"“First of all, as regards the religion of the South Arabians, as we find it in their inscriptions, it is a strongly marked star-worship, in which the cult of the moon-god, conceived as masculine, takes complete precedence of that of the sun, which is conceived as feminine. ...But we may point out in conclusion that in all probability the Greeks borrowed from Arabian incense merchants their Apollo and his mother Leto as also Dionysos and Hermes, in the same way as they took their additional letters Phi, Chi and Psi from the South Arabian alphabet… This would seem to prove definitively that South Arabian civilization with its gods, incense altars, inscriptions, forts and castles must have been in a flourishing condition as early as the beginning of the first millennium BC."
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Original Language: English
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H. Hommel, in First Encyclopaedia of Islam 1913-1936, Leiden, 1987, Vol. I.Quoted in in Goel, S. R. (1993). Hindu temples: What happened to them. Vol. II
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Religion_in_pre-Islamic_Arabia
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Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia
Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia included indigenous Arabian polytheism, ancient Semitic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Iranian religions such as Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and Manichaeism. Arabian polytheism, the dominant form of religion in pre-Islamic Arabia, was based on veneration of deities and spirits.
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