RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESamong Muslims that the impurity of a menstruating woman in the
presence of a worship er nullifed the effectiveness of worship recalls
the behavior of Hazaroe and is likely to be of Magian origin.^52
The form of ritual worship (A. ~alat) performed by Muslims was
similar to widespread contemporary practices. The term itself was an
Arabic loanword from Aramaic selotha which means bowing or
stretching and which was used for worship in several Aramaic dialects.
The gesture of spreading or raising both hands in invocation or ex-
orcism was used by pagan sorcerers in Iraq. But this gesture is also
described in the Bible (Isa. 1:15), so it was acceptable to both Jews
and Christians. The Nestorian catholicos Ish6'yahbh I was accused
of spreading his hands and praying for the usurper Bahram Chubin;
Isaac of Nineveh, who quotes Isaiah, speaks of a monk who remained
in a state of mystic ecstasy for four days "while he stood in prayer
with outspread hands." At first some Muslims objected to beginning
their ~alat with such a gesture because of its pagan connotations; but
the normal practice came to be to raise both hands with the fingers
kept together beside the head and the elbows bent, which was some-
what different from other usages.^53
. Repeated acts of prostration were part of Magian, $abian, and
Christian monastic worship, but only among Christians was prostra-
tion part of a set of practices that included nocturnal vigils and the
recitation of scripture. Biblical references to prostration and vigils
made both practices acceptable to Jews and Christians. By the sixth
century, however, they were most typical of Christian monastic piety,
and Jews had replaced them with study at night. In performing his
prostration, the Christian monk first put his hands on the floor or
ground, then his knees, and then his head. In private exercises, the
number and frequency of prostrations varied and one hears of pros-
trations repeated for up to thirty or forty times (monks were not called
"athletes" without reason). The connection between these individual
exercises and the congregational nature of the Islamic ~alat can prob-
ably be found among the Monophysites. Monophysite monks at Amid
in the sixth century were described as performing nightly vigils while
52 Abbott, Literary Papyri, n, 200, 203.
53 Ibid., pp. 142-43; I. Goldziher, "Zauber-elemente im Islamischen Gebet," Noldeke-
Festschrift (Giessen, 1906), I, 320-28; Scher, "Histoire nestorienne," 11(2), 441; V66bus,
History of Asceticism, 11, 290; Isaac of Nineveh, "Mystic Treatises," pp. 48, 175; A. J.
Wensinck "Salat," El(1), IV, 96, 99.