islam.museum
Tour / Learn Search العربية

The Kaaba

الكعبة

Mecca

The House whose foundations Ibrahim and Ismail raised at Mecca; it was a raised mound before the building, then the sanctuary toward which Arabia’s tribes came — custodied successively by Ismail’s line, Jurhum, Khuzaʾa and finally Quraysh under Qusayy.

Depth

At a glance

Era
Pre-Islamic Arabia · The Prophetic Era
Region
Arabia
Review
Draft Completeness 1/5 · Help complete it

In space

Mecca

Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph

Sacred space and pilgrimage

Overview

The Ka'ba: the House whose foundations Abraham and Isma'il raised; its guardianship passed to Isma'il's descendants, then Jurhum, then Khuza'a, then Quraysh.

The story

Abraham settled Hagar and her child in a valley without cultivation at God's Sacred House — which then was but a rise in the ground like a hillock, the floods coming to it and washing past its right and left 1. On his third journey he and Isma'il built the Ka'ba and raised its foundations 2.

Isma'il held Mecca's leadership and the House's charge all his life; then it passed to Jurhum for some twenty centuries, then to Khuza'a for three hundred years, then to Qusayy and Quraysh from about 440 CE 3. The polytheists filled the Sacred Mosque with idols; when the Prophet conquered Mecca he found three hundred and sixty idols around the House and ordered them brought out and burned 2.

For young visitors

The Ka'ba is God's House at Mecca; Abraham and his son Isma'il built it, and people kept making pilgrimage to it across the ages.

Connections

Built by
Ibrahim (Abraham)Ismail (Ishmael)
Site of
The Raising of the Kaaba’s FoundationsQusayy ibn Kilab Takes Mecca
Located in
Mecca

People and things also explored

Ibrahim (Abraham)Ismail (Ishmael)MeccaThe Command to Sacrifice IsmailThe Settlement of Hajar and Ismail at MeccaThe Raising of the Kaaba’s FoundationsHajar (Hagar)Quraysh

Sources

  1. Sahih al-Bukhari
  2. al-Raheeq al-Makhtum — Safi al-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri
  3. Qalb Jazirat al-Arab — Fuʾad Hamza
  • al-Sira al-Nabawiyya — Ibn Hisham
Cite this page

islam.museum contributors. “The Kaaba”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/building/kaaba/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Accessed 2026-10-12.

Improve this page on GitHub · Report an error · JSON

Wing

Place

Cities, sites and routes on a map that moves through time. Related

Ibrahim (Abraham)

The patriarch of the Adnani Arabs in the sira’s telling: emigrant from Ur of the Chaldeans to Harran and then Palestine, who settled Hajar and the infant Ismail in the barren valley of Mecca, visited them on recorded journeys, submitted to the command of the sacrifice, and raised the foundations of the Kaaba with his son before calling mankind to the hajj.