1
A first bright glimmer of dawn lit the horizon, the cool breeze giving way to dusty heat. A man stood still in the long, loose folds of his garments, watching as a small group of people made haste towards the central part of the city. He observed them enter a circular arena containing a cubic structure surrounded by statues. He watched as they passed the idols, and, one by one, bowed down to kiss the largest, a red agate bust known as Hubal.
The man turned away from this familiar scene to resume his journey. He walked past a family, including a small child wrapped in muslin, on its way to the cemetery. He could hear the approaching sounds of a caravan bustling into the city and moved to avoid it. Camel after camel, loaded with spices and silk, wine and perfume, loped its way to the market, followed by a long line of slaves trudging in single file. The noise and the odour of aromatic liquids filled the air. The city was now stirring. The man continued on his way towards a mountain northeast of the city. In less than an hour he was negotiating its gentle lower slope. When he reached the point where the gradient rises abruptly and the climb becomes more difficult, he stopped. Standing erect, he turned and looked towards the city below, surrounded by mountains from all sides. He was looking at Mecca.
The man’s name was Muhammad. He was in his early forties and of medium stature. Though his complexion was fair, where his body had been exposed to the elements he was tanned to a reddish hue. He had a slightly rounded face, a wide forehead and thin but full eyebrows. His curly hair, parted in the middle, tumbled around his neck.
Mecca has had many names. It was known as al-Balad: simply ‘the main city’, as it was a key urban centre and market town. It was known as al-Qaryah: a place where large numbers of people congregate like water flowing into a reservoir. And as the ‘Baca’ of biblical times it is mentioned in Psalms 84: 5–6:
Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.1
Some associate Baca with a balsam tree; a ‘gum-exuding (weeping) tree’; or ‘weeping wall-rocks’. The Arabic form of Baca, Bakkah, can be translated as ‘lack of stream’. The valley was indeed a dry place with no vegetation. The Greeks translated Baca as ‘the Valley of Weeping’. This Valley of Baca had strong associations with lack of water and ‘deep sorrow’, a place of lament. Yet, when the righteous passed through the valley, they could make it ‘a place of springs’, a source of life.
The focal point of pilgrimage in the Valley of Baca was a structure known simply as the Cube, or in Arabic, Kaaba. Forensic linguistics is littered with examples of a common phenomenon that occurs in many languages: this is the replacing, adding or subtracting of single letters in place names over time. London, for example, was originally called Londinium when the city was first established by the Romans. In the case of Mecca a shift took place from ‘one labial consonant to another, from B to M, and Baca, in Arabic Bakkah, came to be called Makkah, or English Mecca’.2
The inhabitants of the city were once known as the ‘Aribi’, a term that makes its first appearance in a cuneiform account of the Battle of Qarqar (853 BCE) by the Assyrian king Shalmanesar III. It means ‘nomad’ or ‘desert dweller’. In the sculptures dating back to this period, many discovered recently in tombs and cemeteries in northern Saudi Arabia, the Arabs have oval faces, large straight noses, small chins and huge eyes. The eyes, with dilated pupils (inlaid with black stones or lapis lazuli), hint perhaps at religious stupor. Or are they an indication, perhaps, of the widely held belief in the region that spiritual power resides in the faculty of sight? A beneficial look would induce bliss, an evil eye could kill.
Mecca was not the only major city in the region. The oasis of Taif lies sixty miles to the south, known as ‘the Garden of the Hijaz’ for its vines, fruits and vegetables. Just over 200 miles to the north of Mecca is the city of Yathrib, which in Muhammad’s time was home to Jewish clans renowned as goldsmiths and home to scholars familiar with the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. And around sixty miles southwest is the port of Jeddah, the gateway to the world outside. Apart from the Kaaba, Mecca had another advantage over these cities: it stood at the junction of two major global trade routes. The first went north–south, through the mountains of the Hijaz. To the south it went to Yemen, where it linked with the trade coming across the Indian Ocean from India and Southeast Asia; and northwards it went to Syria and the Mediterranean littoral. The second route went east–west. The eastern route ran through Iraq and on to Iran, Central Asia and eventually China; the western route connected to Abyssinia, the Red Sea ports of Egypt and eastern Africa.
The city’s fame was based on the Kaaba. The names of things are full of associations from the straightforward, such as the Kaaba, to the complex and multilayered implications of the names attached to the Valley of Baca in which it is located. It is possible to see the subtle shifts that connect the variety of names that fix and identify this particular spot on earth. Placing them in time is a different matter. Time is a dimension of human understanding, a challenge to our assumptions, imagination and our ability to make and, on occasion, break connections. Many arguments have swirled around the ancestry and age of the Kaaba and the city that grew around it.
Some modern academic critics question whether Mecca was ever an ancient pilgrimage site, as there is no archaeological evidence in support.3 But in this instance, an absence of evidence amounts to little more than an absence of archaeology; and these are very different things.
Today’s Mecca, in modern Saudi Arabia, has for the past eighty years been ruled by a family with a horror of history, of historical evidence, that includes evidence from archaeology, as well as from manuscripts. The government ensured that Mecca was washed clean of its history in June 1973 when entire districts of the city were bulldozed and its cultural property and historic sites were erased from the landscape as easily as one rubs out pencil marks on paper. The little archaeology that has been undertaken in Saudi Arabia occurs far removed from the Holy Places. As far as the Saudis are concerned Mecca has no prehistory, no history before Muhammad, and no history after Muhammad. This denial of Meccan history is based on a single reason: the Saudis do not want anyone to venerate Muhammad. The fear is that historical sites, rather than God, will become objects of worship.
Archaeological evidence, however, is not our only source of insights into history. Our window into the past includes words as well as memories, what today is known as oral history. Learning about the past from words requires a kind of detective work. Humanity’s written records are a jigsaw full of gaps that need to be filled. The gaps exist for no other reason than that writers of yesteryear were not writing for today’s audiences. They had their own concerns, their own reasons to write, and no requirement to answer today’s questions.
While it is impossible to place the origin of the Kaaba and the city that contains it in time, the mention in the Psalms of ‘those who set their hearts on pilgrimage’ ought to indicate some point in time when the practice was sufficiently established and well known to be comprehensible in the poems of the Jewish people. The Psalms, therefore, certainly would be a place to start seeking a point in time, if experts could agree on when they were written.
