JUAN COLE - New Archeological Evidence for the Kaaba, Sanctuary of Peace, in Early Islam
During the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, believers circumambulate the square
‘House of God’ called the Kaaba. It is said to have predated Islam, and to have
been cleansed of idols by the Prophet Muhammad in January of 630, when the town
of Mecca swung to his leadership by acclamation.
There is some new
archeological evidence for the Kaaba in the form of Arabic rock inscriptions in
Western Arabia, photographs of which have been published on Twitter. I should
underline that this evidence was put up on Twitter by Abdallah Muslih
Al-Thumali and Mohammed Almaghthawi, respectively. All I’m doing is reading my
Twitter feed and am grateful to these intrepid rock climbers who are bringing us
this new evidence. The inscriptions have
also been published: Sa’d bin Rashid, al-Suwaydirah : al-taraf qadiman,
atharuha wa-nuqushuha al-Islamiyah, Riyadh, 2009. Belief in sacred sites
like the Kaaba was widespread in that part of the world from ancient times.
In the Hejaz and
Transjordan, a sacred site was called in Arabic a ḥaram. In the Nabataean culture of roughly 300 BC through the Christianization of the
300s AD (after Constantine’s conversion of 312), such a sacred place or temple
was called mḥrmt’ (mahramat?– we don’t have their vowels) in
their sometimes Arabized Aramaic. Thus we have the
inscription: d’ mhrmt dy bnh cnmw which means “This is
the consecrated place which PN built” (M. O’Connor, “The
Arabic Loanwords in Nabatean Aramaic,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies,
Vol. 45, No. 3 (Jul., 1986), pp. 213-229, this phrase on p. 223). ḥrm also meant sacred in the sense of inviolable. So tomb raiders were
warned by Nabataean inscriptions that a grave and its inscriptions are
sacrosanct (ḥrm) and not to be disturbed.
There was a Roman
Greek witness to Arab sacred spaces from the 500s AD. I have written,
‘A Roman ambassador to
the Arabs, Nonnosos, observed a few decades before Muhammad’s birth that they
“have a sacred meeting-place consecrated to one of the gods, where they
assemble twice a year. One of these meetings lasts a whole month….[T]he other
lasts two months.” He added, “During these meetings complete peace prevails,
not only amongst themselves, but also with all the natives; even the animals
are at peace both with themselves and human beings.”’ I discuss this issue
in my new book, Muhammad:
Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires(2018)
The Qur’an (Stories
28:57) says that people in Mecca have been provided with a “safe sanctuary” or
“secure consecrated place” (ḥaraman āminan), which has been taken to
refer to the Kaaba. As Nonnosos said, such places were “secure” because feuding
and fighting were forbidden in their precincts. In my recent book, I argue that
Muhammad, as a member of the Banu Hashim clan, was part of the kinship group
charged with servicing pilgrims to the Kaaba and making sure violence did not
touch it. They would thus mediate feuds and make peace. That was the background
out of which Muhammad came. The Qur’an also on
numerous occasions uses for it the phrase al-masjid al-harām (e.g.
5:2), probably meaning “the sacred temple.” The Qur’an uses “masjid” for any place
of worship, including synagogues and churches, which confused later
commentators, since it is the origin of the word “mosque” and came to mean a
Muslim place of worship. ..
read more: https://www.juancole.com/2019/02/archeological-evidence-kaaba.html
see also
see also
Book review - Tehseen Thaver: Three More
Questions about What is Islam?
What do we actually know about Mohammed? PATRICIA CRONE (2008)
Janet
Afary & Kevin B. Anderson: Revisiting Foucault and the Iranian RevolutionWhat do we actually know about Mohammed? PATRICIA CRONE (2008)
