How It Evolved

Islam · Question

How old is the Kaaba?

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The short answer

Contested

Muslim tradition, following the Qur'an, holds that Abraham and his son Ishmael raised the foundations of the Kaaba, the 'House' at Mecca. History can neither confirm nor refute that. What it can show is that the sanctuary is older than Islam: the Qur'an addresses Quraysh as people who already worship 'the Lord of this House'. No inscription, coin or outside text from before Islam names Mecca or its shrine, so how much older cannot be measured. The building itself has been rebuilt several times: by Quraysh shortly before Muhammad's call, according to the tradition; by Ibn al-Zubayr after a fire in 683; by al-Ḥajjāj in 693 on the earlier plan; and after a flood in the 1620s. The cube standing today is mostly that seventeenth-century rebuilding.

The Kaaba's history, by kind of evidence
DateWhat happenedEvidenceHow secure
Before Islam, date unknownA sanctuary, 'the House', at the centre of Quraysh's prosperityThe Qur'an, sura 106Consensus that the Qur'an presupposes it[1]
The age of Abraham, in traditionAbraham and Ishmael raise the House's foundationsThe Qur'an, 2:127; later traditionA matter of faith; history cannot test it[3]
Shortly before 610, in traditionQuraysh rebuild the House; Muhammad sets the Black Stone in placeIbn Isḥāq's biography, mid-8th c.Majority, as tradition[12]
630The idols of the Kaaba are destroyed when Mecca surrendersThe biographiesMajority[12]
683The Kaaba burns during the Umayyad siege of MeccaMuslim historiansMajority[13]
683–693Ibn al-Zubayr rebuilds it on a larger plan; al-Ḥajjāj restores the earlier oneMuslim historiansMajority
930–951The Qarmaṭīs carry off the Black Stone; it is returnedMuslim historiansConsensus[14]
1620sRebuilt after a flood under the Ottoman sultan Murad IVOttoman recordsConsensus
The Namāra epitaph of Imruʾ al-Qays, dated 328 CE: a long basalt lintel carved with Arabic in Nabataean script, in the Louvre
Marie-Lan Nguyen · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

The short version: the Kaʿba, the cube-shaped shrine in the courtyard of the Great Mosque of Mecca, is older than Islam, but how much older cannot be dated. Muslim tradition, building on the Qur’an, traces it to Abraham and Ishmael; that is a matter of faith, and historical method cannot test it (§0). What can be dated is a set of rebuildings, and the oldest of those is known only from books written a century and a half later. The building standing today is, in the main, a reconstruction of the 1620s on a plan restored in 693. Majority

What the Qur’an says

The Qur’an is the earliest source that mentions the shrine, and it speaks of it as “the House” (al-bayt), a place its first hearers already knew. Sura 106 ties the prosperity of Muhammad’s own tribe to it:

fa-l-yaʿbudū rabba hādhā l-bayt

“So let them worship the Lord of this House.” (Q 106:3, trans. Abdel Haleem)[1]​[2]

That verse is the strongest evidence for the shrine’s age: it addresses Quraysh as people whose caravans and security already depended on a sanctuary at Mecca (Islam §2). Consensus that the Qur’an presupposes an existing sanctuary.

The Qur’an also gives the House an Abrahamic origin. It describes Abraham and Ishmael building it and praying for it to be accepted:

wa-idh yarfaʿu ibrāhīmu l-qawāʿida mina l-bayti wa-ismāʿīl

“As Abraham and Ishmael built up the foundations of the House [they prayed], ‘Our Lord, accept [this] from us.’” (Q 2:127)[3]

Another verse says God “showed Abraham the site of the House” and told him to purify it for those who circle it and pray there (Q 22:26), and a third calls it “the first House [of worship] to be established for people”, at Bakka, a form of Mecca’s name (Q 3:96).[4]​[5] Consensus on what the verses say.

