The Zamzam Well ( ) is a well located within the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is located east of the Kaaba, the holiest place in Islam.
In Islamic narratives, the well is a miraculously generated source of water, which opened up thousands of years ago when Ismaʿil (Ishmael), the son of Ibrahim (Abraham), was left with his mother Hajar (Hagar) in the desert. It is said to have dried up or been buried while the tribe Jurhum lived in the area. The well is claimed to have been rediscovered and excavated in the 6th century by Abd al-Muttalib, grandfather of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Etymology The origin of the name is uncertain. According to historian Jacqueline Chabbi, the noun is an onomatopoeia. She associates the noun with the adjectives and which are onomatopoeic denoting a dull sound stemming from either a distant roll (of thunder) or a guttural sound emitted with a closed mouth by animals or people, however meaning either 'an abundant supply of water' or 'a source of water which does not dry up' if applied to . She states that this latter meaning of an unintelligible guttural sound encompasses a layer of meaning associated with the sacred and mystical, in addition to the basic notion of the sound possibly being related to the concept of an abundant flow of water.
Early Islamic sources use the terms and to refer to the religious rites of Zoroastrianism and the Zoroastrians. The terms are onomatopoeic and derive from what Arabs perceived to be an indistinct, droning sound of the recitation of Avestan prayers and scriptures by Magi.
Medieval Arabic writers like al-Masʿūdī generally state the well is named on the account of . They argue that based on their "kinship with Abraham" Zoroastrians regularly made pilgrimages to Mecca to pray over the well. A later account by al-ʿAynī claims that the well is named after supposedly meaning 'bridles' which had been donated to the well by and named after Sasan, the Zoroastrian progenitor of the Sasanian Empire.
Other medieval Arabic sources connect the name to the Angel Gabriel being the source of the murmuring being captured by this onomatopoeia.
Hughes additionally identifies a tradition of deriving the name from an exclamation supposedly made by Hajar either being or supposedly Egyptian meaning "Stop, stop!".
Traditional accounts
Traditional origins
Islamic tradition states that the Zamzam Well was opened up in some form by God to assist Hajar, the second wife of Ibrahim and mother of Ismaʿil. In Islamic narratives Ibrahim, commanded by God, led Hajar and Ismaʿil to the area of present-day Mecca, there he left them alone in the desert. The two are narrated to have been suffering severely from thirst. In some versions of the story Hajar walks back and forth between the two hills of Safa and Marwah in search of water. The story of the appearance of the well either involves the infant Isma'il scraping the ground with his feet and water springing out or God sending Gabriel (Jibra'il) who consequently opens up the well using a variety of methods depending on the narration. The wealth of mystic discourses discussing the history of the well is from the Abbasid era and largely extra-Quranic, as the well is not referred to directly by the Quran.
According to Islamic tradition, Ibrahim rebuilt a shrine called near the site of the well. A building supposedly first constructed by Adam, which Muslim tradition regards as the origin of the Kaʿba. The well is meant to have dried up (possibly as punishment) during the settlement of the tribe of the Jurhum, who initially are meant to have migrated to the area from Yemen. In some narrations focused on the objects deposited in Zamzam the well simply dries up, then prior to the Jurhum being forced to leave Mecca because of God expelling them for their misdeeds their leader buries sacred objects from the Kaʿba in the location of Zamzam. In others, focused on the well itself, the objects are placed in Zamzam itself, with the well ultimately being buried by the leader of the Jurhum.
Traditional rediscovery According to traditional Muslim accounts, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib is responsible for the rediscovery of the well. He purportedly had a divine precognition about the well at some point in his life. A common narrative relayed by Ibn Ishaq via Ibn Hisham involves four dreams, the first three concern mysterious objects called , and he is meant to dig for, the fourth then names Zamzam. Other accounts omit the third dream naming . Following ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib's precognitions to dig, he is claimed to have found a number of artefacts: golden gazelle figurines, armour, and several specimens of a type of sword called . Ibn Saʿd relays two separate traditions regarding the discovery of a well by ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, one involving Zamzam's discovery and water disputes among the Quraysh, the other involving the series of dreams and said artefacts but neither water nor the name Zamzam.
Hawting's analysis argues that the oral traditions surrounding the , a dry well inside the Kaʿba reputed to have been used as the treasury of the Kaʿba and as a place for religious offerings in pre-Islamic Mecca and Zamzam merged at some point with stories concerning the former being adapted to feature the latter.
Subsequent history Commentators of the Abbasid-era mystic discourses surrounding the well, like al-Masʿūdī expanded on these extra-Quranic accounts. They further connect the site to Zoroastrianism via what they interpret to be Zoroastrian religious artefacts uncovered by ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib in combination with their etymological analyses. Ultimately arguing that due to the well's history supposedly being related to (what they perceive to have been) the true religion of the peoples of Iran, the Islamisation of Iran is to be understood and framed as a rediscovery.
