Mecca's Miniscule Mountains
Tiny Hills, Majestic Mountains, and the Location of Islam's Original Holy City
Pilgrims Standing Next to Marwa ‘Mountain’ in Mecca
An intriguing line of enquiry when it comes to the study of the early origins of Islam deals with the hypothesis that the stories detailing the life of Muhammad, that eventually made it into the hadiths (traditions), were originally set in a different location from the present site of Mecca. If this is the case, it would place of very large question mark over some of the key claims of Islam.
One of the many ways in which modern Mecca is a very bad fit for the place described in the hadiths has to do with mountains.
According to Hadiths and classical sources, the original holy city of Islam was surrounded by high mountains. These mountains crowded in close to the city and some of them seemed to have been considerable peaks.
In fact, Muhammad’s biographer Ibn Ishaq describes a battle inside the holy city of Islam that people observed from the slopes of a high mountain. The problem here is that the nearest high mountain is more than 3 kilometres (2 miles) away from the center of modern Mecca, too far away to observe the minute details of a battle with the naked eye.
The modern city of Mecca is indeed signally lacking in the mountain department. This is a significant problem as one of the foundational stories of Islam is the tale of how Abrahams’s concubine Hagar ran between the mountains of Safa and Marwah near Islam’s holy city in search of water for her son Ishmael. In the descriptions of her ordeal, the mountain peaks are depicted as very high with a valley between them.
These mountains were so substantial that they housed shrines to different idols before the coming of Islam. As related by Ibn Ishaq: “’Amr set up an image on al-Safa called Nahlik Mujawid al-Rih and one on al-Marwa called Mut’im al-Tayr.”
Another confirmation of the fact that the two main mountains of Islam’s original holy must have been a considerable distance from each other is provided by the fact that there are plenty of hadiths that describe people being completely exhausted in attempting to journey between them.
Al Safa was, furthermore, so high that it was used as a military observation point by Muhammad: “When the Verse: 'And warn your tribe of near kindred.' (26.214) was revealed. Allah's Messenger went out, and when he had ascended As-Safa mountain, he shouted, "O Sabahah!" The people said, "Who is that?" "Then they gathered around him, whereupon he said, "Do you see? If I inform you that cavalrymen are proceeding up the side of this mountain, will you believe me?" They said, "We have never heard you telling a lie.” (Sahih Bukhari Vol. 6, Book 60, Hadith 495)
Contrast this with modern Mecca. Muslims must convince themselves that two low rises entirely enclosed (i.e., under a roof!) inside a mosque complex are the ‘mountains’ of Safa and Marwah. These two ‘hills’ are only 450 meters (1500 feet) apart. They are, in fact, so close to each other that Muslim pilgrims move between them seven times in a single day as part of the Hajj. Most of them probably do this without breaking much of a sweat since the ‘mountains’ are practically right next to each other, and they can walk between them in air-conditioned comfort.
It cannot be emphasized enough how deeply at odds this picture is with the majestic descriptions in the hadiths of the high peaks of Safa and Marwah in Islam’s original holy city.
If this was the only discrepancy between modern Mecca and the description of Islam’s original city in the hadiths, we might perhaps have been able to ignore it is a strange anomaly. However, as I point in my book ‘The Mecca Mystery – Probing the Black Hole at the Heart of Muslim History’, this is just one of many instances where we the stark differences between the geography of Mecca and the city described in the hadiths jump out at us.
Kind regards,
Peter
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