Ramadan , Leonid Shower, Kabba

Ramadan is at its end, and if you notice its a crescent moon in the night sky. The earth is passing thru a sector of space that contains 'baseball and smaller sized' meteors, from earth they appear to project from the constellation Leo The kabba is an arab holy relic, thought to be an iron meteorite. Its sanctity pre-dates islamic practice. Notice also that a major symbol in islam is the cresecent moon. The paganaistic pre-islamic arabs were thought to worship, amoung other goods, a moon god.

So my questions are,

1. is the holiday/fast of Ramadan a hold over from pre-islamic times?
   
2. is it normally followed by the leonid meteor shower?
   
3. could something like the Kabbaa have been a Leonid impactor?
   

I am pretty sure that ramadan is one of those holidays that changes its exact date year to year, and is supposed to coincide with the phases of the moon. Probably a re-birth/cleansing type of association there. Ramadan just ended the other day, and the leonid shower is comming up this weekend. Sometimes it can be pretty spectacular. What if the ancient polytheistic arabs saw this recurring metoer shower, and one day saw an especially large shooting star, one the crashed into arabia one day, and when they went to the crash site (must've been as spectacular as a ufo landing/crash site would be today) they found the kabbaa, literally sent from the heavens, and set up their shrine around it? Or moved it to mecca and put it in there, and inaugerated a feast/fast for the period preceding it?

But I don't know if the kabba is the type of meteorite that can be associated with the leonid shower, and i don't know if it 'crashed' during human history, it might've landed a long time ago. And, of course, I don't know when the ramadan celebration started either. Ramadan 'proper' is of course a muslim holiday, but I would expect that -some- polytheistic holidays must've been incorporated or blotted over, like easter and christmas and halloween amoung the christians. Or like how where there used to be a temple/shrine to a god with a particular power, after christianity one finds churches/shrines to a saint with a particular power in the same place.

[edit on 17-11-2004 by Nygdan]

Originally posted by Nygdan
So my questions are,
*is the holiday/fast of Ramadan a hold over from pre-islamic times?

No. It commemorates a battle in historic times. It lasts a full month.

* is it normally followed by the leonid meteor shower?

Yes. The Earth pases through the Leonids' path at this time every single year.

*could something like the Kabbaa have been a Leonid impactor?

It could have been from ANY meteor shower. Or a random meteor impact.

Doh! There goes that idea. I guess that also explains why its in 'sync' with the moon, its because its a whole month.

Actually, I'm still curious:

is Ramadan a commemoration of a historic battle with no pre-Islamic equivalent, or is it a commemoration of a historic battle that conveniently wraps up into it some pre-Islamic celebrations? (IE, Christmas commemorates jesus's birth but also wraps up into it some of the earlier holidays celebrated about that time).

In any case, it seems like Ramadan's the month in which Mohammed was inspired to write the Koran:

(people.howstuffworks.com...) says it's just the month in which the

and also that the first Ramadan was when Mohammed won the military victories that firmed up his core base; it's not clear from this article if that whole month is considered one long battle or a series of smaller battles, but (to me) it does seem a bit murky.

Ramadan is part of the remains of an earlier lunar religion (that's why the moon is so important in ramadan, the light of the moon is used to determine the start and end of the periods of fasting: when a white thread and a black thread become indistiguishable it means it is "night").

In the same way, the kaaba before Mohamed used to house polytheistic idols that were venerated in Mecca. There is even a story that Mohamed went there and broke all the idols (like Jesus turned over the tables of the money exchangers).

Yes but the problem with the lunar association is that its a month long celebration, months are lunar cycles, and therefore any month long celebration is going to be associated with the lunar cycle by default. Now, what that means is that the lunar association is 'uniformative'. The idea of it being a co-opted pagan thing certainly has precedent, even in the region (re:the kabba), and seems possible, but it doesn't appear that anyone is comming forward with an actual event. I don't think its questioned that the arabs had the moon as an important diety, so the use of lunar months is uncontroversial. However, if the import of the holiday is associated with the moon, in something other than a chronological fashion (ie telling when it starts, ends, and even dividing time within it) then that might be a little more suggestive. Do any of the muslims who post here have any light, er, moonlight to shed on it?

