This article considers how the pre-Islamic sanctuary at Mecca became the Muslim sanctuary.    The traditional view (of Mecca as a continuation of Abrahamic ceremonies, of an islamization of a pagan sanctuary by Muhammad) is questioned in light of Muslim literature and its use of words associated with the sanctuary.  These words, according to the author, are used contrary to their usual meanings when describing the Meccan sanctuary; this phenomenon makes reconciliation with the traditional view difficult.  In order for some of the words used to describe the sanctuary to be applied, they had to be available and known to those using them at the time; i.e., they couldn’t have been borrowed after the fact.  The author suggests that terms, “are now applied to some of the most important features of the Muslim sanctuary at Mecca, but the evidence seems to show that they originated independently of that sanctuary and only later came to be used to designate features of it” (p. 24).

The author acknowledges the difficulty in finding (or generating) a narrative of a sanctuary, with so many charged traditions that surround it.  The author’s stance is, “the Muslim sanctuary at Mecca is the result of a sort of compromise between a pre-existing pagan sanctuary and sanctuary ideas which had developed first in a Jewish milieu” (p. 27).  He then lists a number of terms that have undergone redefinition to make them apply to the Islamic sanctuary: Maqam Ibrahim (is this a stone, the whole haram, or what?); Al-Hijr: (is this a semi-circular area adjacent to the Ka’ba, a place of refuge, a place for meeting, or a place where Muhammad was sleeping prior to His Night Journey?); Al-Hatim: is this a semi-circular wall, or an area between the door and the corner?); Al-Masjid al-Haram: is this the mosque at Mecca, or the empty space around the Ka’ba?); Al-Rukn: is it the Black Stone, or the corner which contains the Black Stone?).  The author lays out the arguments for and against these various interpretations, and offers what he feels are the “most satisfactory explanations” to the questions raised: “I think the evidence put forward is difficult to make sense of if the usual version of the adoption of the Meccan sanctuary by Islam is accepted, and that the alternative scheme suggested here seems to me necessary to account for the evidence I have presented” (p. 47.)  The author suggests that the Ka’ba cult combines cultic elements from a number of (presumed earlier) North Arabian cult sites that were suppressed when the Ka’ba was elaborated in the 1^st Century.

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