Many of the Psalms are attributed to the Prophet King David, whose reign is tentatively dated 1040–970 BCE. Psalm 84, however, is attributed to ‘the sons of Korah’, believed to be either a family of religious singers or a guild of singers and musicians. Originally, the sons of Korah were appointed by David to provide songs and music during the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. However, they continued to function long after. Psalm 84 might have come into existence at any time from the era of King David up to the time when the 150 Psalms found in the Old Testament are known to have existed in written form. This spans a period from somewhere after 1040 BCE up to around 165 BCE. At one time most experts opted for a more recent date, with a preference for the third century BCE. Nowadays the consensus pushes their origin further back in time based on evidence of comparable musical and literary forms known from other cultures in the region.4 All of this amounts to a great deal of detective work – but not exactly a result.
We can, however, agree with Edward Gibbon, the eighteenth-century historian and author of the celebrated Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, that ‘the genuine antiquity of Caaba ascends beyond the Christian era’.5 Gibbon knew of claims that the existence of Mecca was known to the ancient Greeks. Diodorus Siculus, the Greek historian who lived during the first century BCE, mentions the Kaaba in his Bibliotheca Historica, a book describing various parts of the discovered world: ‘a temple has been set up there, which is very holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians’.6 The city is also mentioned by Claudius Ptolemy, the Egyptian Roman citizen who wrote his classic text, Geography, in Greek, and lived around 90–168 CE. A mathematician and astronomer, Ptolemy’s works remained the basis of learning before the birth of the modern era. In his survey of the inhabitable world he provides a list of cities in Arabia Felix. Amongst them is ‘a place called Macoraba’,7 which ‘allows us to identify it as a South Arabian foundation created around a sanctuary’.8
History can also be traced through objects, and in particular through long-distance trade in the Middle East that goes as far back as 14,000 BCE. For example the volcanic glass obsidian is of limited occurrence and its distinctive chemical makeup allows its journeys over time to be mapped. A string of archaeological sites from modern-day Iraq to Pakistan, home of the Indus Valley civilization of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, provide evidence of a trade route dating back to around 3000 BCE.9 When the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II was buried in 1224 BCE several peppercorns that would have originated in India or even Southeast Asia were used along with other unguents as part of the embalming process.10 The camel, the utility beast of burden of long-distance trade, was domesticated by around 1000 BCE.11
In addition to land-based routes, by the first century CE there is evidence of the existence of seaborne trade linking Southeast Asia via the Arabian Peninsula to the cities of the Roman Middle East and the Mediterranean world. The Periplus of the Erythean Sea, a Greek periplus, describes and documents these routes. It was written around 40 CE, though it does not mention Mecca as a trading centre. But the city had all the right attributes and factors of location to play its part in connecting the well-established networks of global commerce from an early date.
As he surveyed his city Muhammad had no need to doubt the importance of trade in the life of his community. He had participated in the caravan trade himself. His success had even brought him to the notice of the wealthy widow, Khadijah, who would become his wife. But it was not the economic status of Mecca that preoccupied him. His concern, as he gazed on the valley below, was that he was looking at the ‘Valley of Abraham’. As he stood there – there about a third of the way up Jabal al-Nur, the Mountain of Light – he could easily pick out the Kaaba, at the centre of the city. And he began to reflect on its association with Abraham.
In the stories and poems of Arabia before Islam, Mecca was the city of Abraham, biblical prophet, patriarch of Israelites and Ishmaelites, and founder of the monotheistic faiths. Indeed, there was nothing in the arid, barren valley before Abraham turned it into a place of permanent habitation. He is said to have been born in the city known as Ur of the Chaldees, now located in modern-day Iraq. His place in time and geography is not clear. Judaic sources suggest that Abraham lived somewhere between 1812 and 1637 BCE. This could mean he was born into the Sumero-Akkadian Empire of Ur-Nammur, the third dynasty of Ur. This is the majority Judaic opinion and is shown on most modern biblical maps, located below the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in Iraq today.
Little was known of the city state of Ur before excavations began in 1922 on a vast brick mound some 230 miles south of Baghdad. No reference to Abraham was found. Then, during the digging season of 1928–9, researchers unearthed one of the most evocative artefacts of the ancient world. It was a gold and lapis lazuli statuette of an animal standing on its hind legs caught in the branches of a golden bush. It reminded the researchers of God’s words to Abraham in Genesis 22:13 – ‘Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns’ – and it was named ‘the ram in the thicket’. It now resides in the British Museum. I remember I was entranced the first time I saw it. The statuette was as responsible as the wealth of information that became available about this powerful city for sealing its associations with Abraham.
However, there has long been an alternative dissenting view, both in Islamic tradition and in the opinion of the great medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides. This alternative theory locates Abraham at Urfa, the modern Edessa, now in southern Turkey. It is argued that this is a more logical starting point for a migration that took the patriarch from his native city via Haran, in modern-day Turkey, and on to the Land of Canaan, somewhere between modern-day Lebanon and the Jordan river valley. Other minority opinions opt for a variety of different locations in northern Mesopotamia. There are additional minority opinions on his dates as well: some place him in a much earlier time, as far back as 2153 BCE.
As he stood on Jabal al-Nur, Muhammad was not concerned with the historical detail of Abraham’s life but with the meaning and significance of his founding of the Kaaba and Mecca. Muhammad would have grown up with stories that Abraham’s father was a maker and seller of idols. As the young Abraham watched his father carve statues out of wood, he began to ask questions: questions such as, how could something shaped by human hands be an object of worship? His doubts led him not only to denounce idol worship but to dedicate his life to the one God. Muhammad knew Abraham as Khalil Allah, a true and intimate friend of God. And, as recent research confirms, he counted himself as a follower of those who, like Abraham, believed in One Omnipotent God, who created the heavens and the earth and all that is in between.12
Abraham failed in his mission to liberate his people from paganism. Incensed by his questioning and by his mockery of their gods, they punished him by throwing him onto a fire. He was saved by God; and moved, with his wife Sarah, first to Palestine and then to Egypt.
The couple wanted more children. However, unable at the time to conceive, Sarah suggested that Abraham take as a concubine her slave girl, Hagar. Soon afterwards, Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Later, when Sarah was blessed with her own son, Isaac, she became intensely jealous of Abraham’s other family and asked him to take both of them away. Realizing that it was not possible for the two women to live in the same household, Abraham took Hagar and her son and travelled south with one of the great caravans on the incense route.
