Ibn Abī Ḥātim reports (1): “Aḥmad ibn Manṣūr told us, al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā told us, Yaʿqūb told us, from Abū al-Muṭahhar, who said:

‘While Abū Jaʿfar—al-Bāqir—was standing in prayer, those present began to speak about Yazīd ibn al-Muhallab. When he finished and turned from his prayer he said, “You mentioned Yazīd ibn al-Muhallab; indeed, he was killed in the very first land where other than Allah was worshipped.

‘“They relate that Wadd was a righteous man, dearly loved by his people. When he died they gathered at his grave in the land of Babylon and mourned him intensely. Seeing their grief, Iblīs assumed the form of a man and said, ‘I can see how distressed you are over this man. Shall I fashion an image of him so you may keep it in your meeting place and remember him?’ They replied, ‘Yes,’ so he fashioned an image resembling him and they set it up in their assembly, using it to recall him.

‘“When he observed how much they spoke of him, he said, ‘Shall I not place in every one of your homes a statue like it, so each of you can remember him in your own house?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ He therefore made a statue for every household, and they began to remember him by means of it.

‘“Their children grew up watching what their parents did. Generations followed, and the original motive for remembering him faded until the grandchildren of their grandchildren took that image as a deity, worshipping it besides Allah. Thus the first object ever worshipped apart from Allah was the idol they named “Wadd.”’

This narrative implies that each of those idols was worshipped by a particular group of people. It has also been mentioned that as the ages passed they turned those likenesses into fully three-dimensional statues to make them more permanent, and thereafter they were worshipped instead of Allah. The avenues they pursued in venerating them are exceedingly numerous, and we have detailed them in the relevant passages of our Tafsīr; all praise and favor belong to Allah.

It is established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs (6) that when Umm Salamah and Umm Ḥabībah told the Messenger of Allah ﷺ about the church they had seen in Abyssinia, called Maria, describing its beauty and the images it contained, he said:

‘Those people—when a righteous man among them dies, they build a place of worship over his grave and then set up those images inside it. They are the worst of Allah’s creation.’

In sum: once corruption had spread throughout the earth and the scourge of idol-worship had become widespread, Allah sent His servant and messenger Noah, peace be upon him, calling people to worship Allah alone with no partner and forbidding the worship of anything else.

He was therefore the first messenger whom Allah sent to the inhabitants of the earth, as is affirmed in the two Ṣaḥīḥs (7) in the ḥadīth of Abū Ḥayyān, from