Translations:Manāt/1/en

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: