THE Book of Genesis tells us that Abraham was childless, without hope of children, and that one night God summoned him out of his tent and said to him: "Look now towards heaven, and count the stars if thou art able to number them." And as Abraham gazed up at the stars he heard the voice say: "So shall thy seed be" (15:5)

Abraham's wife Sarah was then seventy-six years old, he being eighty-­five; and she gave him her handmaid Hagar, an Egyptian, that he might take her as his second wife. But bitterness of feeling arose between the mistress and the handmaid, and Hagar fled from the anger of Sarah and cried out to God in her distress. And He sent to her an Angel with the message: "I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude." The Angel also said to her: "Behold, thou art with child, and shalt hear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction" (16:10-11). Then Hagar returned to Abraham and Sarah and told them what the Angel had said; and when the birth took place, Abraham named his son Ishmael, which means "God shall hear."

When the boy reached the age of thirteen, Abraham was in his hun­dredth year, and Sarah was ninety years old; and God spoke again to Abraham and promised him that Sarah also should hear him a son who must be called Isaac. Fearing that his elder son might thereby lose favor in the sight of God, Abraham prayed: "O that Ishmael might live before Thee!" And God said to him: "As for Ishmael, I have heard thee. Behold, I have blessed him ... and I will make him a great nation. But My covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year” (17:20-21).

Sarah gave birth to Isaac and it was she herself who suckled him; and when he was weaned she told Abraham that Hagar and her son must no longer remain in their household. And Abraham was deeply grieved at this, on account of his love for Ishmael; but again God spoke to him, and told him to follow the counsel of Sarah, and not to grieve; and again He promised him that Ishmael should be blessed.

Thus, Hagar and Ishmael were guided to a barren valley of Arabia, some forty camel days south of Canaan. The Books do not tell us how Hagar and her son reached Becca; perhaps some travellers took care of them, for the valley was on one of the great caravan routes, sometimes called "the incense route," because perfumes and incense and such wares were brought that way from South Arabia to the Mediterranean; and no doubt Hagar was guided to leave the caravan, once the place was reached. It was not long before both mother and son were overcome by thirst, to the point that Hagar feared Ishmael was dying. According to the traditions of their descendants, he cried out to God from where he lay in the sand, and his mother stood on a rock at the foot of a nearby eminence to see if any help was in sight. Seeing no one, she hastened to another point of vantage, but from there likewise not a soul was to he seen. Half distraught, she passed seven times in all between the two points, until at the end of her seventh course, as she sat for rest on the further rock, the Angel spoke to her. In the words of Genesis:

“And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out o f heaven and said to her: What aileth thee, Hagar? Fear not, for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise and lift up the lad and hold him in thy hand, for I will make him a great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water” (21:17-19)

The water was a spring which God caused to well up from the sand at the touch of Ishmael's heel; and thereafter the valley soon became a halt for caravans by reason of the excellence and abundance of the water; and the well was named Zamzam.

As to Genesis, it is the book of Isaac and his descendants, not of Abraham's other line. Of Ishmael it tells us: “And God was with the lad; and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness and became an archer” (21:20). After that it scarcely mentions his name, except to inform us that the two brothers Isaac and Ishmael together buried their father in Hebron, and that some years later Esau married his cousin, the daughter of Ishmael. But there is indirect praise of Ishmael and his mother in the Psalm which opens How amiable are Thy tabernacles, 0 Lord of hosts, and which tells of the miracle of Zamzam as having been caused by their passing through the valley: “Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee; in whose heart are the ways of them who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well” (Psalm 84: 5-6). [Whereas Islamic tradition equates Baca/Becca/Mecca, a note to this verse in The New Oxford Annotated Bible {NRSV}simply comments that the location of the “valley of Baca” is unknown.]

When Hagar and Ishmael reached their destination Abraham had still seventy-five years to live, and he visited his son in the holy place to which Hagar had been guided. The Koran tells us that God showed him the exact site, near to the well of Zamzam, upon which he and Ishmael must build a sanctuary (2:121-27), and they were told how it must he built. Its name, Ka`bah, cube, is in virtue of its shape which is approximately cubic; its four corners are towards the four points of the compass. But the most holy, object in that holy place is a celestial stone which, it is said, was brought by an Angel to Abraham from the nearby hill Abu Qubays, where it had been preserved ever since it had reached the earth. "It descended from Paradise whiter than milk, but the sins of the sons of Adam made it black.” This black stone they built into the eastern corner of the Ka'bah; and when the sanctuary was completed, God spoke again to Abraham and bade him institute the rite of the Pilgrimage to Becca--or Mecca, as it later came to be called (22:26-27).

In the ensuing years, the pilgrims who came to visit the Holy House continually

brought rich gifts to Mecca 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 honored through a lesser pilgrimage at any time; and these rites con­tinued to be performed with fervor 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 went to settle elsewhere took with them stones from the holy precinct and performed rites in honor of them. Later, through the influence of neighboring 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. Eventually a chieftain of the tribe, on his way hack from a journey to Syria, asked the Moabites to give him one of their idols. They gave him Hubal, which he brought hack to the Sanctuary, setting it up within the Ka`bah itself; and it became the chief idol of Mecca.

