I agree with Anahita.
The Greeks also considered the Mediterranean coasts of Turkey, Cyprus to be part of Ancient Greece. So I would think their religion would have been present.
Also, remember Muhammad lived around 500 AD. That is a lot of time for the Roman Empire and Christianity to have influenced the region.
Which might have some bearing on anything if the name of that day of the week had been selected at the founding of Christianity and not borrowed hundreds of years later (in English–it does not appear in Romance languages, Greek,or Aramaic) from the Northern European people who contributed to the formation of the English language.
Similarly, Thomas Mann wrote an interesting novel, but he added many of his own touches that are not supported by the historical record. I am not arguing that Christianity did not borrow heavily from earlier pagan beliefs, it clearly did, but let us not get carried away with imagining connections that do not exist.
Some of this stuff is similar to the ideas that various Christian groups use in an attempt to undermine Islam. There are certainly cultural traditions and motifs that have been adopted by newer religions from older ones, but it grossly oversimplifies the activity to state that one belief or another is “the same as” an earlier belief without examining the differences as well as the similarities.
[ /hijack ]
In what is now Iran, you’re absolutely right. Zoroastrianism does still exist today, but with no where near the numbers it once had. Interestingly, the Zoroastian Persians considered the Jews to be kindred people because of their shared monotheism and supported them against the romans. kinda ironic considering the situation today(WRT the persians, not modern Zoroastrians)
You’re off by about a century - Muhammed died in 632.
There likely was some influence, as I mentioned in another thread. However Christianity had not penetrated that strongly in the most of Arabia ( the Byzantine clients, the Ghassanids in the extreme northwest, were Jacobites; at least one prominent and late Lakhmid king, a client of the Sassanians in the extreme northeast, was Nestorian; also the town of Najran and probably a few other areas of north Yemen, were largely Christian, probably from Abyssinian influences ). Muhammed was probably exposed to both Nestorian and Jacobite missionaries and Christian traders from those near neighbors. But a greater direct influence seems to have been the Jewish communities, especially the one in Medina.
Judaism was much more widespread than most people belive. There were several countries, other than Israel that had Judaism or a varient as their official religion. Mostly in East African (at one time Ethiopia was Jewish, & there are still Jews there today), and at least one kingdom in the area of the Caspian Sea.
Don’t forget the Cochin Jews. In the state of Kerala on the west coast of South India. Kerala has had Jews since the B.C. times.
Kerala and Tamil Nadu have had Christians since the 1st century. (St. Thomas the Apostle is said to be buried in Madras.) The prizewinning author Arundhati Roy is one of the Syrian Christians of Kerala.
Kerala also has one of the highest proportions of Muslim population of any state in India. Muslims have been there since the first century of Islam. The renowned feminist poet of Kerala, Kamala Das, converted to Islam a few years ago. Now she’s a Muslim feminist.
The geographical reasons for this early Middle Eastern presence in Kerala is not hard to discover. The trade winds blowing from the Middle East naturally carry travelers to the coast of Kerala. They keep digging up all these Roman coins there.
I’ve done some reading on the worship of Baal, for example this site where we read
The end period is not clear . I’m only guessing, but I would say that the worship of Greek gods replaced other religions which were mostly pantheistic as well throughout the regions Alexander the Great conquered .