The origins of Islam: the Kaaba and the Hajj

BY BARNABY DEVITT

Most of the time we think of Islam as the last of the three largest Western religions, following Judaism and Christianity. All three tell many of the same stories, and all three are said to come from Abraham. But even before Abraham there was a religious culture in the Middle East. There was a Kaaba and there was a Hajj. There was the month of Ramadan. There are important parts of Islam that predate Christianity and Judaism.

We don't really know when the Kaaba was built, but it probably existed at least a thousand years before Islam. The Qu'ran says that Abraham made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca to visit the site, which would make the site more than 1,500 years older than Islam.

The older Kaaba had 360 idols in it representing a wide variety of religious experiences. There were pantheistic deities, gods of nature, and later, statues of Jesus and Mary. When Muhammad cleaned out the temple in 630, he got rid of all the other statues and representations of God and dedicated it to the one God of Islam.

No one is certain what the Kaaba meant before Islam, but it was central to the religious experience of many in the Middle East. No matter where Muslims are in the world they turn towards Mecca and the Kaaba five times a day to pray. And it is one of the five pillars of Islam that they must make a pilgrimage to the Kaaba once during their lifetime. This practice was common before Islam. We know from the Qu'ran that Abraham made the pilgrimage. Even while Muhammad was engaged in the war between Medina and Mecca, both sides stopped fighting in order to make the Hajj. But why were pilgrims coming to Mecca, making the Hajj, if they were not Muslims? What did they believe? What drew them to this place every year at this time?

The Kaaba (from which our word cube probably comes) is a massive structure 43 feet tall and 42.2 square at the base. The slightly taller aspect makes the structure seem even taller than it is. The four corners point to the four directions of the compass.

Mecca is in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula, and the peninsula is almost completely surrounded by water. It is tempting to believe that the first people to migrate out of Africa came to the Arabian Peninsula and, after walking around it, believed it too was an island surrounded by water. They had probably spent thousands of years walking around Africa believing it was an island surrounded by a great ocean until they discovered (probably during a period when the sea level dropped) a land bridge across the Red Sea. Once the new generation of emigrants in Arabia discovered a route into Europe on the east, a route to Russia in the north and a route to Asia in the east, they must have realized that this human race that had been one small tribe was now about to disperse into the world and multiply and fill the earth.

One belief about the Kaaba is that it is the center of the world and through its roof is the route to heaven. Certainly our early emigrants must have believed that the Arabian Peninsula was the center of their world, and that no matter how far they traveled it was very necessary to stay in touch with the rest of the human family. It is easy to believe they all agreed to meet in Mecca next year at this time, to build a monument to the four directions of the human family, and to walk around it counter-clockwise seven times to demonstrate unity with their brothers and sisters in other parts of the world.

So, the Kaaba and the Hajj possibly belong to everyone, because all of us are descended from ancestors who trekked out of Africa and wandered around the Arabian Peninsula for a time before striking out to Europe or Russia or India and China. The Hajj is the annual family reunion for all of us. It celebrates our diversity and our common humanity. [Next month: The origins of Islam: Ramadan]