They left the caravan when they reached the Valley of Baca. Abraham left Hagar and her infant son there with some provisions. Hagar built a little hut and settled down, waiting for Abraham to pay a return visit. When the provisions ran out, she began to look for food and water but could not find any. She ran frantically between the two small hills of Safa and Marwah, and returned to find her child crying from thirst. She ran again and again, becoming more and more desperate. The valley lived up to its name: Baca, a place without a stream, ‘the Valley of Weeping’. Seven times she ran between the two hills but without success. Then, as we read in the Bible:
When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away, for she thought, ‘I cannot watch the boy die’. And as she sat there nearby, she began to sob. God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation’. Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.13
Hagar and Ishmael drank till they were both satisfied. The well and the spring that fed it came to be known as Zamzam. Mother and child settled in the valley, which began to be established as a place of rest and refreshment for the travellers and caravans that passed through. In exchange for the services they rendered to passers-by, Hagar and Ishmael were sufficiently provided for. ‘God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer,’ the Bible tells us.14
Abraham visited Hagar and Ishmael from time to time. According to the Islamic tradition, on one of his visits he found Ishmael sharpening an arrow beneath a tree, close to Zamzam. When Ishmael saw his father, he stood up and greeted him. After they hugged each other, Abraham said: ‘O Ishmael, God has commanded me to do something.’
‘You must do what your Lord has commanded you to do,’ Ishmael replied.
‘But will you help me?’ Abraham asked.
‘Of course,’ the boy replied instinctively.
‘God has commanded me to build a house here,’ Abraham said, pointing towards a small rise that was higher than the land around it.15
Together, father and son set about their task. First they laid the foundations of the House. Then Ishmael started to gather and bring stones from the surrounding hills as Abraham placed them carefully to create a well-defined structure. As the structure grew in height, it became difficult for Abraham to raise the stones and place them on higher levels. So Ishmael brought an especially large boulder. Abraham stood on the rock and carried on the building work; so arduous was his task that his feet left an impression in the stone, a point that today, according to Islamic tradition, is known as Muqam Ibrahim (the place of Abraham).
When the cubic building was almost complete an angel brought a special stone – it had fallen from Paradise onto the nearby hill of Abu Qubays. Abraham and Ishmael incorporated the black celestial stone (al-hajar al-aswad) in the eastern corner of the Kaaba. The building, which still lacked a roof, was now complete. Abraham declared it a sanctuary, a place of pilgrimage for men and women to come and visit on foot and on every lean camel out of every deep ravine.
I have often wondered about both the standard biblical and the orthodox Muslim accounts of Abraham’s story. Abraham, supposedly a devout servant of God, turns out to be rather cruel, happy to abandon Hagar and his infant son in an arid, uninhabitable place. Is this the example that a Prophet is meant to leave for the rest of humankind? Similarly, I wonder why it is that Sarah offers Hagar to Abraham.16 Yet more perplexing are the geographical locations of events recorded in the Bible and in Muslim history.
According to the Bible, Hagar wandered in the city of Beersheba, located in the Negev desert, and eventually settled in the desert known as Paran. If that is the case, then it is highly unlikely that she would turn up several hundred miles away in Mecca; or that Abraham would visit her frequently. It is possible, as recent research suggests, that Abraham and his family were located not in Egypt and Palestine, but in the Asir province, which shares its western border with Yemen, in the southwest of Arabia.17 That, of course, would make the Muslim account more plausible. And Abraham would be able to visit Hagar and Ishmael relatively easily and more frequently.
The story of Abraham, with all its contradictions, improbabilities and different interpretations, like those of all biblical patriarchs, is history without definitive and accurate biography. It is mostly an oral saga handed down from generation to generation.18 The absence of a factual biography does not mean that this story lacks historical roots. Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Sarah and Hagar are real, even if the details of their biography vary in different religious traditions. Moreover, their story is not solely a tale of how Mecca came to be. It is also a story of what Mecca means to billions, and how this came to be. The importance is in the meaning as much as it is in the factual detail.
Does the meaning of the life of Abraham become more pertinent if we can fix it in time and place? The moral of the story, after all, is timeless, just as its substance reaches beyond time. Abraham perceives, appreciates and is loyal to the Eternal; this is what he establishes for those who come after, whatever was his time, wherever he lived. It is also the meaning of the House he built, the Kaaba, and the city that grew around it. And yet I am fascinated by all the detective work, the sifting through the variety of available evidence, the way in which old and new evidence has been interpreted and reinterpreted as the jigsaw of the human past has been fitted together in its still incomplete current version.
Is it likely that we will appreciate Abraham and his significance more should someone unearth definitive archaeological proof of his existence? I am less certain, and am reminded of the discovery of the city of Troy by archaeologists in 1868. The works of Homer are etched in the European imagination, and it is safe to say that the world’s collective appreciation of the Odyssey and the Iliad did not grow as a consequence of this piece of science.19
The biblical narrative of Abraham and his sons divides to establish the origins of two different groups of people. The Bible promotes Isaac, while Ishmael is treated contemptuously in the New Testament and in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In the Muslim tradition, Isaac is respected but not remembered. Ishmael’s descendants become the Arabs; whereas the Jews originate from Isaac and from his son Jacob. A single patriarch and two sons eventually produce three religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Beyond Abraham, we have to rely almost exclusively on Muslim sources. There are no other sources on ancient Mecca. The first book to be written about Mecca was put together before 865 by a native of the city: Meccan Reports by al-Azraqi.20 Virtually nothing is known about al-Azraqi, but we know that the work itself, ‘the earliest preserved example of a book devoted to a single city’,21 was later edited and expanded by a student of al-Azraqi and includes references up to 923. But Meccan Reports is not history as we conventionally understand it. To begin with, it concentrates on the city monuments, for example the Kaaba and Muqam Ibrahim, and the living quarters of the city. What it tells us about ancient Mecca is based on oral tradition and the stories familiar to the city’s inhabitants. Whereas al-Azraqi tells us little about the social and political makeup of Mecca, more general histories focus on the city’s notables, its politics and struggles. One of the most important of these is the monumental forty-volume History of al-Tabari,22 the ninth-century historian, theologian and commentator. Al-Tabari (838–923), who was of Persian origins, was an avid collector of stories; and he includes them all, good and bad, true and false, without comment, in his work. The biographer ibn Saad (784–845), who was born in Basra, Iraq, and worked as a scribe before blooming into a writer, seemed just as open-minded. His multi-volume Book of the Major Classes,23 a compendium of biographical information on famous figures regarded as one of the earliest works of biographical literature in Arabic, is full of all kinds of narrations. It is difficult, I think, to swallow them all. Other historians were more discerning. The biographer and historian ibn Ishaq (d. 767 or 761) was more discerning in what he included in The Life of Muhammad,24 the first part of which deals with the ancient history of Mecca.
We can regard these narrations as ‘it has been said’ history, for they are based on oral narrations, traditional stories, genealogy, poetry, sagas and myths. That, however, does not mean that we can dismiss this history. What is handed down, orally or written, need not always be economical with the truth. It does mean, however, that we need to be more critical of this material, and be scrupulous when sifting through it. It is possible to produce a realistic account of the ancient history of Mecca with some careful, judicious scrutiny.
