Makkah Before the Prophet ﷺ

Ismā‘īl in Makkah

The Patriarch Ibrāhīm (Abraham) came down to the valley of Makkah, surrounded by mountains, naked rocks, and bare and rugged crags. Nothing to sustain life was to be found there — no water, verdure, or grain. He had with him his wife, Hājar (Hagar), and their son Ismā‘īl (Ishmael). Ibrāhīm had wandered through the deserts of Arabia to move away from the widespread heathen cult of idol-worship and to establish a center for the worship of the One and Only God, where he could invite others to bow down before the Lord of the world. He wanted to lay the foundation of a lighthouse of guidance, a sanctuary of peace that should become the radiating center of true monotheism, faith, and righteousness.¹

God blessed the sincerity of Ibrāhīm and the dry valley of this wild country. Ibrāhīm had left his wife and his infant son in this inhospitable territory. Here, in the midst of rugged hills, the Master of all the worlds manifested His grace by causing water to issue forth from the earth, and the well of Zamzam burst forth, and remains to this day. When Ismā‘īl was a few years old, Ibrāhīm went to visit his family in Makkah. Ibrāhīm now made up his mind to sacrifice Ismā‘īl for the sake of God, for the Lord had commanded him in a dream: “Offer up thy son Ismā‘īl.” Obedient to the Lord as he was, Ismā‘īl at once agreed to have his throat cut by his father. But God saved Ismā‘īl and instituted² the “day of great sacrifice” in order to commemorate the event for all times, since he was destined to help Ibrāhīm in his mission and become the progenitor of the last Prophet, as well as of the nation charged to disseminate the message of God and to struggle for it to the end of time.

Ibrāhīm came back to Makkah again³ and, assisted by his son Ismā‘īl, built the House of God. While father and son occupied themselves in the work, they also beseeched God to confer His grace; to cause them to live as well as die in Islam; and to help their progeny to keep a watch over their patrimony of monotheism, not only by protecting their mission against every risk and peril, but also by becoming its standard-bearers and preachers, braving every danger and sacrificing everything for its sake until their call reached the farthest corner of the world. They also supplicated God to raise a prophet amongst their offspring who should renew and revive the summons of Ibrāhīm and bring to completion the task initiated by him:

The prayer sent up by Ibrāhīm included a plea for the House he was constructing to become a sanctuary of peace, and that God might keep his progeny away from idol worship. Ibrāhīm held nothing more in abomination than idolatry, nor deemed anything more fraught with danger for his progeny, for he knew the fate of earlier idolatrous nations. He was aware how the great prophets of God had earlier struggled and fought this evil throughout their lives, but not long after their departure from the world, their people were again misled into fetishism by the devil’s advocates disguised as promoters of faith.

Ibrāhīm implored the Lord to bless his descendants with his own spirit of struggle against the evil of pantheism and iconolatry. He wanted his heirs to carry in their thoughts how he had to strive all his life for the sake of Truth and Faith; how he had to bid farewell to his homeland; to realise why he had incurred the wrath of his idolatrous father; and to appreciate the wisdom behind his selection, for their habitation, of that valley, unbelievably bare, with no scrap of soil, sheer from top to bottom, jagged and sharp.

He wanted them to understand why he had preferred that wilderness, holding no prospects of progress and civilization, over verdant lands and flourishing towns and centers of trade, arts, and commerce, where one could easily meet one’s wishes.

Ibrāhīm had invoked the blessings of God on his sons so that they might be esteemed and adored by all the nations of the world; that the people of every nation and country might become attached to his children; that they should come from every nook and corner of the world to pay homage to his posterity, and thus become a means of satisfying their needs in that barren country.

The Quraysh

God answered the petitions of Ibrāhīm and Ismā‘īl. The descendants of Ismā‘īl multiplied profusely, so that the barren valley overflowed with the progeny of Ibrāhīm. Ismā‘īl took for his wife a girl of the tribe of Jurhum,⁶ a clan belonging to the ‘Arab ‘Āribah. Among the lineal descendants of Ismā‘īl, ‘Adnān was born, whose lineage was universally recognized as the most worthy and noble among them. The Arabs, being very particular about the purity of race and blood, have always treasured the genealogy of ‘Adnān’s progeny in the storehouse of their memory.

