Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

18 t CHAPTER ONE
And remember Abraham and Ishmael raised the foundations of the
House, (saying) “Our Lord, accept this from us.”
And again (22:26):
Behold, We gave to Abraham the site of the House; do not associate
anything with Me (in worship)! And sanctify My House for those
who circumambulate, or those who take their stand there, those
who bow or those who prostrate themselves there.
By all the available indices, verses 2:125–127 were pronounced by
Muhammad not in the shadow of what is elsewhere referred to as
“this sacred House” (5:100) or “this ancient House” (22:29),
which we assume to be the Kaaba in Mecca, but in distant Medina,
and perhaps even in the last year of his life, when his attention
turned more directly back to his native city and particularly to the
rituals practiced there. The verses in question are the effective Islamization
of the cult practices that had long gone on—from
Abraham’s day, the Quran asserts—in and around Mecca, its sacred
precinct (haram), and the cubical building (kaaba) that stood
in its midst.
What the Muslims were told on divine authority about the ancient
cult center at Mecca is summed up in those few verses, and
once more it was left to later generations of Muslims to seek out
additional information on the shrine’s early history. And many of
them did. It was said that Gabriel himself pointed out the Kaaba’s
location and gave directions on its dimensions; and that the Black
Stone, the white sapphire that had come from heaven in the Adam
stories, had not been destroyed in the Flood but had been hidden
within Abu Qubays, a mount rising over the vale of Mecca on the
east. Abraham restored it to the Kaaba, though later it turned
black because it had been touched by menstruating women during
the pagan era that preceded Muhammad’s coming.
This, then, is how most later Muslims understood the proximate
origin of the Kaaba, whose building was alluded to in the Quran.
The patriarch Abraham, on a visit to his son Ishmael in Mecca, put
down, on God’s command, the foundation of the House on a site
already hallowed by Adam.