Islamic tradition tells us that on the Mountain of Light, Muhammad was struggling to answer what had darkened the legacy of his own lineage. What had happened to the teachings of Abraham and Ishmael? Where did it all go so wrong? ‘Who but a fool,’ he said to himself, ‘would forsake the religion of Abraham?’25 He began to climb again. It was a steep but familiar climb. A little distance from the summit he paused to take a breath. He sat on a large boulder and turned his deep, dark eyes once again towards the city as he recalled the stories he knew of its history.
The House of Abraham became a sanctuary under the guardianship of the descendants of Ishmael at the start of the second millennium BCE. People from around the region began to pay their homage to the House, and slowly it became a site of pilgrimage that attracted visitors from further afield. Ishmael’s children and grandchildren worked hard to ensure that peace was maintained in the Sanctuary and the surrounding area, that the landscape was not disturbed, or trees cut down. The visitors and those living around the Sanctuary would visit the Kaaba during the day and retire to their tents and dwellings in the surrounding countryside at sunset. The temple remained solitary and silent at night.
But the Ishmaelites’ role in guarding the Sanctuary would not last. Arabia was dominated by a people of Arab stock known as the Amalik (Amalekites of the Bible), who had settled in all the major regions and towns of the peninsula, as well as in Syria and Palestine. Various clans of the Amalik engaged in long-running inter-tribal conflicts. It was during one of these conflicts that the Amalik attacked the Ishmaelites. The Ishmaelites believed that violence was sinful, and therefore did not defend themselves. The Amalik drove them out of the Baca Valley and they became nomads in the areas surrounding Mecca.
Eventually, the Amalik themselves were driven out not just from Mecca but from the region of the Hijaz by the joint efforts of two different tribes: the Jurham and the Qatura. The Jurham came originally from Yemen; they migrated to Baca and were seen, unlike the Ishmaelites, as ‘genuine Arabs’ – Arabic was their native tongue. The Ishmaelites on the other hand were seen as ‘naturalized’ Arabs, for they only learned Arabic after they had settled in the Baca Valley. The Qatura were the tribal cousins of the Jurham, and travelled with them from Yemen to Mecca. The Jurham, who lived on the western slopes of Baca, controlled the passage in and out of the nearby port of Jeddah, and guarded the area around the Kaaba. The Qatura occupied the Abu Qubays mountain to the east and monitored the entry from Yemen. Pilgrims coming from either direction had to pay protection money to these tribes. It was a precarious arrangement, and hostilities inevitably followed, leading to a clash of the two tribes. Eventually, the Jurham defeated the Qatura and became the sole religious and civil authority in the Sanctuary, although we do not know when this actually happened.26
The Jurham justified their rule in Mecca by claiming close ties, largely by marriage, to the Ishmaelites. As their kin, the Ishmaelites were not only allowed to live in the Baca Valley but some amongst them were given exalted positions of priesthood. The Jurham ruled Mecca for several generations. The city was relatively peaceful during most of their reign, but at the height of their power, the sources indicate, the Jurham became greedy and neglectful of their duties. Far from protecting the pilgrims, from whom they levied a tax, and maintaining peace in the Sanctuary, they started to rob the pilgrims. Worse: they stole the gifts and sacrifices that the pilgrims placed in the Kaaba.27 Thieves would climb into the roofless building and steal whatever they could lay their hands on. The sacred nature of the precinct was also compromised. It was not unusual for couples to be caught having sex in the temple, or engaging in other unbecoming behaviour.
The leader of the Jurham, who claimed descent from Ishmael’s father-in-law, was called Mudad ibn Amer, known simply as ‘the Mudad’. He was concerned that the gods of the Sanctuary would punish his people for their sins. There was a clear early indication: the spring at Zamzam had begun to dry up. So Mudad collected all the treasures of the Kaaba – said to include a pair of golden gazelles and fine swords – and hid them in the empty well to save them from the marauders. Then he fled into the desert to await the judgement of his gods in Mecca.
In the distant land of Saba in Yemen, the Great Dam of Marib, considered one of the engineering wonders of the ancient world, was crumbling. It had been in a state of disrepair for over a century – from inscriptions and records, we can date this to somewhere between the fourth and fifth century CE. It was about to collapse and flood the city of Saba. Alerted by one of their priestesses, the city’s inhabitants decided to escape the impending disaster by migrating north. When the refugees reached Mecca, they were met by the unwelcoming Jurham. The Ishmaelites came out to support the refugees. A pitched battle followed, and the Jurham were soundly defeated. Warriors were massacred; women were taken into slavery. The Mudad looked down upon Mecca from Mount Abu Qubays, wept, and recited the following verses:
Many a woman reciter, her tears flowing abundantly,
Her eye sockets reddened from weeping,
(said): ‘it is as if there had (never) been from Hajun to Safa,
A friend or a companion to speak together in the Meccan night’
And I replied to her, while my heart
Palpitated within me, as a bird between its wings:
‘Aye, we were its people and we have been exterminated’.
The eyes pour tears, weeping for a land
In which is a safe sanctuary and holy stations
Weeping for the temple where the doves are unharmed,
Where they live securely. There (dwell) also the sparrows,
And the wild beasts, untamed.
And if they leave, they would fain return.28
The victors had their problems too. A raging epidemic broke out amongst the invading tribes. They saw this as a bad omen and decided not to stay in Mecca. Some went to Oman, others to Yathrib, still others to Syria. Only the Sabean tribe of the Khuza decided to stay in Mecca. They wanted the Ishmaelites to return to the city and resume the guardianship of the Kaaba. However, the Ishmaelites were fighting amongst themselves; so the Khuza decided to look after the Kaaba. To remove all animosities and ensure peace, the ruling family of the Khuza, the Luhayy, made an alliance with the family of the Mudad. Through this alliance the Khuza established a flourishing state in Mecca at about the beginning of the Christian era.
