A 7th century Armenian mention of Mecca in the WRONG location?

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Welcome back, everyone.

[00:00:02]Well, what I have for you today is it's a bit strange.

[00:00:07]It doesn't really fit with anything I've mentioned before.

[00:00:11]It's an anomaly, and I don't know what to do with it.

[00:00:14]But, being honest, I have to share it with you.

[00:00:18]Um and uh I think the first thing I should say is um it's maybe not to make too many conclusions from this, because it's an anomaly, and I suppose our first port of call is to assume that the person must have got something wrong in the 7th century.

[00:00:39]Uh this Armenian source. But, if they didn't get it wrong, it could imply that in the early days, there was a different [snorts] concept of where Mecca was.

[00:00:50]Maybe it wasn't just one location. Maybe it was a very mobile concept. In any case, um I'm going to share uh what I found with you.

[00:01:00]And uh I'm sure it'll lead to lots of discussion, but as I say, take all of this with caution. I've tried my best to follow down references to make sure everything is right.

[00:01:11]Um I've used AI in only to translate uh Latin text. I think that's safe.

[00:01:19]Uh other than that, I haven't used AI.

[00:01:21]So, I'll just put that disclaimer at the outset. And of course, people can check the translation themselves. Um But, generally, there's not too many people that are able to read Latin these days. So, um I think everyone will probably have to use some form of AI to get a translation.

[00:01:41]Like Google Translate is essentially the same thing. But, um yeah. With that out of the way, so, um what we're dealing with here is what seems to be a 7th-century mention of Mecca.

[00:01:53]But, it's in the wrong place, and it's on the Sinai Peninsula. So, that's a problem for Muslims, perhaps.

[00:02:01]Um it could be considered a a problem for us because we've been saying that the earliest mention we could find of Mecca was 741.

[00:02:09]Um but lo and behold, there is an earlier one.

[00:02:14]Um in fairness to Patricia Crone, she might have dismissed this one because there was a dispute in terms of the dating on this.

[00:02:23]But the the most contemporary scholar uh scholarship on this is that they are um of the opinion that it's 7th century after all.

[00:02:35]Initially, there there was um the notion that it was 5th century um but it got pushed back to 7th century, but not later.

[00:02:44]Um so with that out of the way, let's look at what we got.

[00:02:50]So, um there's a 7th century uh person called Anania.

[00:02:56]Uh Armenian. Um Ananias of Shirak is what the name we'll go with from here on in, which is an awful lot easier to say.

[00:03:03]Um so, here's just a quick summary. He is a 7th century Armenian philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and alchemist.

[00:03:14]Um He authored the book Cosmography and the Calendar.

[00:03:20]Um he was born in the year 610 AD and died in the year 685 AD. So, he he's born right smack in the middle of the 7th century, which is good. He's in the right place or certainly in the right time, I should say.

[00:03:36]Um according to the historian Robert Hewsen, Anania is Armenia's first scientist.

[00:03:45]So, quite a clever man.

[00:03:48]Um okay, so that's just a little background to who he is. I don't know anything really about him beyond this.

[00:03:54]Um and how did I stumble upon this? Well, I found this website. I think as far as I can tell, this is an Islamic website.

[00:04:05]Um so, it's islamichistory.com and it's dealing with the topic of the founding of Mecca.

[00:04:14]And in that I found this a curious quotation from Shura Katsi.

[00:04:20]Okay.

[00:04:22]So, uh before I go to that quotation, um I'd like to just mention the bit at the bottom first, if I may. Um It talks about a later historical source that mentions Mecca by name is the Anonymous Chronicle 741.

[00:04:40]This history, written in Spain, is stated not to be earlier than 741. This chronicle mentions Mecca in context of the war between the Umayyads and Abdullah bin Zubair.

[00:04:52]Even in this chronicle, its location is told to be between Ur of Chaldees and Carras or Carrhae, the city of Mesopotamia.

[00:05:02]We'll come back to that a little bit later, but let's go back to the top there.

[00:05:08]And it gives us this quotation.

