Last updated: April 17th, 2025 at 9:07 am · Est. Reading Time: 2 minutes
The location of the Ka’ba in pre-Islamic times was at the same place where it is located right now.
Debate
Historians have been debating the location of Mecca, and hence the Ka’ba, in pre-Islamic times.
The doubt about its location started when the archaeologists discovered the ruins of the mosque of Wasit in Iraq around 1934. The upper building faced almost in the true direction of the current location of the Ka’ba. There was another building underneath the upper one, and hence older than the upper one. Its direction was not exactly towards the current location of the Ka’ba. It was obvious that the people of Wasit corrected their qibla (direction of the Ka’ba) in the later construction.
Crone was the most vocal historian in rejection of the current location of the Ka’ba. She argued that the qibla direction of so many early mosques is not towards the current location of the Ka’ba. So, the qibla of the Muslims during the Umayyad period was either Jerusalem or somewhere between Jerusalem and the current location of Mecca, probably in northwestern Arabia.1
The king thrust the final nail in the coffin of ‘wrong location’ hypotheses by arguing convincingly that the early Muslims did not have the means of calculating the direction to the Ka’ba as precisely as we have today. They simply adopted one direction, which they thought was that of the Ka’ba. For example, the qibla of Indian Muslims was towards the west. People living in the northernmost parts of India prayed towards the direction of sunset, and the people living in the very south did the same. Neither of them was praying in exactly that direction, which a modern instrument would determine. Determining the exact direction of the Ka’ba was not possible until Al-Biruni’s time, when he developed formulas to calculate the true direction of the Ka’ba from many different locations around the globe. Even then, the concept of one single direction of the Ka’ba continued among Muslims. The qibla of North American Muslims, King argues, is still in the general direction of north.2
Lately, archaeology is verifying the King’s arguments. The qibla direction of many earliest mosques discovered in Israel is towards general direction of Mecca and away from Jerusalem.
Future Reading
History of Islam, https://historyofislam.org/