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Is Mecca Really The Birthplace Of Islam?
All Muslims believe Muhammad received his first divine revelations in Mecca and consider the city’s Kaaba the “House of God.” The Qur’an says Abraham and his son Ishmael built the Kaaba (Q 22:26-29), though many Muslims believe Adam and Eve built the original. Either way, all Muslims believe their cube-like shrine was a pagan temple before Muhammad cleansed it of its idols. They prostrate themselves toward it five times daily in prayer. And they ritually circle it — if possible, touching or kissing its sacred Black Stone — on pilgrimage.
In the 1970s, however, John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone and other scholars challenged the traditional view. They argued that Islam evolved over two centuries not in Mecca, but in the Fertile Crescent —in Nabatea (modern day Jordan) or Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq).
Since then, many have speculated on where Islam originated. Two recent documentary films locate Islam’s origin in Nabatea, Tom Holland’s Islam: The Untold Story (2012) and Dan Gibson’s The Sacred City: Discovering the Real Birthplace of Islam (2017). This would mean Muslims are wrong to face or visit Mecca.
Revisionists claim the following three lines of evidence support the idea that Islam originated outside of Arabia:
- The Qur’an’s geographic data;
- The hadith’s picture of Mecca; and,
- The archeological evidence.
Some revisionists believe Q 37:137 points to the Qur’an’s Nabatean origins since it says Muhammad’s listeners view Sodom’s ruins in the morning and evening. Read literally, this puts Muhammad’s audience in Nabatea. But a freer reading allows for the traditional understanding, which puts Sodom’s ruins beside the Arabs’ caravan route to Gaza. Except in the oases that dot the region, the barren Hijazi landscape permits no agriculture besides animal husbandry.
Also, while Q 6:136-39 implies that Muhammad’s enemies were farmers; Mecca’s geography permits no agriculture. But the passage could well relate to pagan Ta’if, a mere 87 kilometers (54 miles) from Mecca. Ta’if was famous for its grapes, pomegranates, figs, etc. Thus, there’s nothing incompatible with the Qur’an’s Hijazi origins here.
Regarding the hadith’s description of Mecca, much of it is pure yarn spinning and hyperbole. Muslims were the first to acknowledge that many hadith are unreliable. Hence, we can’t expect hadith descriptions to conform to Meccan geography. The fact that Mecca isn’t on a trade route, for example, suggests that many of the stories establishing the power of Muhammad’s tribe may be myth. But this does not take away from the fact that the hadith consistently refer to Mecca as Muhammad’s birthplace and the town where he began his preaching.
Some revisionists also claim most of Islam’s early mosques point quite accurately to Petra, not Mecca. But as science historian David A. King explains, that’s simply impossible: “The first generations of Muslims had no means whatsoever for finding the direction of Petra [or Mecca either] accurately . . . not least because they had no access to any geographical coordinates, let alone modern ones, and no mathematics whatsoever.” They calculated Mecca’s direction accurately by their standards, using the best methods available. But those methods were highly inaccurate by modern standards.
As well, to think that so sprawling and so divided a community as the early Muslim community could have somehow agreed to relocate its sacred center and did so without leaving a single trace of that move is highly implausible, to say the least. Thus, rightly understood, all the available evidence points to Mecca, not Petra or Nabatea, as Islam’s true birthplace.
Is Petra Islam’s True birthplace — Or Mecca?
For centuries Muslims have revered Mecca as the site of their holiest shrine, the Kaaba. However, in 1977 John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook published books arguing for a radically different approach to Islam’s origins. Among other things, these revisionists contended that Mecca was not Islam’s birthplace, which they located somewhere in the Fertile Crescent. Though Crone and Cook later repudiated the theory advanced in their book, Crone at least held fast to the idea that Islam’s origins were likely in the Fertile Crescent, possibly in Nabatea.
Forty years later revisionism is still alive and well. Some scholars still promote the idea that the Kaaba was not originally in Mecca. Some say it was in or near Petra, while others refuse to speculate on the location. Their combined evidence was enough to convince popular historian and documentary filmmaker Tom Holland. Since Muslims everywhere pray facing Mecca, this view (if true) means they all naively face the wrong direction.
