More prayers for rain

[qatarperegrine]

(A follow-up to yesterday's post on prayers for rain.)

Apparently, praying for rain is a tradition going back to Muhammad and is called istisqa. This involves doing two rak'at of prayer, making a supplication for rain, and putting your cloak on inside out. You can read all about it (including a rather nice description of Muhammad "laughing until his molar teeth could be seen" when the rain started) at the Islamic Community of Greater Cincinnati.

The Peninsula reports that the emir planned to join others in performing istisqa this morning.

Comments

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Beats me!

[materjibrail.livejournal.com]

I remember reading somewhere (Tony Hillerman?_ but he knows a lot) that the Hopi pray for rain, and the Navajo/Dine live with the rain that is given. Both are religious attitudes to the tenuousness of our survival on this planet. Does that, and Muhammed's exultation in the gift of Allah,and a western assumption that it's all"science" anyway, lead to any qatar-style theological musings?

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Nah; I think I'm happy with the Western assumption that it's all science anyway. :-) I think my faith in Things Unseen hits a brick wall when it comes to the idea of God intervening to change things like weather patterns because people want God to.

And anyway, I'm still busy musing on how Christians became monogamous. Were the Romans monogamous? (Not counting concubines and slave girls and all that.)

[materjibrail.livejournal.com]

There were three types of marriage in classical Rome: confarreatio, connubium and contubernium, I think they were called ( I could look it up). the first was upper class, clan power relationships and land and money, so obviously monogamous, though divorce became very common by the time of the Empire. The last was "shacking up', informal, the normal for poor people. So probably sequential or lasting single relationships, like America now.

And of course the rich had access to slave women (etc) just like American plantations.

Jews too

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

We Jews [specifically in Israel, IIRC] also pray and fast for rain in times of extreme drought. This happened three years in a row, when I was a child, but, thank G-d, only once since then. There is half a Tractate of the Talmud/Mishna dedicated to this topic, defining under what conditions this is done, and how. The "how" requirements get stricter as the drought progresses through the rainy season.