Amr, the leader of the Luhayy, was an extremely generous man. He went out of his way to feed and clothe pilgrims, not hesitating to sacrifice his own camels to provide meat for the visitors. But his real fame lies elsewhere: he is said to have been the first person to introduce paganism to Mecca, and bring idols into the Sanctuary. It began when he received a statue of Hubal, an oracular deity, with arrows marked on it for divining the future, as a gift. The statue, made of agate, was damaged. Amr, an exceptionally wealthy man, had the hand of the idol recast in gold. He then placed it on top of the treasury well in the Kaaba. Other families then proceeded to place their own idols in the courtyard of the Kaaba: Manaf, the sun god; Quzah, who held the rainbow; Nasr, the eagle-shaped god. The sculptures themselves were inspired by Greco-Roman art. Manaf, for example, showed clear aspects of a Hellenized solar deity. Three, more active, divinities had a special place of honour in the Meccan pantheon, and were widely worshipped by the Arabs: al-Lat, the mother-goddess; Manat, the goddess of fate who represented the darkened moon; and al-Uzza, ‘the she devil’, the goddess of love, sex and beauty. These goddesses had supernatural influence on stones and trees around the region. Al-Uzza was said to frequent three trees in the Valley of Nakhla. A rock in Taif was sacred to al-Lat.29
The pilgrimage to Mecca now became an entirely pagan affair. The Luhayy introduced a number of rites and rituals that had to be followed strictly. The underlying emphasis was on maximizing profit. The date of the pilgrimage would be computed each year by a seer and synchronized with a series of fairs held throughout the region. Pilgrims en route to Mecca would first attend these smaller fairs and festivals before arriving at the Sanctuary for the major ceremony. A poetry competition was held in Ukaz, near Taif, where people gathered to hear poets demonstrate their skills and oral dexterity. They were treated to short verses in a four-syllable metre (called rajaz) that emulated the pace of a camel, or to epic poems and long odes, the qasidahs, which paid homage to gods, great Arabs and enchanted mistresses, or related fables and desert adventures.
Or again there might be caustic satires directed against real and imagined enemies. The seven best poems, selected by an oracle, would be written out by hand, and prepared for mounting on the walls of the Kaaba. After the contest, the poets would join the other pilgrims. The pilgrim processions, led by enchanters and sorcerers, were jolly and colourful affairs, a roving religious circus. There were camels loaded with gifts from all the leaders and rulers of the region, and consecrated camels, decorated with charms and magical jewellery, carrying the idols of various tribes. According to Emel Esin, the twentieth-century Turkish historian of Mecca:
There were seers in a state of trance, who chirped, cooed or hissed according to the bird or snake-genie that inspired them. Sorceresses, who were believed to entangle the course of human lives by tying symbolic knots, came with their long hair flying loose behind them, uttering incantations. Musicians clashed their cymbals and tambourines. Behind them streamed the crowd of pilgrims, some of them no doubt wearing Amer’s gifts of striped Yemeni robes, in the sombre tones of Arab dyes.30
There was no shortage of entertainment, endless supplies of local date wine, as well as the more refined wines of Syria, dancing girls, jugglers, magicians, and opportunities for gambling and sex.
The fairgrounds were the ancient equivalent of modern shopping malls. They were packed with generous supplies of local goods such as scented woods, oil and perfume, gold, silver, and precious stones from the mountains of Arabia. There were imported luxury goods: spices from India, silk from China, fine cotton from Egypt, tanned leather from Anatolia, armour from Basra, slaves from Africa and Persia. There were commodities needed for basic survival: camel loads of grain from outside Arabia and fruits and vegetables from the oases in the region. There were herbalists for the sick, wandering surgeons ready to mend broken bones or perform operations, and dentists to replace broken teeth with gold ones.
After attending fairs, poetry competitions, even drunken orgies, various pilgrim processions would all converge on Muzdalifah, an open area a few miles outside Mecca, but still just inside the sacred territory. Here they would be greeted by the Meccan nobility, dressed in long flowing robes reflecting their status and religious roles. The high priest of Mecca would light a fire. The guests and allies of the Meccan rulers would join them in their camps. The guests of the Ishmaelites would be lodged in their scarlet leather tents. Everyone else – the ordinary people, the Bedouins, those who lived too far from Mecca, the foreigners who were not noble guests, those who had been cast out of their tribes, the beggars and the vagabonds – were ushered towards the plains of Arafat, just outside the sanctified area. There they waited for a signal. Just after the sunset, when a sign was given, the massed pilgrim crowd ran towards the fire at Muzdalifah and fell on a lavish feast prepared by the Meccans. After the meal, the rites of pilgrimage continued. Homage would be given to sacred trees and stones. Lavish offerings – necklaces, earrings, nose-rings – would be made to idols. Oracles would be consulted. And sacrifices would be made at altars all the way from Muzdalifah to Mecca.
On approaching the Kaaba, the pilgrims would remove all their clothes. A few would cover themselves scantily, with fabrics bought or borrowed in Mecca, but most would be naked. Dancing and clapping, the eighth-century Arab historian Hisham ibn-al-Kalbi (d. 819) tells us, they would enter the temple, now housing 360 idols, including statues of Abraham and Ishmael, and circumambulate the Kaaba chanting:
By Allat and al-’Uzza,
And Manah, the third idol besides.
Verily they are the most exalted females
Whose intercession is to be sought.31
Refreshed from his rest on the Mountain of Light, Muhammad resumed his climb. It was his practice to retreat to this mountain to reflect and meditate when life in the city below became too oppressive or depressing. How much would he have known about the Jurham and the Mudad, and Amr of the Luhayy? Muhammad was ‘unlettered’: he could not read or write. This does not necessarily mean that he was uneducated. He was the product of an oral culture, where history and tradition were passed from generation to generation through sagas, genealogical narratives, and most importantly, poetry. He was probably well versed in the ancient history of his city: he would have heard the sagas repeatedly told, the epic poems, the odes, the satires, as well as the lament of the Mudad, and the couplets of Amr of the Luhayy:
We became custodians of the Kaaba after Jurham
that we might keep it prosperous, free from every
Wrongdoer and unbeliever
A valley whose birds and wild animals may not be touched
We are its custodians and we do not discharge our duties
dishonestly
Nay! We were its people, but we were destroyed
By the vicissitudes of time and stumbling fate.32
The history of Mecca was constantly being recited in its streets and squares, alleys and assemblies, and within and around the Sanctuary. The Meccans lived and breathed their history. In this fiercely tribal society Muhammad would, of course, have been familiar with the history of his own tribe – the Quraysh.