Revisionists variously claim the following evidence supports their theory:
- The textual and cartographic data;
- The Qur’an’s geographic data;
- The hadith’s picture of Mecca;
- The archeological record;
- Al-Tabari’s historical record; and,
- Mecca’s geographic conditions.
In addition to these six lines of evidence, we must also consider how plausible it is that the Muslim community “reassigned” its origins to a different city than that of its actual birthplace. Most revisionists believe Muslims made this change during Islam’s classical period for political reasons. But is this believable? Did Islam originate in Mecca or Petra?
The Evidence
First, some scholars are unimpressed that the earliest textual evidence for Mecca is so late — from the late seventh century. They claim the first map documenting Mecca’s existence is late also. I believe Herodotus included Mecca, as “Makoraba,” on his second-century BC map of Arabia, but revisionists are unconvinced. Regarding textual evidence, only a small percentage survives from any ancient culture. And unlike the Mediterranean world at the time of Christ, Arab culture was oral during Islam’s first two centuries, producing precious little written Arabic before the ninth century. However, wishing we had earlier evidence does not license us to discount the evidence we do have. And all the early textual evidence points to Mecca, none to Petra.
Other Western scholars had previously questioned the hadith basis of the traditional origins story, but Wansbrough, Cook and Crone can be credited with beginning Islamic revisionism as a school of thought.
Second, regarding the qur’anic evidence, the fact that the Qur’an names Mecca just once looks suspicious when compared with the New Testament’s naming Jerusalem nearly 150 times. However, the two scriptures are radically different books. By way of comparison, the former names Islam’s founder just four times, while the latter uses Jesus’ name over a thousand times.
Some scholars think the Qur’an’s other geographic data locate Islam’s origins in Nabatea. For example, a woodenly literal reading of Q 37:137 locates Muhammad’s audience beside Sodom’s Nabatean ruins. A freer reading allows for the traditional interpretation, which puts the ruins beside the Arabs’ caravan route to Syria. Q 80:24-32 and other Meccan passages speak of God’s provision of fruit and anʿām —sometimes translated “cattle” — which Mecca’s climate will not allow. But anʿām can also be translated “beasts,” which includes camels. In that case, the verse’s provisions “for you and your beasts” would have been relevant to traders and camel herders alike. There is also no reason to reject the traditional Muslim view that these texts speak universally (after the pattern of the psalms5). Q 6:136-139 implies that Muhammad’s opponents were themselves agriculturalists. But such passages may well have been regional in scope, for example, detailing practices of pagan Ta’if’s residents, just 87 kilometers (54 miles) from Mecca. In fact, none of the Qur’an’s agricultural references require a locale further afield than Ta’if, famous for its grapes, pomegranates, figs, etc. Thus, everything in the Qur’an’s early suras is compatible with its Hijazi origins.
Revisionists must reckon with two other facts which argue strongly against Islam’s Nabatean or northern origins:
- Qur’anic references to the pagans’ practices of idol worship and animal sacrifice; and,
- The presence of no less than 200 Amharic and Ethiopic loanwords in the Qur’an.
The Byzantines had forbidden both idol worship and animal sacrifice long before Muhammad’s time — including in their province of Arabia Petraea (a frontier province of the Roman Empire beginning in the 2nd century). Yet the Qur’an repeatedly refers to idolatry as a contemporary practice, calling the unbelievers to forsake their idols, which they look to for protection (e.g., Q 2:256-57, 16:36). Abraham is repeatedly presented as the great prophetic hero who challenged his people’s idolatry (e.g., Q 26:69-102), even as Muhammad is now doing. G.R. Hawting has argued that Muhammad challenged only the “spiritual idolatry” of retrograde monotheists. But in its listing of proscribed foods, Q 5:3 says, “Forbidden to you are carrion, blood, pork . . . whatever has been sacrificed to idols.” This was clearly pagan idolatry, which points to an Arabian region, like the Hijaz, outside the bounds of the Byzantine Empire.
