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]

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.