Unearthing Abraham’s Altar: The Cultic Dimensions of dīn, islām, and ḥanīf in the Qurʾan

77 Journal of Near Eastern Studies, volume 82, number 1, April 2023. © 2022 The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published by The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/723646 The religious developments of Islam’s earliest decades have been subject to extensive research and vigorous debate in recent scholarship. What was the main thrust of the Prophet Muhammad’s preaching? What led the Prophet and his followers to form a distinct group apart from other communities of their milieu that are mentioned in the Qurʾan, namely, the mushrikūn (“pagans” or “polytheists”), Jews, and Christians? As scholars have looked to the Qurʾan to understand the religious developments of the Qurʾanic milieu, many have tended to locate the impulse behind these developments in the intellectual and theological realms of faith and conviction. For example, the Qurʾan’s emphasis on monotheism and the resulting polemic against the mushrikūn are often understood as pertaining primarily to belief and doctrine, not to matters of ritual and practice.1