The traditional Islamic account of the well's history relayed by al-Azraqī traces the lineage of its management via to Abū Tālib as inherited from its (re)-discoverer and his father ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. The usage rights to the well were then supposedly sold due to Abū Tālib's financial troubles to his brother, al-ʿAbbās, who is meant to have instituted the first new ordinance concerning the well by banning all non-religious body-hygienic uses of it. Thus the management of the Zamzam Well (a responsibility called ) was reputedly a hereditary position of the Abbasids, i.e. the progeny of al-ʿAbbās, who ended up seizing control over Mecca as a whole using their caliphate. Buildings called the , variously referred to also as the , were structures used to store jars of Zamzam water away from the heat. One of which is claimed to have been initially built on orders from and named after Abbas, founder of the Abbasid dynasty himself. However, al-Azraqī describes the well being fully in the open during the age of ʿAbdallāh, son of ʿAbbās. He reports it being surrounded by two pools: one pool between the well and a corner of the Kaʿba, used for quenching the thirst of pilgrims; and another pool behind the well used for wuḍūʾ, i.e. religious ritual cleaning, with a subterranean drainage channel leading the waste water out of the Masjid al-Haram's courtyard. He describes the well's operators pouring the water drawn alternately between the pools using waterskins. In the years 775–778 the second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, sponsored extensive construction projects in the Masjid al-Haram, which included paving the area around Zamzam with marble. Beginning in the years 833–855, during the rule of al-Muʿtasim, a civil servant called ʿUmar ibn Faraǧ ar-Ruḫḫaǧī began a series of construction projects related to the well, all marked by their intricate use of mosaics. He ended up constructing a dome covering the well and demolishing a previous structure surrounding it. Additionally a dome connecting the new dome over the well and the House of Drinking was constructed. Ar-Ruḫḫaǧī had the House of Drinking demolished in 843–844, during the rule of al-Wathiq, and went on to have three small domes surrounding the dome covering Zamzam built in its stead.
In the year 930 a minority branch of Ismaʿilism called the Qarmatians launched an attack on Mecca. They had previously attacked many caravans of the Abbasid Caliphate, including those of pilgrims travelling to the city. They would conquer the Black Stone and move it to the capital of their own state in Bahrayn for 22 years. They were briefly led in 931 by a Persian, al-Isfahani, whom they believed to be God incarnate who unsuccessfully attempted to convert the Qarmatian state to Zoroastrianism. They destroyed the dome covering Zamzam. It is relayed by historians such as that in the aftermath of their attack on the city, the Well Zamzam, as well as all other wells in the city were filled with corpses of pilgrims.
Following the Abbasid relinquishment of the management of the well a quasi-guild called Zamzamis emerged and remained in place at least until the end of the 19th century. While theoretically anyone could go to the well and fill a vessel they brought at the well, in practice this group of specialised men ended up being primarily responsible for distributing the well's water. They did so by storing two kinds of filled jugs, some on wooden podiums with metal cups attached others hidden in the shade. They performed this service in theory without demanding payment. In 19th century practice however a pilgrim would be assigned a Zamzami upon his arrival and would have been obliged to pay him a small initial sum of $1 for a jug to bear his name. This jug would then be kept by the Zamzami for the pilgrim. Payment was in practice also expected for the further services of the Zamzami. These included bringing the pilgrim water throughout his pilgrimage and pouring it over his body for purposes of ritual cleaning (wuḍūʾ) among others. To nudge the pilgrim into donating adequately the Zamzami would show the pilgrim the bad state of the prayer mats he laid out in the Masjid for the pilgrims and explain his dire need for donations. The more generous the pilgrim's donations were, the more expansive the Zamzami's services became; with services such as procuring bottled Zamzam water to be taken home after the pilgrimage and bringing jugs right to the pilgrim's abode in Mecca being reserved for the most generous. To be allowed into the trade of being a Zamzami a costly license from the Grand Sharif was required. During the reign of Awn ar-Rafiq as Grand Sharif for example such a license cost £50.
In the 15th century the Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay invested into improving the well's water quality, as well as funding the construction of a new dome covering the well. In 1489, during the reign of Mamluk Sultan Malik an-Nāṣir, reconstruction of the Dome of Abbas, i.e. one of the two Domes of Drinking, occurred. There had been structures bearing this name and function again at least since 1183. The new structure featured a large painted gate made from yellow stone, a large fountain in its middle, three iron windows, and two metal fountains for pilgrims to drink from all housed under a large dome. Following the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate and their assumption of power in Mecca, Suleiman the Magnificent funded many construction and renovation works in the city. One of these began in 1540 with the destruction of the roof covering the well, which had remained intact since Qaitbay's rule. While construction was disrupted by a flood, completion of the new roof occurred in January 1542. In 1621 the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I had an iron cage constructed around the well. In 1660 Ottoman authorities constructed a new building over Zamzam. Following their conquest of Mecca in 1803, during the reign of Selim III, the Wahhabis, led by Abdulaziz bin Muhammad Al Saud, destroyed the dome covering the well.