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MECCA (Makkah): The most holy of all Muslim sites, according to Muslim sources, it is the place where Adam built a cube like house, known as the Kaaba (ka'bah), as the first temple to God. The Kaaba was destroyed in the Great Flood but rebuilt by the Prophet Abraham and his son Ishmael. Shortly after the death of Ishmael, the city was dominated by pagans who used the Kaaba as a place for worshipping their idols, which were positioned in a sacred space surrounding the holy cube. This is the Arab city where the Prophet Muhammad was born in 570 and was living when he received God's words and began to recite them to his followers. Muhammad fled from the city and his persecutors to nearby Yathrib (later renamed the City of the Prophet, or simply "The City," or in Arabic, "Medina"). He finally returned triumphantly in 630, destroyed all the Kaaba's idols, and restored the "religion of Abraham." Over the next few centuries, Mecca lost influence as a trading city and became instead a holy site where faithful Muslims made the annual pilgrimage (hajj). Those Muslims who claimed descent from Muhammad through his daughter, Fatima, and her husband, Ali, controlled it in these years. |