Patricia Crone and a group of historians later called the
revisionist school of Islamic studies has cast doubt on the claim that Mecca was a major historical trading outpost, and proposed a more northern region as the origin of Islam. Other scholars such as
Glen Bowersock disagree and assert that it was.
Before Muhammad In
pre-Islamic Arabic poetry attributed to
Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma, the builders of the Kaaba are said to be the
Quraysh and
Jurhum tribes.
Christian J. Robin argues that the Kaaba may have become prominent in the last decades of the 6th century in the aftermath of the military defeat of
Abraha by the
Quraysh. However, Peter Webb, based on pre-Islamic poetry, argues that the Kaaba was never a prominent site of pilgrimage and that it largely played a local role in Western Arabia as opposed to a pan-Arabian one. In
Islamic cosmology, the
Zurah pilgrimage site was the precursor to the Kaaba. According to Islamic tradition, the pre-Islamic Kaaba was a site of worship for various
Arabian Bedouin tribes, who would make pilgrimage once every lunar year, setting aside their tribal feuds. The Kaaba hosted 360 pagan idols (potentially one representing each day of the year) including sculptures and paintings before Islam, notably including a statue of
Hubal, the principal idol of Mecca. Paintings of
angels, of
Ibrahim holding
divination arrows, and of
Isa (
Jesus) and his mother
Maryam (
Mary), which Muhammad spared. Undefined decorations, money and a pair of ram's horns were recorded to be inside the Kaaba. To maintain peace among the perpetually warring tribes, Mecca was declared a sanctuary where no violence was allowed within of the Kaaba. This combat-free zone allowed Mecca to thrive not only as a place of pilgrimage, but also as a trading center. A king named Tubba' is considered the first one to have a door be built for the Kaaba according to sayings recorded in
Al-Azraqi's .
Alfred Guillaume, in his translation of the
Ibn Ishaq's
seerah, says that the Kaaba itself might be referred to in the feminine form.
Circumambulation was often performed naked by men and almost naked by women. It is disputed whether Allah and Hubal were the same deity or different. According to a hypothesis by
Uri Rubin and Christian Robin, Hubal was only venerated by
Quraysh and the Kaaba was first dedicated to Allah, a supreme god of individuals belonging to different tribes, while the pantheon of the gods of Quraysh was installed in the Kaaba after they conquered Mecca a century before Muhammad's time.
Ptolemy and Diodorus Siculus Writing in the
Encyclopedia of Islam, Wensinck identifies Mecca with a place called
Macoraba mentioned by
Ptolemy.
G. E. von Grunebaum states: "Mecca is mentioned by Ptolemy. The name he gives it allows us to identify it as a South Arabian foundation created around a sanctuary." In
Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam,
Patricia Crone argues that the identification of Macoraba with Mecca is false and that Macoraba was a town in southern Arabia in what was then known as
Arabia Felix. A recent study has revisited the arguments for Macoraba and found them unsatisfactory. Based on an earlier report by
Agatharchides of Cnidus,
Diodorus Siculus mentions a temple along the Red Sea coast, "which is very holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians".
Edward Gibbon believed that this was the Kaaba. However, Ian D. Morris argues that Gibbon had misread the source: Diodorus puts the temple too far north for it to have been Mecca.
Ibn Kathir, in his famous
exegesis () of the Quran, mentions two interpretations among the Muslims on the origin of the Kaaba. One is that the temple was a place of worship for (
angels) before the creation of man. Later, a house of worship was built on the location and was lost during the flood in
Nuh (
Noah)'s time and was finally rebuilt by Ibrahim and Ismail as mentioned later in the Quran. Ibn Kathir regarded this tradition as weak and preferred instead the narration by
Ali ibn Abi Talib that although several other temples might have preceded the Kaaba, it was the first ('House of God'), dedicated solely to him, built by his instruction, and sanctified and blessed by him, as stated in . A
hadith in
Sahih al-Bukhari states that the Kaaba was the first on Earth, and the second was
Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem. After the construction was complete, God enjoined the descendants of Ismail to perform an annual pilgrimage: the Hajj and the
Qurban, sacrifice of cattle. The vicinity of the temple was also made a sanctuary where bloodshed and war were forbidden.
