The Arabs and the golden branch

This book opens up to the Arab reader horizons they have not known before in reading their literary heritage. As he reads the story of Thamud through what the narrators, storytellers, and interpreters have written about it, he re-reads its history on two levels: the first concerns revealing the actual history that Thamud lived through across time. The second concerns revealing the myth that Thamud left in the Arab imagination before Islam. The author takes two steps in two opposing directions: the first step is to restore Thamud's history and free it from myth, and the second step is to restore Thamud's myth and free it from history. In the Battle of Tabuk, a series of hadiths appeared related to the ruins of Al-Hajar, the grave of Abu Rugal, and the hidden golden branch within it. The author reconnects the parts of this story and stitches them together. He finds that the ruins of Al-Hajar were indeed struck by a severe earthquake that destroyed its temple, wiped out its tribe, and filled it, based on the Lihyanite inscriptions. Thus, the historical reality of Thamud aligns with their symbolic myth: the camel represents the camel economy that was prevalent in Thamud, and the sacred sanctuary where Abu Rugal (or Qudar) was buried is the pagan temple dedicated to the worship of Dhū-Ghābat, which collapsed over the heads of the city’s inhabitants and its priests. However, this integration of myth and history, or in other words, this tension between mythologizing history and stripping it of myth, does not satisfy the author’s hunger. Hence, in the final chapter of the book, he compares the "golden branch" mentioned in the prophetic hadith about Abu Rugal's grave in Al-Hajar with three major foundational texts: the "Epic of Gilgamesh," Homer’s "Odyssey," and Virgil’s "Aeneid." Number of pages: 208 Year of publication: 2023 Publisher: Dar Al-Rafidain for Publishing and Distribution