HISTORY CRAFTER - THE REAL AND SIMULATED HISTORY

'Ensemble' (Copyright Salvatore Puleio 2020) PRE-ISLAMIC SOCIETY IN ARABIA: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TRIBES   If you wonder how society was structured before the advent of Islam, the answer is simple; the tribe, as a matter of fact, was the horizon guiding people lives. Everyone belonged to one of the many tribes, which were groups, organized around kinship, whose members helped each other. There was no State, and there were no particular institutions which had to keep the order and apply the law; the only safeguard came from the relatives of the same family, who were tasked to protect each other. These were duties each member was supposed to fulfil; in the case this did not happen, the person was regarded as the worst criminal. This kind of action, in fact, could bring disruption to the entire tribe.   It was a very different setting from what we know nowadays, although the tribal belonging still plays a significant role in the Arabian Peninsula still now; in fact, all the male a

'Dancing Polygons' (copyright 2020 Puleio Salvatore) L’ARABIA PRIMA DELL’ISLAM   Questo articolo è già stato pubblicato dal sottoscritto in lingua inglese; tuttavia, considerando che la divulgazione di questo tema è pressoché nullo, specialmente in italiano, ho deciso di renderlo fruibile anche in italiano.   Effettivamente, quando si pensa alla Penisola Araba, e non solamente all’Arabia Saudita, la prima associazione che viene fatta è all’Islam; a quasi 14 secoli di distanza dalla comparsa ed ascesa del Puro Monoteismo, non stupisce che l’Islam sia diventato anche una cultura, e non semplicemente una religione.   La percezione generale, dunque, è che la situazione sia sempre stata la stessa; invece, la storia di questi luoghi e civiltà è molto lunga, e precede di millenni l’avvento dell’Islam. Tale aspetto, tuttavia, viene quasi taciuto, e quasi nulla viene divulgato; attualmente, in effetti, sembra che la storia dell’Arabia pre-islamica sia confinata ad un gruppetto di espert

THE  HARAM DECLARATION AND THE   MECCAN CONSTITUTION    In the previous posts, I discussed the presence and meaning of harams in pre-Islamic Hijaz, Madinah (or Medina) was the site of one of them, as we already know; now it seems interesting to see what happened after the advent of Islam. In this article, and eventually in the next ones, we’ll try to answer this question, in order to understand what happened and how the sacred spaces were configured in Islamic Madinah. As a matter of fact, Prophet Muhammad made use of the former haram after he fled to Madinah; the case of Medina is different from the others, as we have many information about this event. For Makkah (or Mecca) we cannot know how the site became an haram , since the Holy Quran does not provide any historical account, in the case of Medina we are luckier. The same goes for the site of Waji, as already noted in the previous article; in the case of Medina, on the contrary, the situation is different.   I am not denying that

SACRED SPACES IN PRE-ISLAMIC HIJAZ   In a previous post, I discussed the difference between haram and hima in the region oh Hijaz, where Madinah is located; here, it seems interesting to explore with more depth the harams  present there. On this regard, one may note that in Hijaz, not all the himas  were sacred in a strict sense; however, the custom to sanctify a place is well known and the harams  existed in the proximity of the cities of Makkah and Madinah. These places, in particular, as historians suggest, must have been known by the Prophet Muhammad; although the evidence is still generally lacking, this seems reasonable.   A UNIQUE HARAM ?   An interesting questions, then, is about the number of this places in the region of Hijaz before Islam; in fact, the Holy Quran mentions only one haram , but the available evidence seems to suggest that there must have been other harams as well. Besides the well known haram in Makkah, the historians point to Waji and Buss, which were associat

MADINAH: A DIFFERENT CITY When we think at Madinah, the mind associates this place to the Prophet Muhammad, as he found refuge there, when his own people turned against him; today, Madinah is one of the two holy cities in Islam. Madinah is Muslim then, but it is not always been the case; in fact, Islam was revealed by Prophet Muhammad some 1,400 years ago. The history of Madinah, though, is much older, and bear witness to a history which is now almost forgotten and relegated to the realm of a few historians, experts and curious people who may wonder what was there before this city became one of the strongholds of Islam, before it came to be known as the ‘city of the Prophet’.   The religious landscape of the Pre-Islamic Hijaz   Before Islam changed forever the city and society of Madinah, of the Hijaz region, the rest of Arabia, and the world at large, the landscape was very different; in general terms, there were, in the region of Hijaz, where Madinah is located, many shrines where po