‘Adnān had many sons, of whom Ma‘add was the most prominent. Among the sons of Ma‘add, Muḍar was the most distinguished; then Fihr ibn Mālik, in the lineage of Muḍar, achieved eminence; and finally, the descendants of Fihr ibn Mālik came to be known as Quraysh. Thus came into existence the clan of Quraysh, the nobility of Makkah, whose lineage and exalted position among the tribes of Arabia, as well as whose virtues of oratory and eloquence, civility, gallantry, and high-mindedness, were unanimously accepted by all. The recognition accorded to Quraysh without a dissenting voice throughout the Peninsula became, in due course of time, a genuine article of faith to the people of Arabia.⁷

Quṣayy ibn Kilāb

Quṣayy ibn Kilāb was born in the direct line of Fihr, but the hegemony of Makkah had, by that time, passed on from Jurhum’s clansmen to the bands of the Khuzā‘ites. Quṣayy ibn Kilāb recovered the administration of the Ka‘bah and the town through his organizational capacity and superior qualities of head and heart. The Quraysh strengthened the hands of Quṣayy ibn Kilāb in dislodging the Khuzā‘ites from the leadership they had usurped. Quṣayy was now master of the town, loved and respected by all. He held the keys of the Ka‘bah and the rights to provide water to the pilgrims from the Well of Zamzam, to feed the pilgrims,⁸ to preside at assemblies, and to hand out war banners. In his hands lay all the dignities of Makkah, and nobody entered the Ka‘bah until he opened it for him. Such was his authority in Makkah during his lifetime that no affair of the Quraysh was decided but by him, and his decisions were followed like a religious law, which could not be violated.

After the death of Quṣayy, his sons assumed his authority, but ‘Abd Manāf amongst them was the most illustrious. His eldest son, Hāshim ibn ‘Abd Manāf, conducted the feeding and watering of the pilgrims, and after his death the authority passed on to ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib, the grandfather of the Prophet. His people held him in the highest esteem, and the popularity he gained, so they say, went beyond anything that his ancestors enjoyed.⁹

Banū Hāshim

The progeny of Hāshim now filled the stage and assumed a commanding position among the Quraysh, like a column of light in the darkness of Arabia. The sketches of Banū Hāshim preserved by the historians and genealogists, although few in number, eloquently speak of the nobility of their character and the moderation of their disposition, the reverence they paid to the House of God, their sovereign contempt for things unjust and uneven, their devotion to fair play and justice, their willingness to help the poor and the oppressed, their magnanimity of heart, their valour and horsemanship — in short, every virtue admired by the Arabs of the pagan past. Banū Hāshim, however, shared the faith of their contemporaries, which had beclouded the light of their soul; but despite this failing, they possessed all this goodness as the forefathers of the great Prophet who was to inherit their ennobling qualities and to illustrate them by his own shining example for the guidance of the entire human race.

Makkan Paganism

Quraysh continued to glorify the Lord of the worlds, from whom all blessings flow, like their forefathers Ibrāhīm and Ismā‘īl, until ‘Amr ibn Luḥayy became the chief of the Khuzā‘ites. He was the first to deviate from the religion of Ismā‘īl; he set up idols in Makkah and had the people worship and venerate them. He instituted the custom of the sā’ibah,¹⁰ which were to be held in reverence. ‘Amr ibn Luḥayy also corrupted the divine laws of the permissible and the impermissible. It is related that once ‘Amr ibn Luḥayy went from Makkah to Syria on some business, where he found the people worshipping idols. He was so impressed by the ways of the idol worshippers that he obtained a few idols from them, brought them back to Makkah, and asked the people there to pay divine honors to them.¹¹

It might have been so; or perhaps, on his way to Syria, ‘Amr ibn Luḥayy had happened to pass through Batra, which was variously known to ancient historians and geographers as Petraea and Petra. It was the key city on the caravan route between Saba’ and the Mediterranean, located on an arid plateau three thousand feet high, to the south of what is today known as Jordan, as mentioned by Greek and Roman historians. The city was founded by the Nabataeans, ethnically an Arab tribe, in the early part of the sixth century BC. These people carried their merchandise to Egypt, Syria, the valley of the Euphrates, and to Rome. Most likely, they took the way to the valley of the Euphrates through Ḥijāz. The Nabataeans were an idolatrous people who made their deities of graven stones. Some historians hold the view that al-Lāt, the famous deity of northern Ḥijāz during the pre-Islamic period, had been originally imported from Petra and was assigned an honored place among the local gods and goddesses.¹²

