Mecca: shrine of Kaʻbah within the Al-Haram mosque, with a view of the city. Lithograph, c. 1820.

The Muslims traced the holiness of Mecca's sanctuary back to Adam, who was directed there and built a cube-like house (ka'bah) directly beneath an identicical structure in heaven. Adam's ka'bah was destroyed in the flood, but according to the Aur'an, at a later date Abraham, too, was directed to Mecca where he and his son Ishmael raised anew the foundations of the Holy House. The ka'bah was a ramshackle construction that the Quraysh rebuilt and roofed during the Muhammad's youth (after 570 ce). Around the ka'bah was an undefined open space that was regarded as taboo and in which a greate many idols were set up. (Source: The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, New York, 1995, vol. 3, p. 82)