Flora Unveiled

274 i Flora Unveiled

these make the land on both sides of them green and altogether pleasing. Moreover,

an altar is there built of hard stone and very old in years, bearing an inscription in

ancient letters of an unknown tongue. The oversight of the sacred precinct is in the

care of a man and a woman who hold the sacred office for life. The inhabitants of the

place are long- lived and have their beds in the trees because of their fear of the wild

beasts.^27

In the tradition of the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible who railed against the planting of the
sacred trees of the goddess Asherah, the Prophet Muhammad destroyed the sacred groves
of Al- ’Uzza. In the Book of Idols, ibn al- Kalbi relates that after the Prophet had captured
Mecca he dispatched one of his generals to Al- ’Uzza’s sanctuary in the valley of Nakhlah
to cut down the three sacred trees. Nachla is Arabic for date palm, which suggests that the
sacred trees in question were date palms. When the general had cut down two of the sacred
trees, the distraught priestess emerged—“an Abyssinian woman with disheveled hair and
her hands placed on her shoulder[s] , gnashing and grating her teeth.” The general slew the
priestess and cut down the third tree. Upon hearing the news, the Prophet declared, “That
was Al- ’Uzza. But she is no more.”
Muhammad may have struck down Al- ’Uzza, but the date palms and other garden plants
she represented were assimilated into the Paradise Garden of the Quran and thus retained
as religious symbols. Significantly, the Islamic ban on making images of “living things”
applies to humans and other animals, but not to plants. Indeed, plant decorations adorn
many famous mosques, including the Dome of the Rock, the mosque of Cordoba, and the
Ummayyed Great Mosque of Damascus (Figure 10.11). Some of the images are naturalistic,
including date palms, grapes, pomegranates, and olives, and some are more stylized. Despite
the destruction of her sanctuaries in the seventh century, Al- ’Uzza’s symbols— date palms,
other fruit trees, and garden flowers— have endured and continue to grace and beautify
Islamic mosques.

Mary and the Date Palm

Prior to the emergence of Islam, Christians had assimilated elements of pagan god-
desses into the figure of Mary. As discussed in Chapter 11, Mary’s identification with
f lowers and gardens reached its zenith in the High and Late Middle Ages, but, prior
to this, she was associated with sacred trees—both the Tree of Knowledge of Good
and Evil (in her role as the “Second Eve”) and the Tree of Life, by way of Near Eastern
goddesses. In the Christian literature, she is first associated with date palms in the
Apocrypha (non- canonical writings) of the New Testament. The Gospel of Pseudo-
Matthew, dating to around the sixth century ad, incorporates encounters with sacred
trees into the tale of Mary and Joseph’s f light to Egypt mentioned brief ly in the Gospel
of Matthew. Unlike the canonical version, however, the Gospel of Pseudo- Matthew
includes miraculous feats performed by the infant Jesus along the way to Egypt, such
as the taming of wild dragons. According to Pseudo- Matthew, on the third day of the
journey, after traversing the desert for hours, the Holy Family arrived at a solitary date
palm tree. Explaining to Joseph that she was tired and wished to rest in the shade of the