[00:05:11]It says, "It is bounded on the south by fortunate Arabia, that would be Felix Arabia.

[00:05:19]On the east by desert Arabia and on the north by Syria and Judea.

[00:05:26]It has five districts near Egypt.

[00:05:29]Takistan, the Una Chiatis Gulf by the Red Sea, um and Pharanitis, where the town of Pharan, which I think Arabs called Mecca.

[00:05:44]Here begin the mountains called Melana Melana which if you delve into the Greek it just simply means the black mountains which extend northwards turning slightly to the east and then the Hellenites in the Gulf of Akaba which is near a plateau Fortunate Arabia which is Felix Arabia [clears throat] contains the river Tritonon but not a single spring it is 6° long and 2 wide.

[00:06:19]Um Now the the website says though the location of Mecca is vague in this account it's time of writing nearly coincides with the advent of Islam.

[00:06:32]Um now obviously the the mention of Mecca is the the bit that's of interest uh to us.

[00:06:39]Um the Hellenites it is a question about about that who's being referred to there.

[00:06:48]Uh there's also the question of what river exactly is mentioned there what what what is that word uh Tritonon but maybe we can leave that to others to to solve that one. So we're going to focus uh as I say on that quotation we'll go to the go to the source itself.

[00:07:10]Um and it's found in the the geography of Ananias of Shirak which is listed at the top there we'll come to that shortly.

[00:07:21]Before we do so um the 741 Chronicle I've mentioned this before so this is just a reminder really.

[00:07:28]It places Mecca somewhere between Ur of the Chaldees and Haran.

[00:07:34]And my suggestion has been that it could be be uh be inside this red circle.

[00:07:40]Okay?

[00:07:41]Um an alternative Ur in southern Iraq was only discovered in the 19th century, so less likely, but also why would they say it's between two far distant places in Mesopotamia? So, this is at least a solution. Obviously, that the author of 741 could be wrong that he thought Mecca was there.

[00:08:00]Um, it's possible, but it's interesting that that's where they think um, Mecca was and obviously a long, long way from from, um, in the Hejaz.

[00:08:15]Um, so I think that if it were an accurate witness, that would be a problem for Islam. That's as late as 741, there was a different concept of Mecca, but that source, that witness could be wrong because it's written in Spain and who knows they may have got their details wrong. But we now have also got an earlier source.

[00:08:40]The place is Mecca somewhere else in the in Paran in the Sinai Peninsula. But this is about 100 years earlier in the possibly the 630s it was written. So, it's [clears throat] in the 7th century.

[00:08:55]Okay?

[00:08:58]So, I've gone to to the the source itself and, uh, helpfully we've got a nice translation here.

[00:09:09]Um, so it will start off at the top there.

[00:09:14]It's talking about different regions and different countries and so forth in this writing.

[00:09:19]The 25th country of Asia, Rocky Arabia, is east of Egypt and the Arabian Sea as Heroopolis extending to the western fork of the Red Sea through which the Israelites passed.

[00:09:35]It is bounded on the south by Fortunata Arabia, which is Felix Arabia.

[00:09:41]Um that would be Yemen and Oman today.

[00:09:45]On the east by desert Arabia.

[00:09:49]And on the north by Syria and Judea. It has five small districts near Egypt.

[00:09:56]Uh Takistan, which I would argue is equivalent to northern Mesopotamia.

[00:10:04]The Mounachiatus Gulf by the Red Sea.

[00:10:09]And Pharanitis, where the town of Pharan is located, which I think the Arabs call Mecca. So this is This author believes that Pharan is where the Arabs call Mecca.

[00:10:26]Okay?

[00:10:28]Here at this city begin the mountains called Melana, which it just comes from Greek and so I've I've learned. Uh it means black mountains, which extend northwards turning slightly to the east.

[00:10:42]And then the other bits, which I'm not going to look into.

[00:10:45]Okay? So the main thing we're interested is in that place.

[00:10:50]So it's saying that he thinks that the Arabs called Pharan Mecca.

[00:10:59]All right?

[00:11:01]Uh there's a little bit extra as well.