Regarding loanwords, significant linguistic borrowing suggests extensive cross-cultural interaction. When goods and ideas are exchanged, words often are as well. Cultural dominance may play into linguistic borrowing also, and Ethiopia ruled the Hijaz briefly during the 6th century. If the Qur’an’s early suras were given in Petra, one might expect more Coptic than Amharic and Ethiopic loanwords since Nabatea had a much closer cultural connection with Egypt than with Ethiopia. Yet Amharic and Ethiopic words in the Qur’an stand in a 20:1 ratio to Coptic words. (Aramaic and Syriac, on the other hand, exerted major influence on the entire region, even far-off Yemen.) Thus, from both these perspectives the Hijaz is the more likely location of Islam’s emergence. And while the Qur’an mentions Mecca by name only once, it never mentions Petra at all. Thus, the Hijaz is the more likely location of Islam’s emergence when both the Qur’an’s references to idolatrous worship and its vocabulary are taken into account.
Third, since the hadith clearly exaggerate in glorifying Mecca, we must take their hyperbolic descriptions of its grandeur and lush vegetation for what they are. Crone is doubtless right to argue that western Arabia’s economy was insufficient to support the populations mentioned in the hadith. Neither was Mecca ever on any trade route. But again, we must not allow fictional accounts and hyperbolic descriptions to mislead us into looking for a large city at the nexus of a trading empire. Hadith sources consistently disagree when hyperbolizing. It is where they consistently agree that we should pay attention. And they consistently make Mecca Islam’s birthplace.
Fourth, revisionists make two claims about the archeological record. The first relates to the fact that we have no evidence that Mecca was inhabited in the seventh century. Due to the Saudi government’s absolute dread of shirk—roughly translated, idolatry — it adamantly forbids all archeological study of Mecca’s historic sites. Indeed, the Saudis seem determined to obliterate the city’s historic record in their rush to dwarf the Kaaba with skyscrapers. An estimated 95 percent of Mecca’s historic buildings have been demolished to allow for this building spree. Any remaining historic sites are treated with a strange combination of fear, contempt and scholarly avoidance, lest they be idolized. This leaves us with no archeological evidence whatsoever, either for or against Mecca’s being Islam’s birthplace.
The other archeological claim some revisionists make relates to early mosque orientation. Writer and documentary filmmaker Dan Gibson claims close agreement in the qibla, or prayer direction. In his unpublished paper “Petra in the Qur’an,” Dan Gibson claims that Petra was also called Mecca, and that the hadith accurately described the alleged Petran Mecca. But it defies logic that Muslims would have named an Arabian city by the very same name, without ever distinguishing the two, unless to cover their tracks.
One example of this fear and contempt is that the Saudis have turned the house of Khadijah, Muhammad’s first wife, into a block of toilets. Likewise, while radical clerics have repeatedly called for the demolition of the house in which Muhammad was born, the Saudis have used it as a cattle market for many years.
Fifth, Gibson, reading between the lines, suggests that al-Tabari’s account of Ibn al-Zubayr’s trip to Mecca in 70 AH (689-90 CE) may point to the Muslim community’s relocation from Petra to Mecca. Tabari says Ibn al-Zubayr took with him “many horses and camels and much baggage” to Mecca. To begin, had the rebel Ibn al-Zubayr’s trip represented a communal move and relocation of the Black Stone to Mecca, why would his enemies not have reversed it upon his defeat? As for the horses mentioned, he would have needed them to mount the defense of his desert refuge. Regarding the money Ibn al-Zubayr took, transferring power from Damascus involved outfitting and rewarding his supporters, and money was bulky in those days. Tabari also says that many camels were slaughtered on his arrival in Mecca — doubtless to celebrate his victory, fleeting though it was. There is nothing to suggest that this points to the Muslim community’s relocation of Islam’s sacred shrine. And while Tabari never mentions Petra, he elsewhere repeatedly names Mecca as home of the Kaaba.
Sixth, some believe Mecca’s harsh conditions and geographic isolation make it a wretched choice for the spiritual center of the world. But however ambitious Muhammad was, it seems Gibson claims the exceptions face halfway between Petra and Mecca. Missing in both Gibson’s book (and film) is precise archeological evidence for each of the mosques studied. And no amount of cinematic wizardry can make up for this lack. Coordinates based on satellite imagery are unreliable due to the fact that many early mosques have multiple foundations.
