Arabs and the Golden Bough

The book “The Arabs and the Golden Bough” opens up horizons for the Arab reader that he has not known in reading his literary heritage. As he reads the story of Thamud through what was written about it by historians, storytellers, and commentators, he rereads its history on two levels: the first is concerned with revealing the actual history that Thamud lived throughout history. The second is concerned with revealing the myth that Thamud left in the Arab imagination before Islam. The author takes two steps in opposite directions: the first step is to restore the history of Thamud and rid it of the myth, and the second step is to restore the myth of Thamud and rid it of history. In the Battle of Tabuk, a series of hadiths appeared related to the ruins of Al-Hijr, the grave of Abu Righal, and the golden bough buried in it. The author reconnects and welds the parts of this story together. Indeed, he finds that the ruins of Al-Hijr were struck by a violent earthquake that destroyed their temple, and eliminated their tribe and people, based on the Lihyanite inscriptions. Thus, the historical reality of Thamud is consistent with their symbolic myth: the she-camel is the camel economy that was prevalent in Thamud, while the holy sanctuary in which Abu Righal was buried is the pagan temple that was dedicated to the worship of Dhu-Ghabat, and it collapsed over the heads of the city’s people and priests. However, this integration between myth and history, or in other words, this agreement between the mythologization of history and its demythologization, does not satisfy the author’s appetite. Hence, in the last chapter of the book, he is interested in comparing the “branch of gold” mentioned in the prophetic hadith about Abu Righal’s grave in Al-Hijr, with three major foundational texts: “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” “The Odyssey” by Homer, and “The Aeneid” by Virgil.