I suppose its possible that some of them might've been scared away (although the post has only been up for a little while) becuase so many people will try to make this older pagan arab religion into a 'muslims worship the moon, they're really pagans' or some other such bs. So let me just be clear that I am not saying anything like that at all. Perhaps there is also controversy as to the origins of the kabbaa amoung muslims too?

ahhh interesting topic.

First, something about the origin of Kaaba. It existed before Mohammad and served as polytheistic temple. All kinds of Gods and idols were worshipped there, basicaly every tribe, every family, had one of its own. It is not only the moon that was worshipped, everything was. Everything had its own idol to worship.
The legend goes that Kaaba was built by Abraham, as the first temple to worship one God, something that is very difficult to prove. However, since it says so in Qur'an, Muslims simply believe it. With time the worship of one God turned into worship of many and the true nature of Kaaba was forgotten. Until Mohammad came and destroyed all idols of false Gods.
Basicaly, just like Christianity incorporated some of the pagan practices, Islam did it too. They both changed the meaning of it. Christmas comes to mind when speaking of christianity, for example, a day pagans already celebrated, only now it is celebrated as a christian holiday.


There are several mentions of Kaaba by various Greek historians, some jewish scriptures, the truth is somewhere outthere, where exactly, nobody knows.

Here is a very good article about it:

www.submission.org...


The lunar calender was used long time before Muhammad, if I remember correctly. I think that the first lunar calender in that part of the world was developed by Sumerians, and that tradition never died.

Ramadan is the lunar month in which Mohammad received the first words of Quran (notably the 27th night of Ramadan), that is the reason why it is so special, and that whole month is devoted to fasting, charity, special aditional prayers and such. Also during that month years later, Muslims fought a very important battle, so that is celebrated too.

When compared with solar calender, the start of Ramadan moves backwards through it, due to the fact that lunar months have 28/29 days.
Example, this year Ramadan started on october 15 of solar calender, next year it will be october 5th and so on.
So, I don't know about Leonids, and how they tie in with all that. I mean, if they do occur at the same time every year in solar calender, it is not the same month of the lunar one.

The meteor rock in Kaaba, well its origins are a mystery. It was there before Mohammad and he didn't order it to be removed, so it is the only thing that stayed from the old belief.

Whoa, paperclip, you posted between when I reread this thread and clicked reply. I think that settles it again:

A) Mohammed received the inspiration to write the Koran during the first Ramadan in the Islamic calendar
B) there's at least one major battle won during Ramadan and that victory's currently celebrated during Ramdan
C) (and this may not be the same thing) there were some battles and other major events in the first Ramadan that helped Mohammed et al. get set up in the first place.

I think that's right; interesting stuff.

reply to post by Nygdan

Following my researches into the origins and architecture of the Ka'ba I should point that the famous black stone, 'Hajar al Aswad' contrary to popular Islamic belief and yours it seems, is definitely not a meteorite but a large piece of 'black obsidian' i.e. volcanic glass, that could have been easily collected from any number of possible volcanic sites and brought back to Mecca. This stone represents the new qibla or direction of prayer according to Mohammed although it is not in fact mentioned in the Qur'an. The 'black stone' acts as a convenient substitue for the original qibla which in pre-Islamic times was Polaris, the North pole Star towards which Mohammed and the rest of the pagan Arab world prayed for guidance. Paul

An aside

One of the great stories I heard while in Saudi was that in the sixties Nasa was doing research on meteorites and wrote to every known owner/holder of a meteorite asking permission to film it, measure and take a sample.

They sent one to the Saudis of course - for the Kaaba.

Saudis use to tell me that one to demonstrate the length that the west would go to insult them and their religion. I haven't been able to confirm that that every happened however.