Ibrahim's journeys to Mecca

Ibrahim travelled to Mecca from time to time to see to his property. How many journeys there were is not known, but reliable historical sources preserve four of them. ¹

God mentions in the Qur'an that He showed Ibrahim in a dream that he was slaughtering Isma'il, so he carried out the command, and God ransomed him with a great sacrifice, as in 37:103 to 107. ¹ The author argues from the book of Genesis that Isma'il was thirteen years older than Isaac, and from the context of the story that it happened before Isaac's birth, because the good news of Isaac is mentioned after the whole story is told; so the story includes at least one journey before Isma'il grew up. ¹ Its details are on the ransom of Isma'il.

Al-Bukhari relates the other three journeys in full, from Ibn Abbas, traced to the Prophet ﷺ. ^{1 2} When Isma'il grew up and learned Arabic from the Jurhum, they married him to a woman of theirs, and his mother Hajar died. When Ibrahim came to see to his property, he did not find Isma'il, so he asked his wife about him, and she complained of the hardship of their living. He told her to tell Isma'il to change the threshold of his door. Isma'il understood his father's meaning, divorced her, and married the daughter of Mudad ibn Amr, the chief of the Jurhum. ^{1 3}

Ibrahim came again after this second marriage and did not find Isma'il. He asked his wife about him and about their condition, and she praised God. He charged her to tell Isma'il to keep firm his door-threshold, and went back to Palestine. ¹

He came a third time and found Isma'il trimming an arrow under a tree near the Zamzam. He rose to him and did as a father does with a son and a son with a father; their meeting came after a long absence. ¹ On this visit they built the Ka'ba and raised its foundations, and Ibrahim proclaimed the pilgrimage among the people as God had commanded him. ^{4 2} Its details are on the raising of the foundations of the Ka'ba.

• The three journeys are a single long hadith in the book of the Prophets in Sahih al-Bukhari; the author summarises it and refers to 1/475–476 of his edition.
• The date is an estimate: the author puts the time of Isma'il at about twenty centuries before Christ. ⁵