The Arabs have worshipped at (if not necessarily toward) a Ka'bah since at least 680 CE. Guidi (Chronica Minora, CSCO, Scriptores Syri, third series, vol.iv, Louvain, 1803-1907) printed an anonymous account, from which Alphonse Mingana published an abridged English translation in The Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society (1916) pp. 223-32 and reprinted it in The Muslim World 7 (1917) pp. 402-14. Ibn Warraq reprinted it yet again in The Origins of the Koran pp. 97-113 (more here):
Then God raised against [the Persians] the sons of Ishmael like the sand of the sea-shores, with their leader Muhammad.... As for the Ka'bah we cannot know what it was, except in supposing that the blessed Abraham having become very rich in possessions, and wanting to avoid the envy of the Canaanites, chose to dwell in the distant and large localities of the desert; and as he was living under tents, built that place for the worship of God and the offering of sacrifices; for this reason, the place received its title of our days, and the memory of the place was transmitted from generation to generation with the evolution of the Arab race. It was not, therefore, new for the Arabs to worship in that place, but their worship therein was from the beginning of their days; in this, they were rendering honour to the father of the head of their race...
The Qur'an would come to endorse the tradition of pilgrimage in numerous passages. Sura 2:125 has Abraham endorsing the "circuit" of the "house", which can only mean the pagan rituals that still take place to this day in Mecca. I think it likely that Guidi's author was also referring to Mecca - which was about to secede from Damascus, and keep its distance until Abd al-Malik finally reconquered it in 705 CE.
The Qur'an endorsed that House additionally in 14:37, and in 3:96-97:
Verily, the first House appointed for mankind was that at Bakkah, full of blessing, and a guidance for Al-'Alamin. In it are manifest signs, the Maqam (place) of Ibrahim; whosoever enters it, he attains security. And Hajj to the House is a duty that mankind owes to Allah, those who can afford the expenses; and whoever disbelieves, then Allah stands not in need of any of the 'Alamin.
But in sura 2:192, the "hajj to the House" becomes "the hajj and the visitation to Allah". This could hint at a primitive temple cult as once existed at Teima, in which the tribal god dwells in His sanctuary. This project will investigate that possibility, starting with a study of what that verse most likely originally said.
Muslims claim that the Qur'an is one Qur'an, and that it defines who is a Muslim and who is not. But there was once a Shi'a variant of sura 2:192, according to Daud Rahbar (part 2):
In the 'Uthmanic redaction of the Qur'an verse 2:192 opens with the words: "
And fulfil the Hajj (Pilgrimage) and the cUmrah (Visitation) to God". The Codex of 'Ali reads instead as follows: "And perform the Pilgrimage and the Visitation to the House". Had the word House been part of the standard Sunni reading, we would readily have accepted it to mean the House of Ka'ba... The variant reading above is shared by the Codex of 'Ali and the Codex of Ibn Mas'ud. To both of them is attributed also the reading instead of in the same passage. That reading would make the translation read thus: "And perform the Pilgrimage. And the Visitation is to the House".Let us not make the substitution of the word Allah here by the word bayt too much of a Shi'a operation, for the insertion of the word al-bayt in the passage, in a slightly different way, is to be found in other versions also: "
And perform the Pilgrimage and the Visitation to the House". (See the Tafsir of Al-Tabari, Bulaq edition, Vol. II: 120.)
Rahbar thought the Shi'a preferred this reading over Uthman's because "we can be fairly sure that a Shi'a is always delighted to read the word al-bayt used in a good sense anywhere in the Qur'an.
" The Shi'a often interpreted al-bayt to be the "House of Muhammad", that is, Ali's family, rather than that "House of Abraham" which is the Ka'bah.
Rahbar listed more than a few variants in which the Shi'a reading is inferior to the Uthmanic.
As a result, he suspected 2:192 as another Shi'ite correction:
"But since the variant appears in 'Ali's Codex, it may have been intended to mean the family of 'Ali rather than Ka'ba. The suggestion seems far-fetched but cannot be ruled out.
".
But however the Shi'ites may have interpreted this verse, in context the disputed word in 2:192 concerns Abrahamic pilgrimage, with nothing to do with Muhammad or his family. In every version of the Qur'an, sura 11:76 gives the label ahl al-bayt to the people of Abraham. It is in that pre-Shi'a context that the first Muslims would have understood the "house of Abraham" in 3:96-97. The al-bayt in 2:192 would not have helped the Shi'a in debates with other Muslims, who would only have read it in the (nearly identical) context of 3:96-97.
Also, Islamic doctrine is clear that Allah is everywhere, and that one does not need to journey "to Allah". The verse is so un-Islamic that the King Fahd translation had to make it "for Allah". Nor is the "hajj to Allah" accepted elsewhere in the Qur'an. But there is no such problem with "Hajj to the House", and that phrase does appear in the Qur'an (3:96-97).
There is no need to assume wrongdoing on the part of Uthman's isnad of copyists. albyt and allh in cursive Arabic are not far apart as it is; and if the script had been defective enough, the copyists might have been forced to decipher an albt. Either way the scribe need only fail to bend his strokes enough, and fail to point his text properly, for subsequent copyists to direct their path to Allah, so to speak.
The Shi'ites had more favourable means, and contexts, to bolster al-bayt than in 2:192's context of the House at Mecca. Had an allh in another context been replaced with albt, then one would have to suspect a side of alteration, and that side would have been Shi'ite. But that is not relevant here.
2:192's "hajj to Allah" does not reflect pagan practice. It is a scribal error of Uthman's party from comparatively late in the Qur'an's development. It is also a minor one: its original does not provide any aid to the Shi'ite cause, and its current state does not affect the sense of 2.192 for anyone else.
But the Shi'at Ali can be still be blamed for the Qur'an's corruption, if only indirectly here. They had made so much noise about al-bayt, that once the Umayyad copyists had made their "recension", it is likely the latter tacitly agreed to preserve it. In this way the Umayyads removed, in an almost unnoticeable fashion, one more weapon from the hands of their adversaries.
Any thoughts? e-mail me :^)
zimriel@sbcglobal.netIn 16 Feb 2003 I found out about the verse. The first version of this project was written 3 March 2003. 17 May, filled out biblio. 23 Feb 2004, meaning of "the house".