The Ka`bah—under the supervision of the Quraysh clan--was the greatest of all the Arabic sanctuaries, but  other lesser sanctuaries were located throughout Arabia and the most important of these in the Hijaz were the temples of three "daughters of God" as some of their worshippers claimed them to be, al-Lat, al-`Uzzah and Manat. Manat’s temple was at Qudayd on the Red Sea, almost due west of the oasis. More important for Quraysh was the shrine of al-`Uzzah in the valley of Nakhlah, a camel day's journey south of Mecca. Another day's journey in the same direction brought the devotee to Ta'if, a walled town on a luxuriant green tableland, inhabited by Thaqif, a branch of the great Arab tribe of Hawazin. Al-Lat was "the lady of Ta'if", and her idol was housed in a rich temple. As guardians of this, Thaqif liked to think of themselves as the counterpart of Quraysh; and Quraysh went so far as to speak currently of "the two cities" when they meant Mecca and Ta'if. But despite the wonderful climate and fertility of "the Garden of the Hijaz", as Ta'if was called, its people were not unjealous of the barren valley to their north, for they knew in their hearts that their temple, however much they might promote it, could never compare with the House of God. Nor did they altogether wish it were otherwise, for they too were descended from Ishmael and had roots in Mecca. Their sentiments were mixed and sometimes conflicting. Quraysh on the other hand were jealous of no one. They knew that they lived at the center of the world and that they had in their midst a magnet capable of drawing pilgrims from all points of the compass. It was up to them to do nothing that might diminish the good relationship which had been established between themselves and the outlying tribes.

Abd al-Muttalib's office as host of pilgrims to the Ka'bah imposed on him an acute awareness of these things. His function was an intertribal one, and it was shared to a certain extent by all Quraysh. The pilgrims must be made to feel that Mecca was a home from home, and welcoming them meant welcoming what they worshipped and never failing to show honor to the idols they brought with them. The justification and author­ity for accepting idols and believing in their efficacy was that of tradition: their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had done so.

At this time—569--Yemen was under the rule of Abyssinia, and an Abyssinian named Abrahah was vice-regent. He built a magnificent cathedral in San`a', hoping thereby to make it supersede Mecca as the great place of pilgrimage for all Arabia. He had marble brought to it from one of the derelict palaces of the Queen of Sheba, and he set up crosses in it of gold and of silver, and pulpits of ivory and ebony, and he wrote to his Abyssinian master, the Negus: "I have built thee a church, O King, the like of which was never built for any king before thee; and I shall not rest until I have diverted unto it the pilgrimage of the Arabs." Nor did he make any secret of his intention, and great was the anger of the tribes throughout Arabia. Finally a man of Kinanah, a tribe akin to Quraysh, went to San`a' for the deliberate purpose of defiling the church, which he did one night and then returned safely to his people.

When Abrahah heard of this he vowed that in revenge he would raze the Ka`bah to the ground; and having made his preparations he set off for Mecca with a large army, in the van of which he placed an elephant. When Abrahah arrived at the outskirts of Mecca, the chief of Quraysh, 'Abd al-Muttalib, went out to the meet with Abrahah.  'Abd al-Muttalib informed Abrahah that the army had taken two hundred of his camels and he asked that they should be returned to him. Abrahah was somewhat surprised at the request, and said that he was disappointed in him, that he should he thinking of his camels rather than his religion which they had now come to destroy. 'Abd al-Muttalib replied: "I am the lord of the camels, and the temple likewise hath a lord who will defend it." "He cannot defend it against me," said Abrahah. "We shall see," said 'Abd al-Muttalib. "But give me my camels.'' And Abrahah gave orders for the camels to be returned.

'Abd al-Muttalib returned to Quraysh and advised them to withdraw to the hills above the town. Then he went with some of his family and others to the Sanctuary. They stood beside him, praying to God for His help against Abrahah and his army, and he himself took hold of the metal ring in the middle of the Ka'bah door and said: "O God, thy slave protecteth his house. Protect Thou Thy House!" Having thus prayed, he went with the others to join the rest of Quraysh in the hills at points where they could see what took place in the valley below.

The next morning Abrahah made ready to march into the town, intending to destroy the Ka'bah and then return to San'a' by the way they had come. The elephant, richly caparisoned, was led into the front of the army, which was already drawn up; and when the mighty animal reached his position his keeper Unavs turned him the same way as the troops were turned, that is towards Mecca. But then, to the surprise and dismay of Abrahah and the troops, the elephant slowly and deliberately knelt himself down to the ground and would not move. They did everything they could to bring him to his feet; they even beat him about the head with iron bars and stuck iron hooks into his belly, but he remained like a rock. Then they tried the stratagem of making the whole army turn about and march a few paces in the direction of the Yemen. He at once rose to his feet, turned round and followed them. Hopefully they turned round about again, and he also turned, but no sooner was he facing Mecca than again he knelt.

This was the clearest of portents not to move one step further forward, but Abrahah was blinded by his personal ambition for the sanctuary he had built and by his determination to destroy its great rival. If they had turned back then, perhaps they would all have escaped disaster. But suddenly it was too late: the western sky grew black, and a strange sound was heard; its volume increased as a great wave of darkness swept upon them from the direction of the sea, and the air above their heads, as high as they could see, was full of birds. Survivors said that they flew with a flight like that of swifts, and each bird had three pebbles the size of dried peas, one in its beak and one between the claws of each foot. They swooped to and fro over the ranks, pelting as they swooped, and the pebbles were so hard and launched with such velocity that they pierced even coats of mail. Every stone found its mark and killed its man, for as soon as a body was struck its flesh began to rot, quickly in some cases, more gradually in others. Not everyone was hit, and amongst those spared was the elephant, but all were terror-stricken. A few remained in the Hijaz and earned a livelihood by shepherding and other work. But the main part of the army returned in^. disorder to San'a': Many died by the wayside, and many others, Abrahah included, died soon after their return.