PAGANS AND GNOSTICSwhich determine whatever happens, and it was this kind of materi-
alistic fatalism that passed for science in the sixth and seventh cen-
turies. Astrological fatalism was so typical of Babylonia that it was
called cbaldtota (Syr.) and its practitioners Chaldaeans.^41
Pagan Arabs shared the belief in destiny in the form of the imper-
sonal operation of the course of time (M.P. dabr, zaman). This was
the force that determined human existence and was the inescapable
cause of whatever good or evil fortune befell a person.^42 There is really
very little difference between this and cbaldtota or fatalistic Zurvanism,
and Arabs may have acquired this concept of destiny from Chaldaeans
because of the popularity of Zurvanism among the Sasanian ruling
class. The pagan merchants of Makka who opposed Mu1).ammad as-
serted the eternity of time and matter; claimed that events on earth
were caused naturally by the turning of the spheres; sought to escape
responsibility for their actions; and denied that God created the world
or provided for it. They also denied the impending end of the world,
judgment, and rewards and punishments by saying that "there is only
our worldly life; we die and we live, and it is only dabr that destroys
US."43
However, there may have been an ethical dimension to destiny that
associated the Babylonian version of original sin, the evilness of human
nature,44 with the belief that the children of unbelievers or sinners
shared the fate of their parents. In Judaeo-Arab circles this seems to
have taken the form of an ar.gument over the fate of the children of
Korah (Num. 16). Although the Biblical account says explicitly that
the children of Korah were not killed (Num. 26:11), which implies
that they did not share in the sin of their father nor were they punished
for it, the Talmud contains a curious story about an Arab merchant
who told one of the rabbis about the wheel of the sky which revolved
daily; in the same context he said that the children of Korah were
roasted in Gehenna.4s41 Assemani, BD, III(1), 29; Neubauer, Geographie, pp. 352, 427; W. Tarn, Hellen-
istic Civilization (Cleveland, 1967), pp. 345-47.
42 W. Montgomery Watt, Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam (London, 1948),
pp. 20-21.
43 Goldziher, "Dahriyya," E/(1), 11, 894; Qur'an, 45:24.
44 This, in turn, went back to the Sumerian notion as expressed in the poem of the
righteous sufferer, that "never has a sinless child been born to its mother"; see S. Kramer,
The Sumerians (Chicago & London, 1963), p. 128.
4S Rodkinson, Talmud, XIII, "Baba Bathra," 205-6. That Korah's sin was manifestly
political in challenging Moses' authority ("all the congregation are holy, every one of
them, and the Lord is among them," Num. 16:3) was notlost on the Nestorian catholicos
George I (659-80), who compared his rival for the position of catholicos to Korah in