The Quraysh, a large tribe of Ishmael’s descendants, have a special place in the ancient history of Mecca. The earliest member of the Quraysh to leave his imprint on the city was Zayd bin Kilab, who was born around 400 CE. Zayd’s father died soon after his birth, and his mother Fatima was left to look after him and his brother, Zuhrah. Soon afterwards, she met and married a man from Aqaba who was visiting Mecca on pilgrimage. Fatima’s new husband took her and Zayd back to his home town, leaving Zuhrah, who was much older, in Mecca amongst his own tribe. So Zayd grew up in the ancient settlement of Aqaba amongst the Nabatean Arabs, the people of North Arabia, who controlled the trading networks between Arabia and Syria, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea, from their oasis settlements. He must have stood out as different in his mother’s second family, as he was dubbed ‘Qusayy’, or ‘the little stranger’. And it was as Qusayy that he became famous in Mecca’s history.33
Qusayy hated being seen as a stranger and was determined to get back to Mecca. But his mother would not give him permission to travel until he was a young adult, when he joined a pilgrim caravan travelling south along the desert route. Once in Mecca, he wasted no time in finding himself the perfect bride. He asked the man who was in charge of the Kaaba and ruled Mecca, Hulayl, the chief of the Khuzah tribe, for the hand of his daughter, Hubba, in marriage. Both father and daughter were besotted with the highly intelligent and handsome young man. Qusayy married Hubba and moved into Hulayl’s house. Hubba bore him four sons, each named after and dedicated to one of the gods in the Kaaba. His wealth multiplied, and the respect he received from the citizens of Mecca increased proportionately.
When Hulayl become too old to perform his rituals and gate-keeping duties at the Kaaba, he asked his daughter to take over. She, in turn, turned to her husband – much to the displeasure of her tribe. The Khuza were infuriated that a sacred duty, which they had carried out for so long, should be so capriciously handed to an upstart and an outsider. Qusayy saw himself as a direct descendant of Ishmael and, as such, someone with more right to look after the Kaaba and rule the city. He decided to expel the Khuza from Mecca. He summoned all his relatives, both Ishmaelites and Nabateans, to help. They came from near and far, riding swiftly and silently at night, in large numbers. A bloody battle took place in Mina, a short distance from Mecca. It was brief and decisive: Qusayy and his relatives were victorious and agreed that an arbitrator should decide the fate of the vanquished. His verdict was that the Khuza were related to Qusayy by marriage and hence could not be expelled from the city. Nevertheless, Qusayy was now the undisputed ruler and the prime priest of Mecca. He asked all the members of his tribe, the Quraysh, scattered throughout the region, to come together and settle in Mecca. After two thousand years of exile, the Ishmaelites returned to the city of their origin.
Qusayy was as brilliant an administrator as he was a politician. Under his leadership, Mecca was forged as a proper city, united under a single tribe. Up to this time there were no houses near the Kaaba. The nearest inhabitants were located on the slopes of the Abu Qubays mountains, overlooking the valley. The well of Zamzam had been forgotten and lost. Qusayy built new houses next to the Kaaba, laid out in concentric circles. Closest to the temple, enclosing the dusty courtyard and facing the north side of the Kaaba, was his own house, followed by houses for his sons and close relatives. The rows behind were designated according to strict rules of caste and status. The more prestigious a family or a clan, the closer to the temple. There was also accommodation for tribes allied to the Quraysh, or regarded as their equal, such as the Khuza. The outcasts, the slaves, and foreigners were all located on the outskirts of the city. New wells were dug around the city to supply everyone with water. The houses themselves were modelled on the Kaaba, being cubic in shape with a single door. While most were built simply of rough local stones, some were built with baked or unbaked bricks, and a few were decorated with marble, coloured stones or seashells from the Red Sea. The dwellings of the prosperous even had elevated ceilings supported by pillars, or a garden with an odd palm tree growing in a courtyard. ‘Along the narrow streets merchants would sell spices and perfumes, local and imported cloths, garments and sandals, water-skins, stone vessels, honey and dates, the juices of Taif grapes and the millet that was their common food. There were wells with cisterns in the town squares, and caravan camels would be brought there to kneel, deposit their burdens and to drink.’34
The newly built city was open for business. It welcomed those who came to perform the pilgrimage, attend the numerous fairs organized around the city, or were simply passing through with their caravans. Serving the constant stream of visitors required security and appropriate facilities. Defence was the responsibility of every tribe and clan. According to tribal laws, it was all for one and one for all. Every clan had a duty to defend not only its own members but also all taken under its umbrella as guests, including pilgrims, thrill-seekers, merchants and foreign guests, and much honour could be gained by protecting them. For all other duties, Qusayy established a number of councils: a city council that looked after the overall administration of the city, an advice council of elders, a leadership council and a council for the administration of the Kaaba. A number of important duties were divided amongst various families: some were responsible for supplying water to the pilgrims, some for collecting taxes to pay for feeding the poor pilgrims, and some were required to look after horses and camels. There was an emergency committee and ambassadors responsible for foreign affairs. The person in overall charge of both secular and spiritual affairs was Qusayy himself. He led all the ceremonies within the temple, consulted the oracles, and supervised the distribution of food and water to pilgrims. His house doubled as the city hall where council meetings were held and people came to seek his permission on all matters, including his consent to marry outside the tribe. During wars, he led the troops into battle.
The policy pursued by Qusayy had two basic components: unity and neutrality. His aim was to emphasize unity by merging several Meccan cults into one. Sacred totems and tokens of every Meccan clan were gathered in the Kaaba. He also encouraged other tribes in Arabia to bring their tokens and fetishes to the Kaaba and thus come together in a common sacredness. All the different deities from all the clans, from inside and outside Mecca, were presided over by the chief deity Al-lah, literally ‘the god’, who was the guarantor of the pilgrimage and unity amongst the Meccan clans.
To maintain a constant flow of both pilgrims and caravans to Mecca, the city must have a reputation for neutrality in the region, and Qusayy aimed for both religious and political neutrality. By now there were strong Jewish communities in the northern Hijaz, and Christianity was particularly strong in Yemen to the south. Indeed, the Jews had established their presence in Arabia well before the arrival of the Christians. They arrived in the Hijaz as traders as early as the first century BCE; the migration increased considerably after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and their banishment from Jerusalem by the Romans in 135 CE. There were large Jewish communities in such cities as Yathrib, Khaibar, Taima and Fadak, working as farmers, craftsmen, goldsmiths and makers of fine armour. Over one-third of the population of Yathrib was said to be Jewish. But there were hardly any Jews in Mecca itself, although the city did have some Christians. The largest Christian community was to be found not in the Hijaz but in Najran in southern Arabia. Hijaz itself had more monasteries, established by Syrian monks, than churches. The Meccans looked up to the Christians, seeing them as learned; they had mastered the art of writing at the court of Hira, a noted Christian city on the west bank of the southern Euphrates, long before it became established in the Arabian peninsula. Also, the Christians were respected for their skills in poetry. On the east coast of Arabia, Zoroastrianism was also important. Meccans welcomed and served members of all these different faith communities – they favoured none but invited all to pass through the city and attend its fairs and pilgrimages. ‘Even Christian Arabs made pilgrimage to Kaaba, honouring Allah there as God the Creator.’35
Geographically, Mecca was almost equidistant from three major political powers of the region. Situated midway between Syria and Yemen, it was almost as far from the Persian Sassanid Empire, which controlled what is now Iraq. Qusayy aimed to keep all these major powers at bay and maintain the neutrality of Mecca and its ruling tribe, the Quraysh. In his rise to power, Qusayy had taken advantage of Byzantine interest in Mecca: he used their help to gain full control of the city and yet remain outside their sphere of influence. He was aware that both the Romans and Abyssinians had their eyes on the Hijaz and had made forays into the region. Indeed, the Abyssinians had sent troops as far north as Yathrib targeting Jewish settlements along the trade route. Mecca was a prime target for an empire looking for quick riches, and fertile ground for monks and priests seeking converts. Maintaining neutrality was not an easy task. Yet Qusayy managed to pursue an aggressive policy of neutrality and keep control of the north–south trade that made Mecca rich. By the time he died, Mecca had acquired considerable prestige and the Quraysh were seen as a dependable tribe who valued honour and honesty.
