A Great Loss

RAHAM'S prayer was answered, and rich gifts were continually

brought to Mecca by the pilgrims who came to visit the Holy House

in increasing numbers from all parts of Arabia and beyond. The

Greater Pilgrimage was made once a year; but the Ka'bah could also be

honoured through a lesser pilgrimage at any time; and these rites con-

tinued to be performed with fervour and devotion according to the rules

which Abraham and Ishmael had established. The descendants of Isaac

also venerated the Ka'bah, as a temple that had been raised by Abraham.

For them it counted as one of the outlying tabernacles of the Lord. But as

the centuries passed the purity of the worship of the One God came to be

contaminated. The descendants of Ishmael became too numerous to live

all in the valley of Mecca; and those who wentto settle elsewhere took with

them stones from the holy precinct and performed rites in honour of them.

Later, through the influence of neighbouring pagan tribes, idols came to be

added to the stones; and finally pilgrims began to bring idols to Mecca.

These were set up in the vicinity of the Ka'bah, and it was then that the

Jews ceased to visit the temple of Abraham.'

The idolaters claimed that their idols were powers which acted as

mediators between God and men. As a result, their approach to God

became less and less direct, and the remoter He seemed, the dimmer

became their sense of the reality of the World-to-come, until many of them

ceased to believe in life after death. But in their midst, for those who could

interpret it, there was a clear sign that they had fallen away from the truth:
they no longer had access to the Well of Zamzam, and they had even

forgotten where it lay. The jurhumites who had come from the Yemen

were directly responsible. They had established themselves in control of

Mecca, and the descendants of Abraham had tolerated this because

Ishmael's second wife was a kinswoman of Jurhum; but the time came

when the Jurhumites began to commit all sorts of injustices, for which they

were finally driven out; and before they left they buried the Well of

Zamzam. No doubt they did this by way of revenge, but it was also likely

that they hoped to return and enrich themselvesfrom it, for they filledit up

with part of the treasure of the sanctuary, offerings of pilgrims which had

accumulated in the Ka'bah over the years; then they covered it with sand.

Their place as lords of Mecca was taken by Khuza'ah', an Arab tribe

lLL,I5·

See index for note on pronunciation of Arabic names, p. 348. 2

5 A Great Loss

descended from Ishmael which had migrated to the Yemen and then

returned northwards. But the Khuza'ites now made no attempt to find the

waters that had been miraculously given to their ancestor. Since his day

other wells had been dug in Mecca, God's gift was no longer a necessity,

and the Holy Well became a half forgotten memory. .

Khuza'ah thus shared the guilt of jurhum. They were also to blame in

other respects: a chieftain of theirs, on his way back from a journey to

Syria, had asked the Moabites to givehim one of their idols. They gavehim

Hubal, which he brought back to the Sanctuary, setting it up within the

Ka'bah itself; and it became the chief idol of Mecca.