These verses tell the historian what Muhammad’s message claimed about the shrine: that its true religion was Abraham’s monotheism, which the idols had corrupted. They do not date the building, and no other evidence reaches back to Abraham, whose own life cannot be dated (Islam §1). Consensus

What the evidence outside the Qur’an shows

Very little. No inscription, coin or Greek, Syriac or South Arabian text from before Islam securely names Mecca, let alone its shrine. The Greek geographer Ptolemy, in the second century CE, lists a place called Macoraba in western Arabia; Glen Bowersock reads the name as “Mecca the great”, and Patricia Crone argued that it has nothing to do with Mecca.[6]​[7] Contested The tribe of Quraysh, too, is named in the Qur’an and the tradition but in no pre-Islamic outside source. Consensus

Silence of this kind is weak evidence. Western Arabia before Islam left few documents, and a small sanctuary town would not be expected to appear in them (§0). Most historians accept the setting that the Qur’an and the tradition both imply.[8] Majority But it means that everything said about the Kaʿba’s appearance and cult before Islam comes from Muslim writers of the eighth and ninth centuries.

What the tradition says about the shrine before Islam

The fullest account of Mecca’s gods is the Book of Idols of Hishām ibn al-Kalbī (d. c. 820), written about two centuries after Muhammad. It says a chief called ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy first brought idols to Mecca from Syria, and describes Hubal, a red stone figure with a broken right hand replaced in gold, standing in the Kaʿba with seven arrows used for divination.[9] Majority that this is what the book says. The famous figure of 360 idols around the Kaʿba also comes from such later writers. Historians read the Book of Idols with care: it was written long after the shrines were destroyed, and its crowded Mecca fits the later Muslim picture of the “age of ignorance” as much as any evidence.[10]​[11] Majority Hubal appears in only one inscription outside Muslim sources, a Nabataean tomb text at Hegra in north-west Arabia.[11] Majority

The biography of Muhammad by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 767), the earliest full one, tells of a rebuilding shortly before his call to prophecy. The Kaʿba had been weakened by fire and damaged by a flood, and Quraysh rebuilt it. When the clans quarrelled over who should have the honour of setting the Black Stone into the wall, Muhammad, not yet a prophet, had them lift it together on a cloak and set it in place himself.[12] Majority as the tradition’s account. The story was written down well over a century after the event, and it serves to show the future prophet as a peacemaker trusted by every clan; historians treat it as tradition, not record (§0).

From Muhammad to the Umayyads

When Mecca surrendered to Muhammad in January 630, the biographies say, the idols of the Kaʿba were destroyed, and the shrine became the centre of Muslim worship and pilgrimage.[12] Majority

The next dated events are from the civil war of the 680s (Islam §5). ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr, who refused allegiance to the Umayyad caliph Yazīd, made the sanctuary his base. In 683 a Syrian army besieged Mecca, and the Kaʿba caught fire.[13] Majority Tradition says Ibn al-Zubayr rebuilt it on a larger plan, enclosing the semicircular area beside it, the Ḥijr, which he held to be part of Abraham’s original foundations. After his defeat in 692, the Umayyad governor al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf pulled down his additions in 693 and restored the shape the building had had under Quraysh, the cube that stands today. Majority as the tradition’s account.

The Black Stone

The Black Stone, set into a corner of the Kaʿba, is the one part of the shrine the tradition connects directly with both Abraham and Muhammad. Its most dramatic documented episode is medieval. In 930 the Qarmaṭīs, a radical Ismāʿīlī group from eastern Arabia, sacked Mecca during the pilgrimage and carried the Black Stone off; it was returned only in 951 (Islam §6).[14] Consensus

Later rebuildings

The building has been repaired many times since. The most thorough reconstruction came after heavy rain and flooding in 1626 brought down its walls, under the Ottoman sultan Murad IV; the Kaʿba was rebuilt in granite from the hills around Mecca, on the plan of 693. Consensus Most of the masonry visible today dates from that rebuilding.

So how old is it?

The answer depends on what is being dated.

