The Story of Abraham

2.3 Abraham, the Father of Prophets

It was in this privileged region of Arabia, nearly four thousand years ago, that a man named Ibraheem was born in a family of stone carvers who, from his very early life, protested against man's worship of other men and stone objects. He also put forward the concept of a Supreme Being, omnipotent and omnipresent, who created the world and who alone deserved to be worshiped; that by comparison to that Being all humans are almost equal and ought to treat each other equally and that all human beings will have to account for all their actions on the day of judgment. As he became vocal in the expression of his ideas of human dignity, monotheistic religion and democratic attitudes, the imperial establishment unable to counter him by argument began to feel threatened and he was made the object of crude persecution. The refusal to worship political and religious rulers and their deities was really a negation of their domination, which deserved the most exemplary punishment. So much so, that he had to leave Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and migrate to Egypt with his beautiful wife Sarah.

His reputation as a man of great new ideas earned him access to the court of the King, but unfortunately the King was more impressed by Sarah's beauty than by Prophet Ibraheem's (PBUH) philosophy. According to accepted legends he promptly gave him one of his prettiest maids -- Hagar, hoping to make a fair exchange. But he was quite disappointed when he discovered Sarah's complete loyalty to Abraham. In the mean time Hagar also started showing signs of having been influenced by Abraham's philosophy of dignity and fidelity. The King was shattered. Here was a man who possessed the ability to command absolute loyalty and unity of thought with individuals close to him; something he had always wanted but never achieved. He could not have Ibraheem (PBUH) killed. So he simply asked him to leave Egypt and take both women with him.

Prophet Ibraheem (PBUH) on his part had learned the crucial lesson that it is futile to try to reform a corrupt establishment by joining it and working from within. He decided to create an institution of his own. By coincidence or design or divine guidance he ended up in the valley of Makkah situated in the middle of mountains and only a few meters above a great aquifer i.e. a natural underground water reservoir. There he settled with his wife who had a pious and obedient son Ismail with whom he built a cubic structure on whose walls he wrote his thesis on human dignity proclaiming the unacceptability of man's worship of man or objects, the equality of all men in worldly matters and the inevitability of a day of final reckoning leading to heaven or hell. The message would have been in hieroglyphics running in seven lines spirally along the four walls -- perhaps the writing referred to in the Qur'an as "Sahhaf Ibraheem". This was Ka'bah, the first monument to what we call Democracy.

For hundreds of years to follow, men and women would come to walk around this Ka'bah, read the inscriptions and meditate and get inspiration to live with dignity, freedom and democracy. From the traditionally established direction of circumambulation (Tawaf) it is apparent that the inscriptions on the walls of the Ka'bah were in a language that was written and read from left to right. The kissing of the black stone fixed at the edge from where circumambulations start and end is exactly in line with the Arab custom of kissing a book after reading it. The black stone of Ka'bah may have been the world's first bookmark. Traditions indicate that with the passage of time, the Ka'bah gradually came to be known as a place where one could acquire great knowledge and wisdom -- even magic. The sanctity of the place would impart the visitor absolution from his sins; and the infirm could regain health by exercising between the hills of Safa and Marwa and drinking the mineral rich water of the nearby natural fountain of Zamzam. So much so that even trading caravans travelling between Northern Arabia and Yemen began to make a detour to stop by it. Makkah thus became, maybe, the world's first city to have simultaneously a university, a hospital, a church, a trading center and no king.