The Settlement of Hajar and Ismail at Mecca

Abraham settles his wife Hagar and their suckling son Ishmael in a valley without vegetation beside the Sacred House. Zamzam gushes forth, and the tribe of Jurhum comes to settle there by her leave. This marks the beginning of the settlement of Mecca, as set out in The Sealed Nectar ¹.

Abraham returned to Palestine from Egypt, and God granted him Ishmael by Hagar. Sarah grew jealous until she compelled Abraham to take Hagar out with her young son ^{1 2}.

Abraham brought them to the Hijaz and settled them in a valley without vegetation beside the sacred House of God. At that time the House was only a raised mound of earth, like a hillock, which floods reached and divided around its right and left sides. He placed them beneath a tree above Zamzam at the top of the mosque. No one was in Mecca at that time, and there was no water there ^{1 2}. He left with them a bag of dates and a waterskin, and returned to Palestine ¹.

Before many days had passed, their provisions and water ran out. Then, by God's favour, the well of Zamzam gushed forth there, and it became their sustenance and their means of living for a time. The full story is well known from Sahih al-Bukhari ^{1 2}.

A tribe from Yemen came, the second Jurhum, and settled in Mecca with the permission of Ishmael's mother. It is said that they had been earlier in the valleys on the outskirts of Mecca. The narration in Sahih al-Bukhari states explicitly that they came to settle in Mecca after Ishmael was settled there and before he grew up, and that they used to pass through this valley before that ^{1 3 2}.

Abraham would travel to Mecca from time to time to look in on what he had left there; see Abraham's journeys to Mecca ³. Ishmael learned Arabic from Jurhum, and they married him to a woman from among them ³.

• The dating is an estimate. The author places the time of Ishmael at twenty centuries before Christ ⁴.
• The original source is the long report of Ibn Abbas in Sahih al-Bukhari, Book of the Prophets. The author refers to pages 1/474–475 of his edition.