The number of pagan cities in the Ḥijāz was three—Mecca, Medina, and Ṭāʾif—and the inhabitants of each city possessed one of those three major idols. For this reason Allah, exalted is He, singles them out when He says:
“Have you considered al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt, the third, the other? Is the male for you and for Him the female? That, then, is an unfair division.” (Q 53:19–22)
That is, an unjust apportioning. He goes on:
“They are nothing but names you and your forefathers have coined; Allah has sent down for them no authority.” (Q 53:23)
For they assigned to Allah female offspring and female partners, so He repeats: “Is the male for you and for Him the female? That, then, is an unfair division.”

The roots of polytheism: venerating graves and worshipping the heavenly bodies
Among the children of Adam, most forms of polytheism arise from two principal sources.
The first: exalting the graves of the righteous and fashioning their likenesses in order to seek blessing from them. This was the earliest cause by which mankind invented polytheism, the very shirk of the people of Noah. Ibn ʿAbbās said, “There were ten generations between Adam and Noah; all of them were upon Islam.” It is authentically reported that the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—said, “Noah was the first Messenger sent to the people of the earth.” Hence Allah mentions no messenger in the Qur’an before him, for polytheism only surfaced in his era.
Al-Bukhārī records in his Ṣaḥīḥ—citing Ibn ʿAbbās, and many early scholars of exegesis and history concur—regarding the verse,
“And they said, ‘Do not abandon your gods; do not abandon Wadd, nor Suwāʿ, nor Yaghūth, Yaʿūq, or Nasr,’” (Q 71:23)
that these were righteous men among the people of Noah. When they died, their people gathered around their graves, then sculpted their images. Those idols were later inherited by the Arabs, and Ibn ʿAbbās listed the Arab tribes among whom such idols were found.