George Sale, The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, translated into English immediately from the original Arabic; with Explanatory Notes, taken from the most approved Commentators. To which is prefixed A Preliminary Discource (1734)

high, of a single stone, and placed in the midst of a temple supported by 56 pillars of massy gold: this idol Mahmûd Ebn Sebecteghin, who conquered that part of India, broke to pieces with his own hands ¹.

Besides the idols we have mentioned, the Arabs worshipped also great numbers of others, which would take up too much time to have distinct accounts given of them, and not being named in the Korân, are not so much to our present purpose: for besides that every house-keeper had his house-hold god, or gods, which he last took leave of, and first saluted at his going abroad and returning home ², there were no less than 360 idols ³, equalling in number the days of their year, in and about the Caaba of Mecca; the chief of whom was Hobal ⁴, brought from Belka in Syria into Arabia by Amru Ebn Lohai, pretending it would procure them rain when they wanted it ⁵. It was the statue of a man made of red agate, which having by some accident lost a hand, the Koreish repaired it with one of gold: he held in his hand seven arrows without heads or feathers, such as the Arabs used in divination ⁶. This idol is supposed to have been the same with the image of Abraham ⁷, found and destroyed by Mohammed in the Caaba, on his entring it, in the eighth year of the Hejra, when he took Mecca ⁸, and surrounded with a great number of angels and prophets, as inferiour deities; among whom, as some say, was Ismael with divining arrows in his hand also ⁹.

Asâf and Nayelah, the former the image of a man, the latter of a woman, were also two idols brought with Hobal from Syria, and placed the one on mount Safâ, and the other on mount Merwa, They tell us Asâf was the son of Amru, and Nayelah the daughter of Sabâl, both of the tribe of Jorham, who committing whoredom together in the Caaba, were by God converted into stone ¹⁰, and afterwards worshipped by the Koreish, and so much reverenced by them, that tho’ this superstition was condemned by Mohammed, yet he was forced to allow them to visit those mountains as monuments of divine justice ¹¹

I shall mention but one idol more of this nation, and that was a lump of dough worshipped by the tribe of Hanîfa; who used it with more respect than the Papists do theirs, presuming not to eat it till they were compelled to it by famine ¹².

Several of their idols, as Manah in particular, were no more than large rude stones, the worship of which the posterity of Ismael first