After his death, Qusayy’s duties were divided amongst his family. It was a recipe for a family feud, which followed in due course. Civil war broke out, and pitted Qusayy’s sons against each other. At the end of the hostilities, the clear winners were Qusayy’s twin grandsons: Abd al-Shams, ‘the servant of the Sun’, and Amer, who was known as Hisham, ‘the bread breaker’, because he distributed bread to pilgrims. The young brothers, known for their courtesy and good temper, divided their grandfather’s responsibilities between them, with Hisham and his party retaining the office of providing food and water to the pilgrims.
Hisham, who was renowned for his nobility and generosity, travelled extensively in the region on business. On a trip to Yathrib, he met and fell in love with a noblewoman of the Khazar tribe called Salma. They married, and a year later Salma gave birth to a boy who was named Shaybah. Hisham did not live to see his son grow up. He died soon after the birth, on a trade journey to Gaza, entrusting his brother Muttalib to take care of his son, who was still with his mother in Yathrib.
The young Shaybah stayed with his mother until he was seven or eight, developing an ardent interest in archery. When his uncle Muttalib eventually came to take him back to his father’s clan in Mecca, he feared that Salma would not relinquish her son. On arriving in Yathrib he saw a group of young boys playing under the watchful eyes of some elders. He asked if they knew his nephew. ‘Yes,’ they said, and pointed to Shaybah. ‘This is your brother’s son, and if you want to take him, do so now, before his mother finds out. If she finds out she will not let him go, and we shall have to prevent you from taking him.’ Muttalib called out to Shaybah: ‘Nephew, I am your uncle, and I want to take you to your people.’36 Without hesitation, the young Shaybah climbed on his uncle’s camel. When Muttalib and Shaybah reached Mecca it was early morning and the city’s inhabitants were sitting in their assemblies. Muttalib was wearing fine saffron robes and the purple sash of the high-born Quraysh; the boy was dressed modestly in the clothes of an archer. The citizens thought Muttalib had acquired a new slave and gave the boy a nickname: Abd al-Muttalib, ‘Muttalib’s servant’. History would know him by this name.
Abd al-Muttalib inherited his uncle’s duties of supplying water to the pilgrims and collecting taxes for feeding the poor pilgrims. The former duty led him to rediscover Zamzam, the well of Ishmael, whose water had been buried and forgotten beneath the sand for centuries. He also helped in establishing a confederation of tribes in Mecca to prevent feuds and bloodshed. All this enhanced his reputation and prominence so much that he became the chief of Mecca. The city was prospering. Paganism had managed to hold Christianity at bay. Meccan idolatry had also developed a compromise with Judaism, and incorporated enough of its legends to attract wayward Jewish tribes. The great growth industry was the business of idol worship. And at the centre of it all was the Kaaba, which not only provided Meccans with commercial gains but also with considerable respect and esteem.
The wealth of Mecca did not go unnoticed amongst other tribes and provinces of Arabia. Some of them, including the Ghassanis, a south Arabian tribe, built their own holy houses to attract people away from Mecca. The most magnificent building, specifically designed to divert the pilgrims away from the Kaaba, was built in Sanaa, the principal city of Yemen. It was a project of Abrahah, the Christian viceroy of the negus of Abyssinia, who ruled Yemen in the middle of the sixth century. Abrahah’s magnificent church, complete with ornate furniture and elaborate statues, was called al-Qalis. The viceroy was convinced that his holy house would draw not just pilgrims from all over Arabia but the Meccans themselves. However, no one came. The pagan Arabs continued to see Mecca as the only city worthy of a pilgrimage. Even the inhabitants of Yemen bypassed the new monument en route to Mecca. Abrahah decided the only way to increase traffic to his church was to remove this rival by destroying the ancient site, so in the late sixth century he set off from Sanaa with a magnificent army, riding an elephant that was specially brought from Abyssinia for the occasion.37
Abrahah’s army camped at a place called al-Mughammas, a short distance from Mecca. A number of riders were sent to seize any property belonging to Meccans they could find. They returned with some cattle and 200 camels that belonged to Abd al-Muttalib. Then Abrahah sent a message to Abd al-Muttalib: ‘I have not come to wage war against you. I have come only to destroy the House. If you do not fight me then I have no need to shed your blood.’ The Meccans had already concluded that Abrahah was too strong to fight. When Abd al-Muttalib announced his intention not to fight, Abrahah invited him and the other leaders of Mecca for face-to-face negotiations.
Abd al-Muttalib was a handsome, dignified man. Abrahah was impressed with his demeanour the moment the two leaders met. He came down from his throne and sat on the carpet beside Abd al-Muttalib.
‘What do you need?’ Abrahah asked through an interpreter.
‘I need my wealth back, the two hundred camels which belong to me that you have taken.’
Abrahah was taken aback. ‘I was impressed with you when I saw you,’ he replied, ‘but I lost my respect for you when you spoke to me. You speak about the camels that belong to you. But you say nothing about the House which is part of your religion and the religion of your forefathers, which I have come to destroy.’
‘I am the owner of the camels, and I would like my property back,’ Abd al-Muttalib replied. ‘As for the Kaaba, it has its Owner who will protect it.’
‘No one can protect it from me,’ Abrahah replied, and dismissed the leaders of Mecca.38
On his return to Mecca, Abd al-Muttalib asked the citizens to vacate the city at once and withdraw to nearby hills and mountains. Within hours Mecca was abandoned and left at the mercy of Abrahah’s fearsome army. As that army approached the city, with the viceroy at its head riding his elaborately decorated elephant, the destruction of the Kaaba and Mecca seemed imminent. But then something extraordinary began to happen.