The above view finds confirmation in the History of Syria by Philip K. Hitti, who writes about the religion of the Nabataean kingdoms:

At the head of the pantheon stood Dushara (Dhu al-Shara, Dusares), a sun deity worshipped under the form of an obelisk or an unhewn four-cornered black stone. Associated with Dushara was al-Lāt, the chief goddess of Arabia. Other Nabataean goddesses cited in the inscriptions were Manāt and al-‘Uzzā, of Qur’anic fame. Hubal also figures in the inscriptions.¹³

It is noteworthy that the above description relates to a period when idolatry had, in various forms and shapes, engulfed Arabia and the surrounding countries. Jesus Christ and his disciples, who later on labored to restrain its unbridled expansion, had not yet appeared on the scene. Judaism had already proved its incompetence in the task, since, being essentially a racial religion, it allowed none save the children of Israel to join its faith in the creed of monotheism preached by it.

Another writer, De Lacy O’Leary, tracing the influences responsible for the introduction of idol worship in the Arabian Peninsula, sums up his findings in Arabia Before Muhammad in these words:

It seems fairly safe therefore to understand that the use of images was an instance of Syro-Hellenistic culture which had come down the trade-route; it was a recent introduction in Makkah in the time of the Prophet and was probably unknown to the Arab community at large.¹⁴

Worship of idols was thus the popular creed of the people in the valley of the Euphrates and the land to the east of Arabia. As the Arabs were bound, since time immemorial, by ties of commerce with these countries, it is not unlikely that their cultural influence was responsible for grafting idol worship onto the Arabian Peninsula. In his history of ancient Iraq, Georges Roux says that during the third century BC and long thereafter, idol worship was very common in Mesopotamia.¹⁵ Every city, whether old or new, provided shelter to several foreign gods in addition to its local deities.¹⁶

There are also reports which suggest that idol worship gradually came into vogue among the Quraysh. In olden times, as some historians relate, anyone going out on a long journey from Makkah would take a few stones from the enclosures of the sanctuary with him as a mark of grace. In due course, they started venerating the monoliths they admired most. The subsequent generations, not knowing the reason for holding such monoliths in esteem, started worshipping them like the other pagan peoples of the surrounding countries.¹⁷ The Quraysh, however, remained attached to some of the older traditions, such as paying deference to the holy sanctuary, its circumambulation, Ḥajj,¹⁸ and ‘umrah.¹⁹ The gradual evolution of different religions, showing the substitution of means for ends, and the slow progression from suppositions to conclusions, lends support to the view put forth by the historians about the beginning of idol worship among the Quraysh. The esteem and reverence in which even certain misguided Muslim sects come to hold the portraits and sepulchers of saints, and the way they sluggishly adopt this course, provide incriminating evidence in support of the gradual evolution of idol worship. That is why the Islamic Sharī‘ah completely closes all those ways and paths that lead to the undue veneration of personages, places, and relics, for they ultimately lead to ascribing partners to God.²⁰

The Elephants

It was during this period that a significant event, unparalleled in the history of Arabia, came to pass, which foreshadowed something of crucial importance likely to take place in the near future. It augured well for the Arabs in general, and indicated a unique honour for the Ka‘bah, never attained by any place of worship anywhere in the world. It afforded hope for a great future for the Ka‘bah — a future on which depended the destiny of religions, or rather of all humanity, since it was soon to unfold itself in the shape of an eternal message of righteousness and peace.

An Implicit Belief of the Quraysh

Quraysh had always held the belief that the Bayt Allāh, or the House of God, had a special place of honor in the eyes of the Lord, who was Himself its protector and defender. The conversation between Abrahah and ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib amply bears out the trust placed by Quraysh in the inviolability of the Ka‘bah. It so happened that Abrahah seized two hundred camels belonging to ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib, who then called upon him and sought permission to see Abrahah. Abrahah treated ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib with the greatest respect and rose from his throne to make him sit by his side. Asked to tell the purpose of his visit, ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib replied that he wanted the King to return his two hundred camels, which the King had taken.

