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Because the Arabs could hardly ignite fire, both for cooking and illumination, they ate dates, locusts and lizards, and depended on camel’s milk as a substitute for water. However, the Quran says that God had provided them with some kind of a “green tree” from which they obtained fire to meet their needs (36:80). During nights, the Arabs stayed inside their tents and homes, fearing mischief from capricious Jinns, which they believed, attacked mankind in darkness at solitary places.
Having nothing worthwhile to do either during the day or night, most of the people spent their time gossiping, drinking, gambling or narrating the fables of the past. Their other main pastime was an inordinate obsession with sex, both hetero-and homosexual, for they were reputed to have been endowed with great sexual virility.
The Arabs practiced pederasty, an act they considered to be a normal part of their sexual conduct. Their womenfolk also led a highly licentious life, engaging themselves in sexual acts with any men they felt attracted to. Men recognized this conduct as being normal on the part of their women.
On the death of Abd al Mottalib, his son, Abu Talib succeeded to the guardianship of Ka’aba, assuming the religious functions performed by all his predecessors. The priestly office held by him required his sacerdotal household to observe rigidly all the rites and ceremonies of the sacred House of God. This afforded young Muhammad the opportunity to observe them closely and to record them in his mind, enabling him later to incorporate most of them, sans the idol worship, in his own religion.
The rites and ceremonies practiced by the pagan Arabs before the advent of Islam consisted, among others, of the following:
-The pagans observed three principal fasts within the year; one of seven, one of nine, and one of thirty days. During their fasts, they ate and drank, but did not talk.
-They prayed three times each day; about sunrise, at noon, and about sunset, turning their faces in the direction of Ka’aba.[1]
-They performed a yearly pilgrimage or hajj, which required them to circumambulate the Ka’aba seven times, to run between the two hills of Safa and Marwa on each of which was installed a male and a female idol, to sacrifice animals in the name of the deities, and then to shave the heads of all male pilgrims. Female pilgrims satisfied the later commandment simply by having a few locks of their haircut off.