Salat pre Quran
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Is there any pre Muhammad evidence in poetry or epigraphy of the use of Salah? Or even in Syrian sources I think it'd be cool if we had anything that indicated how the arabs or surrounding people thought about the concept.
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To my knowledge it is extremely rare to find extant dated written sources prior to Quran. A lot of "pre-Islamic" poetry is claimed to be so but it is questionable whether it is.
Toshihiko Izutsu talks a little about its "pre-Islamic" usage in his works. I was discussed on here, e.g.
https//free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=15870.msg159537#msg159537You could always look up Classical Arabic dictionaries but they are post-Quran.
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The only claim that has been consisted about Salaah is that it means Du'aa' or call/supplication. This has come in all classical Arabic lexicons.
Pre-Islamic poetry is hard to verify, and even if possible, the Quran explicitly condemns following poets.
But keep in mind Quran has its own definitions at times and said things people didn't understand and had explained it.
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Thank you for your responses. I'll check out the link, Wakas I don't know if there's any written parchments in arabic before the Quran that would be pretty cool though.
From my understanding pre islamic epigraphy is an emerging field of study although I think a lot of it is still being deciphered due to regional variety. I'd be interested if any scholar of the field finds anything... I'd imagine there must be something in the whole of arabia seeing how central the concept is in the Quran.
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JSTOR and Academia.edu has many articles on the study of pre-Islamic poetry, maybe you can find something there.
