From Goddesses to Doctrine: Al-Lāt, Al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt in the Transition from Pre-Islamic Arabia to Islam

The pre-Islamic Arabian religious landscape was neither a void nor a cultural wasteland but a richly pluralistic system that contained layers of polytheism, tribal cults, astral deities, and sacred spaces. At the center of this matrix stood three goddesses—al-Lāt, al-‘Uzzā, and Manāt—collectively remembered in later Islamic polemics as the “daughters of Allāh.”¹ Their cults, shrines, and rituals were not marginal; rather, they represented a visible and significant affirmation of the sacred feminine within Arabian religiosity. This paper re-examines the role of these deities as mirrors of gender, authority, and power in late antique Arabia. It argues that their prominence reveals both the symbolic centrality of women in religious imagination and the broader patterns of gender organization before Islam. The analysis also addresses the transformation brought by Islam, which both acknowledged the presence of these goddesses in Qur’ānic discourse while simultaneously suppressing their cults. In doing so, Islam reconfigured not only religious orthodoxy but also gender norms, producing a decisive break with the symbolic authority of female divine figures. This study situates the goddesses within comparative contexts of Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions, exploring their associations with fertility, warfare, and fate, and considers how their decline under Islam paralleled the gradual constriction of women’s social and ritual authority. By combining literary, archaeological, and epigraphic evidence, and engaging with critical scholarship, the paper provides a nuanced reassessment of the sacred feminine in Arabia. Far from being peripheral idols, al-Lāt, al-‘Uzzā, and Manāt embody a cultural memory of gendered religiosity whose erasure under Islam marked both theological and sociopolitical transformations. [1] Gerald R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 12–18; F. E. Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 108–112; Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 187–190.