Abrahah, taken by surprise, asked ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib, “You wish to talk about your two hundred camels taken by me, but you say nothing about the House on which your religion and the religion of your forefathers depend, which I have come to destroy?” ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib boldly replied, “I am the owner of the camels, and the House has an Owner who will Himself defend it.” Abrahah said again, “How can it be saved from me?” “This is a matter between you and Him,” replied ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib.²¹

Who would dare to do harm or cast a blighting glance at the House of God? Its protection was, in truth, the responsibility of God.

The episode, briefly, was that Abrahah al-Ashram, who was the viceroy of the Negus, the King of Abyssinia, in Yemen, built an imposing cathedral in Ṣan‘ā’ and gave it the name of al-Qullays. He intended to divert the Arabs’ pilgrimage to this cathedral. Being a Christian, Abrahah had found it intolerably offensive that the Ka‘bah should remain the great national shrine, attracting crowds of pilgrims from almost every Arabian clan. He desired that his cathedral should replace the Ka‘bah as the most sacred place of worship in Arabia.

This, however, was something inglorious for the Arabs. Veneration of the Ka‘bah was a settled disposition with the Arabs: they neither equated any other place of worship with the Ka‘bah nor would they have exchanged it for anything, however precious. The perturbation caused by the declared intentions of Abrahah set them on fire. Some Kinānite daredevils accepted the challenge, and one of them defiled the cathedral by defecating in it. Now, this caused a serious uproar. Abrahah was enraged, and he swore that he would not rest until he had destroyed the Ka‘bah.

Abrahah took the road to Makkah at the head of a strong force which included a large number of elephants. The Arabs had heard astounding stories about elephants. The news made them all confused and bewildered. Some of the Arab tribes even tried to obstruct the progress of Abrahah’s army, but they soon realized that it was beyond their power to measure swords with him. Now, hoping against hope, they left the matter to God, putting their trust in Him to save the sacred sanctuary.²²

The Quraysh took to the hills and craggy gorges in order to save themselves from the excesses of Abrahah’s soldiers. ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib and a few other persons belonging to Quraysh took hold of the door of the Ka‘bah, praying and imploring God to help them against Abrahah. On the other side, Abrahah drew up his troops to enter the town and got his elephant “Maḥmūd” ready for attack. On his way to the city, the elephant knelt down and refused to get up in spite of a severe beating. But when they turned it towards Yemen, it got up immediately and started off. God then sent upon them flocks of birds, each carrying stones in its claws. Everyone who was hit by these stones died. The Abyssinians thereupon withdrew in fright by the way they had come, continually being hit by the stones and falling dead on their way. Abrahah, too, was badly smitten, and when his soldiers tried to take him back, his limbs fell off one by one, until he met a miserable end upon reaching Ṣan‘ā’.²³ The incident finds a reference in the Qur’ān also:

Repercussion of Abrahah’s Failure

When God turned back the Abyssinians from Makkah, crushed and humbled, and inflicted His punishment upon them, the Arabs naturally looked up to the Quraysh in great respect. They said: “Verily, these are the people of God. God defeated their enemy — and they did not even have to fight the assailants.” The esteem of the people for the Ka‘bah naturally increased, strengthening their conviction in its sanctity.²⁵

It was undoubtedly a miracle, a sign of the advent of a Prophet who was to purify the Ka‘bah of its idolatrous contamination. It was an indication that the honor of the Ka‘bah was to rise with the final dispensation to be brought by him. One could say that the incident foretold the advent of the great Prophet.

This great event was a landmark for the Arabs, and rightly so. They instituted a new calendar from the date of its occurrence. Accordingly, we find in their writings such references as that a certain event took place in the Year of the Elephant, or that such and such persons were born in that year, or that a certain incident came to pass so many years after the Year of the Elephant. This miraculous year was 570 AD.

Five years had not elapsed since the Year of the Elephant before Allāh had swept away the Abyssinians; their rule no longer had any influence in the land of Yemen. Thus, in one sweep, the Arabian Peninsula was freed from Christian influence and colonization by Abyssinia. With it approached ‘the establishment of the Arabian State’, as summed up by Jamāl Surūr: “A national movement was established in the state of Ḥimyar to liberate Yemen from the rule of Abyssinia. Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan sought aid from the Persian king, who sent an expedition in the year 575 AD, headed by Wahraz. Under his leadership, the Abyssinians were defeated in Yemen.”²⁶