We've always said that in order to know what really happened historically with Islam, just return to the 7th century and find the artifacts from that time period and read what they say.

Well, here we have a prime example of just that...a rock inscription, chiselled by hand on a rock sometime between 697AD - 698AD, and situated north east of Taif, which is around 50-60 miles from Mecca itself.

How do we know its date... it says so on the inscription (i.e. 78 years from the year of the Hijra = 622 AD).

But it's what it claims in the inscription which is proving to be most problematic for Muslims, because it notes that the "Masjid al Haram" was built 78 years from the Hijra, and everyone knows that this would be the Ka'aba itself, the stone building which everyone prays to, yet supposedly was built by Abraham and Ishmael (in 1900 BC), and which was visited often by Muhammad before he supposedly died in 632 AD.

Yet, it says clearly on this rock that this building was not "BUILT" until 698 AD, confronting everything we have been told concerning when the Ka'aba was built.

The Islamic Awareness web site features this rock inscription on its site, and due to this embarrassing fact has changed the translation of the Arabic word "Buniya" (was built) to "Ueida Binawuha" (was rebuilt), suggesting that the caliph Abd al-Malik needed to renovate the structure, which he did in 695 AD, and then finished it in 698 AD, thus the reference to it in this inscription.

But that is not what the inscription says. It clearly writes the word "BUILT", not "REBUILT", which confronts the Standard Islamic Narrative completely, yet fits perfectly with what we are now finding from many pieces of evidence on the ground.

Ibn Zubayr, the governor of Petra, under Abd al-Malik, rebelled against abd al-Malik around 687 AD, destroyed the Petran Ka'aba, stole the black stone and sent it south (possibly to Mecca) with the women and children, while he remained in Petra where he and his son were killed by Al Hajjaj in 692 AD.

Because the black stone was in the south, the pilgrims followed it believing that where the black stone was, so was God's presence.

A building was needed to house the stone, so the Masjid al-Haram (i.e. the Ka'aba) was built between 697-698AD, which is commemorated by this inscription, giving us the correct date of its construction.

No wonder the Islamic Awareness web site mistranslated their explanation on this inscription, as it confronts their narrative of when Mecca was built. Unfortunately for them, rocks don't lie, and if we refuse to call out what really happened, then the rocks will cry out for us...because they never lie!

You can see the Islamic Awareness article on this Rock Inscription here: https://www.islamic-awareness.org/his...

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, May 19, 2023
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