On This Day, 1,342 Years Ago

There was a Spark, which the Wind Blew

By Joaquin Pellegrin-Alvarez

In the Gregorian calendar, October 31, 683 CE corresponds to 3 Rabi’ al-Awwal in the year 64 AH of the Islamic calendar, which was some fifty years after the death of the prophet Muhammad. In the intervening decades, the growing Muslim community had been led by the Rashidun (or “rightly guided” in Arabic) Caliphs (from the Arabic word for “successor”), who also served as rulers over their rapidly expanding empire, which stretched from Egypt to Iran. It had been twenty years since the last Rashidun Caliph, ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, was assassinated, in which time two civil wars had erupted, and now, on 3 Rabi’ al-Awwal, the Kaaba was burning.

Mecca had been besieged for a month by the time the Kaaba, the center of the most important mosque and direction of prayer, was burned. The attackers were sent by the Umayyad Caliphate in Syria, which became dominant following the Rashidun era, but perhaps they were not nearly as rightly guided. At least, that would be the claim of the defender ‘Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr, who declared himself Caliph and was a popular descendant of one of the Rashidun Caliphs. The Umayyads were a family which had arisen from the First Fitna (an Arabic word which can mean something like “strife”), a civil war which dogged the rule of Caliph ‘Ali and ended in his death. The Umayyads went on to massacre ‘Ali’s grandson along with many of his supporters in 680, at the theologically and politically important Battle of Karbala. This was not popular, and triggered a Second Fitna, wherein the Umayyad Caliph sent forces against ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca.

The Umayyad forces surrounded the holy city, singing songs in praise of their siege equipment to frighten the besieged. We know all this from Muhammad al-Tabari, a historian from the 10th century who preserves first hand accounts of these events from the early years of Islam. He reports that, after a month of siege, “There was a spark, which the wind blew; it set fire to the veil of the Kaaba and burned the wood of the Sacred House.” He laid the blame at the feet of ibn al-Zubayr, since his supporters had lit fires on the tips of their spears. The Kaaba’s hangings were burned and much of the wooden structure destroyed, which seemed as if it would spell the end of ibn al-Zubayr’s defense, as his support began to dwindle. Fortunately, around a week later the Umayyad Caliph died back in Syria, and the army retreated to the empire’s core without orders. Now that Mecca was safe, ibn al-Zubayr’s first point of order was to rebuild the Kaaba. He built new foundations and incorporated the Hateem, a wall next to the Kaaba, which had been built for the prophet ‘Isma’il (or Ishmael, son of Abraham). The Hateem had not been previously incorporated because the Kaaba had been rebuilt before in the time of the prophet Muhammad’s father. 

Professor Candace Mixon of the Religious Studies Department, who specializes in Islam and to whom I spoke before writing this article, characterizes this Second Fitna as emblematic of an imperial pivot to establish a new center for the Caliphate. Previously, Mecca was the center of the Caliphate since it was an important city in Arabia before Muhammad and the heart of his state. As the Caliphate expanded, the Umayyads enjoyed more support from the more economically rich and regionally important areas of Syria and Mesopotamia. Ibn al-Zubayr represents the old Meccan order, while the Umayyads had stronger support from these new, stronger territories. Both ibn al-Zubayr and his new Kaaba, were destroyed by Umayyad catapults in a second siege in 692, and the new Umayyad government, which would go on to rule for fifty more years or so, refitted the Kaaba to its state before the fire, which is how it remains to this day.