  • The site as a sanctuary: older than the Qur’an, which addresses people already devoted to it. How much older is unknown. Consensus
  • Abraham’s House: a belief the Qur’an teaches and Muslims hold; history has no evidence either way for a building of Abraham’s time in Mecca. Consensus on the limits of the evidence.
  • The present shape: the plan restored in 693, which the tradition says follows the pre-Islamic rebuilding by Quraysh. Majority
  • The present stones: largely the 1620s. Consensus

Common misconceptions

  • “The Kaʿba’s age is proved by outside evidence.” No dated pre-Islamic inscription, coin or text names it. Its pre-Islamic history comes from the Qur’an and from later Muslim writers. Consensus
  • “Silence proves Mecca did not exist before Islam.” Most historians reject this; the region left few documents, and the Qur’an presupposes an established sanctuary (§0). Majority
  • “The building is unchanged since Muhammad’s time.” It has burned, been rebuilt to a larger plan, been restored, and been rebuilt again after floods; the plan, not the masonry, is what the tradition says goes back to Quraysh. Majority

References

  1. ^ Qur'an 106:1-4 — The Qur'an. 610–632 CE (recited); standard text c. 650. Arabic. The Qur'an names Quraysh and ties their security and journeys to 'the Lord of this House'. read the text
  2. ^ M. A. S. Abdel Haleem The Qur'an: A New Translation. Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 2004. The translation quoted in the Islam series unless stated.
  3. ^ Qur'an 2:127 — The Qur'an. early 7th c. CE. Arabic. Abraham and Ishmael raise the foundations of the House and pray for it to be accepted. about
  4. ^ Qur'an 22:26 — The Qur'an. early 7th c. CE. Arabic. God shows Abraham the site of the House and tells him to purify it for worshippers. about
  5. ^ Qur'an 3:96 — The Qur'an. early 7th c. CE. Arabic. 'The first House established for people' is the one at Bakka, identified with Mecca. about
  6. ^ G. W. Bowersock The Crucible of Islam. Harvard University Press, 2017. Arabia between the empires; reads Ptolemy's Macoraba as Mecca.
  7. ^ Patricia Crone Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press, 1987. Questions Mecca's trade and the reliability of the sīra's detail.
  8. ^ Fred M. Donner Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010. Islam's origins in the early seventh-century preaching of Muhammad.
  9. ^ Hishām ibn al-Kalbī, Kitāb al-Aṣnām — The Book of Idols. early 9th c. CE. Arabic. The fullest Muslim account of pre-Islamic Arabian gods: al-Lāt at Ṭāʾif, al-ʿUzzā at Nakhla, Manāt, Hubal in the Kaʿba, ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy. about
  10. ^ G. R. Hawting The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Argues that the Qur'an's 'associators' were monotheists judged deficient, not idolaters.
  11. ^ a b Robert G. Hoyland Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. Routledge, 2001. The standard survey of pre-Islamic Arabia, its kingdoms, religions and languages.
  12. ^ a b Ibn Isḥāq, Sīrat Rasūl Allāh — The Life of Muhammad (recension of Ibn Hishām). mid-8th c. CE (Ibn Hishām's recension, early 9th c.). Arabic. The earliest surviving Muslim biography of Muhammad; source for his alliance and conflicts with the Jewish tribes of Medina (Qaynuqāʿ, Naḍīr, Qurayẓa) and the conquest of Khaybar. about
  13. ^ G. R. Hawting The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661–750. Routledge, 2nd ed., 2000. The standard short history of the Umayyads and of the sources' bias against them.
  14. ^ Farhad Daftary The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 2007. The standard history of the Ismāʿīlīs, including the Fatimids and Qarmaṭīs.

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APA 
Paudel, A. (2026). How old is the Kaaba?. In How Islam Evolved. How It Evolved. https://howitevolved.com/islam/how-old-is-the-kaaba/
MLA 
Paudel, Amrit. “How old is the Kaaba?.” How Islam Evolved, How It Evolved, 23 October 2026, howitevolved.com/islam/how-old-is-the-kaaba/.
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@misc{howitevolved2026howoldisthekaaba,
  author = {Paudel, Amrit},
  title = {How old is the Kaaba?},
  howpublished = {\url{https://howitevolved.com/islam/how-old-is-the-kaaba/}},
  year = {2026},
  note = {How Islam Evolved. Last modified 2026-10-23}
}