Many American mosques face southeast, based on Mecca’s direction on a flat map, while others face northeast, based on the shortest distance around the globe.
Most revisionists hypothesize that the early Muslims relocated Islam’s center to Mecca for its remoteness, in order to make the Kaaba (with its vital Black Stone) immune to political intrigue. But it is not hard to imagine every rebel spiriting the stone off and rebuilding its shrine in his preferred location. That did not happen in all the centuries since the stone was allegedly moved to Mecca because it is precisely Mecca’s Muhammadan history that sanctifies it to Muslims.
It is likely that he initially hoped to make his hometown simply the center of his Arabian theocracy. He could not have known when he first began how much of the globe his armies would subdue.
The Issue Of Plausibility
The last issue for us to consider in assessing the theory that Petra or another city in the Fertile Crescent is Islam’s real birthplace is that of plausibility. This issue comes to the fore when we ask how the Muslim community seamlessly made and accepted the move from Islam’s “original birthplace” to Mecca, its “pseudo-birthplace,” without leaving any evidence of the move in the written record.
Of the proposed answers to this question, two call for our consideration. Gibson puts forward a highly implausible hypothesis that Muslims formerly called Petra “Mecca,” a hypothesis endorsed by Christian apologist Jay Smith. This would mean there were two Meccas, the first being Petra, the second being the Kaaba’s current home in Saudi Arabia. Gibson bases this theory on the testimony of a 9th-10th century Christian historian named Thomas Artsruni, who wrote that Muhammad had preached in Mecca, located in “Arabia Petraea Paran.” According to Gibson, Thomas locates Mecca in Petra, “in southern Jordan.”
However, Thomas locates Mecca, not in the city of Petra at all, but only in the Byzantine province of Arabia Petraea, specifically in its Paran region—in Sinai. Two things explain Thomas’s mistake.
- First, he wrote in distant Armenia of places he had never seen.
- Second, he undoubtedly placed Mecca in Paran because Muslims say Mecca was the site of Hagar and Ishmael’s exile, an event Genesis 21:22 clearly locates in Paran.
In other words, Thomas mistakenly assumed that Mecca must be in Paran since the author of Genesis set Hagar and Ishmael’s story there. Thus, we should overlook Thomas’s error, not expand upon it.
The standard revisionist explanation for the hadith’s total silence on the topic of the Muslim community’s alleged move of its central shrine from Petra or some other town in the Fertile Crescent to Mecca is that the Muslims covered their tracks. They supposedly did this because they did not want it known they had moved the qibla, lest it diminish Mecca’s sanctity and legitimacy. This theory is also implausible for a number of reasons:
- Having the correct qibla has always been vitally important to Muslims.
- The Muslim community was already widely distributed when the alleged change and subsequent cover-up happened.
- So deeply divided was the early community that Sunni, Shia, Khariji and other Muslims killed each other to gain or retain power.
But even supposing that Muslims used the name Mecca for Petra before relocating the Black Stone to the new Mecca (in Saudi Arabia), this does not explain why they never again referred to Petra as Mecca (or “Old Mecca”) after that historic move.
Though not written down until much later, the hadith do reflect the early Muslim community’s divisions and disagreements in numerous respects.
To think that so sprawling and so unruly a community could have unanimously agreed to relocate its sacred center and could have done so without leaving a single trace of the move is highly implausible, to say the least.
By my reckoning, then, the score is Mecca 7, Petra 0. Muslims do not mistakenly face the wrong direction when they pray. All the available evidence points to Mecca as Islam’s true birthplace.
- First, he wrote in distant Armenia of places he had never seen.
- Second, he undoubtedly placed Mecca in Paran because Muslims say Mecca was the site of Hagar and Ishmael’s exile, an event Genesis 21:22 clearly locates in Paran.
In other words, Thomas mistakenly assumed that Mecca must be in Paran since the author of Genesis set Hagar and Ishmael’s story there. Thus, we should overlook Thomas’s error, not expand upon it.
Is Mecca Really The Birthplace Of Islam?
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Last Updated: 12/2021
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