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Đū Shará (Arabic: ذو شرى)"Lord of the Mountain", also transliterated as 'Dusares', was an aniconic deity in the ancient Middle East worshipped by the Nabataeans at Petra and Madain Saleh (of which city he was the patron). In Greek times, he was associated with Zeus because he was the chief of the Nabataean pantheon as well as with Dionysus. His sanctuary at Petra contained a great temple in which a large cubical stone (Ka'ba) was the centrepiece.
The existence of this deity was mentioned by the 9th century CE historian Hisham Ibn Al-Kalbi, who wrote in The Book of Idols (Kitab al-Asnām) that: "The Banū al-Hārith ibn-Yashkur ibn-Mubashshir of the ˤAzd had an idol called Đū Sharā."
References
Ibn al-Kalbī; (author) and Nabih Amin Faris (translator & commentary) (1952): The Book of Idols, Being a Translation from the Arabic of the Kitāb al-Asnām. Princeton University Press. US Library of Congress #52006741
External links
- Nabataean religion
- The Book of Idols
- Kitab al-Asnam in the original Arabic (description on p. 5)
- Dhushara The Meaning of the Name
- "Solving the Enigma of Petra and the Nabataeans" Biblical Archaeology Review
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