The elephant became unruly. When they tried to make it move towards Mecca, it sat down. The animal was beaten but it refused to budge. When they told it to move in the direction of Yemen, it got up and started running. Asked to move east, towards Syria, it began to gallop. But when they tried to get it to charge in the direction of Mecca, it sat down again.
The next occurrence was even more astonishing. Abrahah’s army was afflicted by a deadly disease, perhaps smallpox. The disease spread rapidly within the ranks of the army and took its toll with unbridled ferocity. Abrahah was attacked by waves of birds that showered his army with deadly stones. Abrahah was terrified by what he saw and ordered his army to return to Yemen. They fled, falling and dying as they sought a way out of the Valley of Weeping. By the time Abrahah returned to Sanaa his army had dwindled to nothing. The viceroy himself succumbed to illness and may have died. Or maybe he was killed, three years later, by a Persian general named Wahriz, who invaded Yemen. But the extraordinary events witnessed by the Meccans left their mark on the city: its reputation was enhanced and its citizens acquired an exalted status. Time was now reckoned from ‘The Year of the Elephant’.
Abd al-Muttalib now turned his attention to personal matters. He wanted a large family, and pledged that if the gods granted him ten sons, he would sacrifice one to an idol. It happened that he was blessed with ten sons, so to fulfil his oath he resorted to the ancient Meccan procedure for picking a candidate: he consulted divining arrows, kept in the Sanctuary under the protection of Hubal. The short straw was drawn by Abd al-Muttalib’s youngest and favourite son, Abdullah. He began to have second thoughts. Abdullah’s mother and her relatives were none too pleased either. They told Abd al-Muttalib: ‘By God! You shall never sacrifice him, but must get an excuse for not doing so. If it takes all we possess to ransom him we will do so.’39 He was advised to consult a soothsayer to see if a way out could be discovered. The oracle obliged: Abdullah’s life could be ransomed for the price of a hundred camels. Much relieved, Abd al- Muttalib sacrificed the camels and celebrated by taking his son to Yathrib to visit relatives.
The patriarchs who shaped the political landscape and social life of Mecca seem to have lived lives that followed the same cyclical pattern. It was inevitable that Abdullah would meet and marry a noble woman from Yathrib. Her name was Amina, daughter of Wahab, a prominent leader of the city. It was also inevitable that Abdullah would embark on a trade journey. Almost at once he went to Syria, and there, equally predictably, he fell ill. He returned to Yathrib, where he died. By this time, Amina had already conceived Muhammad, the very Muhammad whose journey to the Mountain of Light we have been following by tracing his ancestry through the course of history.
Mecca had changed from the days of Qusayy. Times were hard. The sea routes had now opened up and took much business away from the city. Caravans were few and far between. Economic hardship led some to commit infanticide. But the Meccans remained steadfast to their ancient religion, the very source of their material well-being: idol worship.
Muhammad grew up in Mecca surrounded by paganism. Like most people in the city, he became a merchant. And like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, he joined the caravan trade and travelled on business to Syria. Through his trading and other dealings he acquired the nicknames of ‘the trustworthy’ and ‘the truthful one’, but unlike his forefathers, he did not marry a noble, younger woman from Yathrib. At the age of twenty-five, Muhammad married Khadijah, an older ‘woman of dignity and wealth’40 from Mecca, who was impressed with his business acumen and integrity. The city and its pagan ways had little attraction for him. Mecca and its citizens, however, would make their own demands on Muhammad.
When Muhammad was about thirty-five years old, the Kaaba caught fire and part of the structure was demolished. It appears that a woman was burning incense in the Sanctuary when things got out of control. The Quraysh decided to rebuild and extend the Kaaba. It was only the height of a man, which made it quite easy for thieves to steal its treasures. It had no roof, the threshold was on the ground level, and water could get in during the frequent floods. The Meccans planned to add a roof and double the building’s height. It happened that a Byzantine ship was thrown ashore at the nearby port of Jeddah and the Meccans were able to salvage its wood to use for the new building. A Copt, who was a master carpenter, was visiting the city. Everything was on hand for rebuilding the Kaaba.
But before that could happen, the remaining structure had to be demolished. The Meccans feared the wrath of their gods and withdrew in awe. After some time, a man called al-Walid bin al-Mughirah came forward and declared: ‘I will begin the demolition.’ He picked up an axe and set to work, chanting: ‘O God, do not be afraid. O God, we intend only what is best.’41 He worked most of the day and managed to demolish small segments of two corners. Next morning he returned to continue his work. When others saw that nothing untoward had happened to him, they joined in knocking down the Kaaba.
The Kaaba was then rebuilt with alternate layers of teak and stone. The Meccan tribes shared the task amongst themselves, each tribe collecting stones and working on its own part of the structure. The work proceeded according to plan; the height of the structure was doubled and a roof added. A door was placed above the level of the ground; whoever wished to enter must in future use a ladder. Only one item remained: the Black Stone had to be put in place. The Meccans started to quarrel among themselves about who should have the honour. Swords were drawn; blood oaths were sworn. For four days the city was on edge and on the verge of serious violence.
Then, on the fifth day, when the Meccans had gathered around the newly built Kaaba in another attempt to resolve their dispute, a senior citizen came forward with a suggestion. His name was al-Mughirah bin Abdullah bin Umar bin Makhzum. Al-Mughirah urged the agitated crowd to let the first man who entered the Sanctuary decide on the matter. The assembly agreed.
Muhammad was the first man to pass through the gate of the Sanctuary. ‘You are the trustworthy one,’ they said. ‘We agree to accept your decision.’42 He asked them to bring him a cloak. When the cloak was brought to him, he spread it on the floor. He picked up the Black Stone with his own hands and placed it on the cloak. Then he said: ‘Let each tribe take an edge of the cloak, and all of you lift it up together.’43 This equitable arrangement met with approval; collectively they raised the Black Stone into position. Muhammad then lifted the Stone and put it in its place. The construction of the Kaaba was complete.
And so were Muhammad’s reflections on his day-long trek up the Mountain of Light. The newly constructed Kaaba was just over five years old. The paganism associated with Mecca and its Sanctuary had a history going back centuries, perhaps a thousand years. It was a history that troubled him deeply. He began the last, relatively easy, portion of his climb. At its summit the mountain flattened off. He followed a path he had taken many times, coiling around and then descending to an area where a hidden cave was located. He paused at the entrance to the cave, turned, and looked towards the city for the last time. The shimmering sun was slowly sinking over the horizon. In the fading light he could just make out the outlines of the city before it was shrouded in darkness.
He entered the cave.