During Muhammad's lifetime ''. Muhammad is shown with veiled face, CE. '', , depicting Muhammad and others moving the black stone into the Kaaba During Muhammad's lifetime (570–632 CE), the Kaaba was considered a holy site by the local Arabs. Muhammad took part in the reconstruction of the Kaaba around 600 CE, after its structure was weakened by a fire, and then damaged by a subsequent flood. Sources including
Ibn Ishaq's
Sirat Rasūl Allāh, one of the biographies of Muhammad (as reconstructed and translated by Guillaume), as well as
Al-Azraqi's chronicle of Mecca, describe Muhammad settling a quarrel between the Meccan clans as to which clan should set the Black Stone in its place. According to Ishaq's biography, Muhammad's solution was to have all the clan elders raise the cornerstone on a cloak, after which Muhammad set the stone into its final place with his own hands. The
timber for the reconstruction of the Kaaba was purchased by Quraysh from a Byzantine ship that had been wrecked on the
Red Sea coast at Shu'aybah. The work was undertaken by a Coptic Egyptian carpenter from the same ship, called Baqum (باخوم Pachomius), the name indicates an Egyptian Origin, The name Pachomius means "eagle" or "falcon", It comes from the
Coptic word "akhōm" (eagle/falcon), which originally meant "divine image" in Middle Egyptian. Financial constraints during this rebuilding caused Quraysh to exclude six cubits from the northern part of the Kaaba. This portion is what is currently known as Al-Hateem الحطيم or
Hijr Ismail حجر اسماعيل. Muhammad's
Isra' is said to have taken him from the Kaaba to the
Masjid al-Aqsa and heavenwards from there. Muslims initially considered Jerusalem as their qibla, or prayer direction, and faced toward it while offering prayers; however, pilgrimage to the Kaaba was considered a religious duty though its rites were not yet finalized. During the first half of Muhammad's time as a prophet while he was at Mecca, he and his followers were severely persecuted which eventually led to their migration to
Medina in 622 CE. In 624 CE, Muslims believe the direction of the qibla was changed from the Masjid al-Aqsa to the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, with the revelation of . In 628 CE, Muhammad led a group of Muslims towards Mecca with the intention of performing the
Umrah, but was prevented from doing so by the Quraysh. He secured a peace treaty with them, the
Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, which allowed the Muslims to freely perform pilgrimage at the Kaaba from the following year. At the culmination of his mission, in 630 CE, after the allies of the Quraysh, the Banu Bakr, violated the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, Muhammad
conquered Mecca. His first action was to remove statues and images from the
Kaaba. Al-Azraqi further conveys how Muhammad, after he entered the Kaaba on the day of the conquest, ordered all the pictures erased except that of Maryam: After the conquest, Muhammad restated the sanctity and holiness of Mecca, including its Great Mosque (Masjid al-Haram), in Islam. He performed the Hajj in 632 CE called the
Hujjat ul-Wada' ("Farewell Pilgrimage") since Muhammad prophesied his impending death on this event. After Muhammad's
conquest of Mecca, it is said that the 360 idols of the Kaaba were destroyed. The Kaaba became a site for the veneration of
Allah only, identified as the same God as that of other monotheists. The Kaaba continued to be a site of annual pilgrimage, an early Muslim who ruled Mecca for many years between the death of ʿAli and the consolidation of power by the
Umayyads. 'Abdullah rebuilt it to include the
hatīm. He did so on the basis of a tradition (found in several
hadith collections) that the
hatīm was a remnant of the foundations of the Abrahamic Kaaba, and that Muhammad himself had wished to rebuild it so as to include it. The Kaaba was bombarded with stones in the
second siege of Mecca in 692, in which the Umayyad army was led by
al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. The fall of the city and the death of 'Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr allowed the Umayyads under
'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan to finally reunite all the Islamic possessions and end the long civil war. In 693 CE, 'Abd al-Malik had the remnants of al-Zubayr's Kaaba razed, and rebuilt it on the foundations set by the Quraysh. The Kaaba returned to the cube shape it had taken during Muhammad's time. Its basic shape and structure have not changed since then. it has been smeared with excrement, stolen and ransomed by the
Qarmatians and smashed into several fragments. After heavy rains and flooding in 1626, the walls of the Kaaba collapsed and the Mosque was damaged. The same year, during the reign of Ottoman Emperor
Murad IV, the Kaaba was rebuilt with granite stones from Mecca, and the Mosque was renovated. In 1916, after
Hussein bin Ali had launched the
Great Arab Revolt, during the
Battle of Mecca between
Arab and Ottoman forces, the Ottoman troops bombarded the city and hit the Kaaba, setting fire to the protective veil. This incident was later exploited by the propaganda of the Great Arab Revolt to attempt to demonstrate the impiety of the Ottomans and the legitimacy of the revolt as a holy war. The Kaaba is depicted on the
reverse of 500
Saudi riyal and 2000
Iranian rial banknotes.
Al-Azraqi provided the following narrative on the authority of his grandfather: Ismail and his eldest son
Nebaioth built the Kaaba as well as the city of Mecca." == Architecture and interior ==