Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 114

part. Some rather doubtful texts speak
of libations of wine poured on tombs. In
Liyān it is perhaps a case of a large offer-
ing of wine to Dhū ābat to expiate a
murder. At Palmyra, wine was ceremoni-
ally drunk at the funeral banquets of the
thiasoi . It is perhaps to this sacred impor-
tance that we are to attribute the frequent
use in Saphaitic of names such as rb
(arīb? “drinking companion”) and Skrn
(Sakrān “drunk” “intoxicated”) At Mecca,
at the moment of deconsecration which
concluded the a, there was ritually
drunk a fermented beverage with a basis
of grapes ( arāb, nabī ) or of barley and
honey ( sawī ) and this rite was continued
under Islam until the 2nd/8th century; a
similar rite at the beginning of the cere-
monies could explain the name of yawm al-
tarwiya which is given to the first day. But,
in other regions, in other circumstances or
in other cults, there was abstinence. Wine
was one of the things which people most
often vowed to renounce; in particular
those swearing vengeance abstained from
it until their vengeance was accomplished.
The Nabataeans did not drink wine and
the Arabs in general had the reputation
of being water drinkers. A Nabataean set
up at Palmyra in 132 A.D. two altars to
his god ay al-awm who, as he empha-
sizes, probably with polemic intent, “does
not drink (or perhaps: does not allow to
drink) wine”. This is very probably the
god known in Greek as Λυκοῦργος , who
was regarded as the opposite of Aara u
'l-arā, in Greek ∆ουσάρης and identi-
fied with Dionysos, hence the mythical
story of the fight between the god of wine
and his enemy.
Shortly before the time of the Prophet,
those who were attracted to monotheism
[see anīf] would seem to have adopted
certain prohibitions in order to conform to
the Noachic precepts enjoined upon Jew-
ish proselytes and in general adopted by

the Christians ( Acts , xv, 29). An example
is Zayd b. Amr from the Adī clan of the
uray, who is said to have abstained
from animals which had not been ritu-
ally slaughtered, from blood and from
meat which had been sacrificed to idols.
Others, probably from asceticism, under
the influence of the earlier practices men-
tioned above and of the abstinence which
was enjoined by Manicheism, by the
Christian ascetics and certain Christian
sects, and which was practised by other
Semitic peoples (if the fact is indeed true),
are said to have abstained from drinking
wine— e.g. , another uraī, Umān b.
Maūn, who was later to embrace Islam.
Musaylima forbade wine as well as sex-
ual relations to those who were already
fathers. It has been possible to compile a
list of those who abstained from wine in
the āhiliyya.
The epigraphic sources add hardly any-
thing to this picture for central and north-
ern Arabia. They do, however, illustrate
the importance attached there to game
and hunting. This importance is also
reflected in the rock engravings which
accompany the graffiti or are contem-
porary with them. They hunted gazelle,
ostriches, ibex, perhaps also wild asses
etc. A “Thamudean” text mentions the
capture of a lizard ( wrl ), perhaps for food.
The domestic animals mentioned: camels,
cattle, sheep, horses, donkeys, were used
partly for food. The reference to an abun-
dance of milk and the reference to bees
are dubious, as are the references to dates.
Fish caught in the pools of stagnant water
on the edges of the desert were preserved
by drying.

ii.—Pre-Islamic Southern
Arabia
Southern Arabia was much more agri-
cultural and thus afforded a much greater
variety of vegetable food. The dates ( tmr )