times in places like Athens, Delphi, Olympia, and Sicyon. Langdon argues that both the Greek Moirai, Tyche-Fortuna and the Arabian Manāt are directly connected to Ishtar and her titles *ilat Menulim, "*Goddess of the fate of refusal," and ilat Menuanim, "Goddess of the fate of consent," and therefore the origin of the mythology of fate traces back to the cult of Ishtar or shares the same Semitic roots. But unlike Allāt or Alʿuzza, where we have Greek bilingual inscriptions equating them with Athena and Aphrodite respectively, there's no inscription equating Manāt with the Moirai or Tyche or any another divinity.

In Nabataea, mentions of Manāt are restricted to the northern Hejaz where She is mentioned in five Hegra tomb inscriptions. It must be significant that in four of these inscriptions She immediately follows Ḏušarē and in three of the four no other deity is mentioned. The pair are also found together in an inscription just outside of Hegra in Jabal Ithlib. One inscription invokes Her with A'ra, a deity from Bostra that was identified with Ḏušarē. Another invokes Her before Allāt. Most inscriptions in Hegra's tombs are about cursing those who might tamper with the tombs such as one in which Manāt, Ḏušarē and a mysterious deity named Qaysha are called on to "curse anyone who sells this tomb or buys it or gives it in pledge or makes a gift of it or leases it." Qaysha is also closely associated with Manāt and He appears only once in an inscription alone. He had a temple in Hegra but appears nowhere else in Nabataea. In two inscriptions (H 8 and H 16) we hear of mnwtw wqyšh "Manāt and Her Qaysha." Qaysha might mean spouse or measure so its possible Qaysha was a consort of Manāt as His name suggests. Measure might also be a reference to the measuring out of manāyā or the thread of fate. This is just speculation on my part and it should be kept in mind that Manāt also had a special relationship with Ḏušarē as pointed out above. Qaysha was only worshipped in Hegra and must be a local deity.

In Tayma, Manāt is called 'lht 'lht', Goddess of Goddesses. Manāt is found more in theophoric names than in prayers, however, especially in Dedan where we find 10 different forms of personal names that have Manāt but only one prayer (JS 177). Manāt is absent from Nabataea outside the northern Hejaz. There are no prayers to Manāt in Safaitic but Manāt does show up in two theophoric names. Outside of Nabataea, Manāt was popular among Thamudic-writers across the peninsula and was frequently invoked in prayers. She is even called st slm mnwt, the Lady of Peace, Manāt. Although She was not known in the northern centers of Nabataea, Manāt is attested in Palmyra, often invoked with the God Ba'al Hammon. Inscriptions in the Temple of Bel mention the Arabian Manāt along with the Aramaean Agibol, Babylonian Herta and Nanai, and Canaanite Reshef among others reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of the city. Manāt and Ba'al Hammon were brought to Palmyra by the tribe Banu Agrud and were considered the Gads (Fortunes) of that tribe. Manāt cult even traveled with the Roman army and we find an inscription mentioning Her with Ba'al Hammon in Hungary, Roman Dacia, written by a Palmyrene. In South Arabia worship of Her was virtually non-existent aside from one inscription in Ma'in from the 5th century BC.

In Islamic tradition

Islamic-period sources mention Manāt along with Allāt and Alʿuzza and exegetical tradition identifies them as three Goddesses worshipped by the polytheistic Meccan opponents of Muhammad. They are central to the traditional image of Paganism before Islam and are said to have been viewed by the Meccan opponents of Mohammad as daughters of Allah. Devotees would go on pilgrimage to Mecca to visit their statues or cult stones, the oldest of which was Manāt's. Manāt is even found in theophoric names such as Zayd Manāt (abundance of Manāt). Devotees of Manāt had their own family wooden idols of Her in their homes. One story relates that Manāt's site had two swords, possibly given as votive offerings, named Mihzam and Rasub. One of them became Dhul-Faqar, the famous sword gifted by Mohammad to Imam Ali.

According to Ibn Al-Kalbi's Kitab Al-Asnam (Book of Idols), Manāt's cultic site was "on the seashore in the district of al-Mushallal at Qudayd between Medina and Mecca" and most other sources agree on this but conflict on which tribes or clans were associated with the sanctuary. There is a tendency to link the site and Manāt's cult with the Ansar (the Aws and Khazraj tribes), but Azd (especially Ghatafit), the Khuza'a, Quraysh, and even just "all Arabs" are mentioned. Some say Manāt was worshipped using an altar/libation table, others a statue, and some say Manāt was worshipped using a bayt (literally, house) which could be a stele/standing stone or an open-air sanctuary or temple. These variants and inconsistencies are common in the reports about pre-Islamic religion in Islamic sources which makes it difficult to establish the basic facts about Manāt from this material, let alone deduce anything about Her character.

As for Her association with manāyā (fate) derived from the same root as Her name, there is little if anything in the Islamic tradition that explicitly supports such identifications and links. But its unlikely that all of the material in the Muslim tradition relating to the three Goddesses is the result of mere speculation on names found in the Quran. I do think that the three Goddesses may have been worshipped in the Mecca region during the 6th century but there was a process whereby Mohammad gradually redefined and thus diminished the Gods of his opponents, a process that culminated in the denial of their existence. Redefining them from the Gods the ancients understood them to be to just jinn, or angels, or identifying them with their altars and statues. The details we have in the Islamic tradition are so fragmentary, lack a real context, and are reported with variants and inconsistencies that make it difficult to see their significance for any general discussion of Arabian religion before Islam.

See also

• Allāt
• Alʿuzza
• Ašima
• Nemesis
• List of Deities
• Manāyā

Sources

• The Pantheon Of Palmyra By Javier Teixidor
• Models, Portraits, and Signs of Fate in Ancient Arabian Tradition
• The Diwans of Abid ibn al-Abras, of Asad, and Amir ibn at-Tufail, of Amir ibn Sasaah
• Meni Definition and Meaning
• Relief Depicting Ishtar and Tyche (The Tyche of Palmyra)
• High relief statue of Nike supported Zodiac Tyche, Khirbet el-Tannur
• The Semitic Goddess of Fate, Fortuna-Tyche
• South Arabia, Religions inPre-Islamic