[00:11:04]Um I think this might be a different manuscript, but it says It's 30th uh Rocky Arabia is east of Egypt and the western fork of the Red Sea, which was crossed by the Israelites extending as far as Syria and Judea. It has two small districts.

[00:11:21]Takistan and Pharanitis, which is foolishly called the home of Abraham.

[00:11:28]And three other districts. There's not a single river.

[00:11:32]Okay, so here is Pharnices is depicted as a region which would be the desert Pharan, I would suggest. Takistan would be northern um Mesopotamia. Now, what we know previously is uh the Saracens are associated with both of these regions.

[00:11:55]All right.

[00:11:58]Okay.

[00:11:59]>> [clears throat] >> The the translator of the work is Derek Houston.

[00:12:03]Um so, you can have a look at the the book there if you just type in the that web address, you'll get the um the book that I'm I'm reading from, and I'll try and remember to include that in the description.

[00:12:20]Okay, so the author uh he wrote this book on the a translation in 1992.

[00:12:29]And um he goes over all the different scholars down through the the last couple of centuries um on the question of when was this uh book written?

[00:12:43]And having looked at uh opinions that stated it was from the 5th century, and then and then much later, the author um comes to this opinion.

[00:12:56]In my opinion, the A S X was indeed the work of Anan Ananias of Shirak.

[00:13:04]And to my mind, there's no problem involved in his having lived 610 to 685.

[00:13:12]Although his geographical text depicts Armenia, Caucasia, and the Persian Empire as they were prior to 636.

[00:13:22]Ananias had probably been gathering data for his work for many years.

[00:13:26]And these were doubtless drawn from many sources of varying dates, quality, including archival materials no longer relevant to the time in which he was working.

[00:13:36]We probably exaggerated, moreover, the impact of the coming of the Arabs on the minds of the Armenians of the mid-7th century, whose ruling class had already come to terms with the newcomers, and who probably were unaware of whatever changes had taken place within Persia and other parts of the Middle East after the Muslim triumph.

[00:14:00]All right, so we're confident at least on the basis of this altar that it comes from the middle or maybe early part of the 7th century.

[00:14:13]Now, um so if you look at this map here, you have a map of Paran.

[00:14:19]Um you can see it is northwest of Mount Sinai.

[00:14:23]Okay, so it's in the southern part of um the Sinai Peninsula. And we know previously that the Saracens lived in that area.

[00:14:35]And previously, um I looked at a qibla uh in the Aqaba uh mosque or sometimes referred to as Aila, uh which you'll also see in the map there. It's in the the fork to the right of Mount Sinai in the Red Sea, if that makes sense.

[00:14:57]And uh according to the archaeologists, including Wickham, they had a had assessed the site over a number of years and came to the opinion uh that it was directed 215° which is basically south southwest.

[00:15:17]And um if you look at where Paran is in relation to that, it does appear to be in that general direction.

[00:15:26]Uh just from a lay layman's point of view, but Um but on closer examination, when when I looked at it, it seems to be about 20° off. It seems to the direction seems to be somewhere between, say, Paran and St. Catherine's Monastery. So, somewhere there. So, you're still talking roughly um in in the middle of uh the southern Sinai area.

[00:15:56]Um now, I know Dan Gibson disputes this and believes that it still points to Petra.

[00:16:02]Um I don't know how because that's opposite wall doesn't doesn't go to Petra, but in any case, we'll leave that one aside. Um let's carry on.

[00:16:14]So, if you want to read more about that um building in Aila, uh which was uh considered to be a mosque. I'm not sure if that's uh provable or not, but in any case, that's what the paper came to the conclusion.

[00:16:32]Um Now, in terms of the Saracens in the Sinai, um this uh book uh came to came to my attention today as I'm looking around at at this question. It's called The Mirage of the Saracen, Christians and Nomads in the Sinai Peninsula in Late Antiquity by Walter D.

[00:16:52]Ward.

[00:16:54]Um and it can be found online at it can be freely accessed, so if you want to look it up.

[00:17:02]So, I'm I'm going to read at length on this because this it this is where some interesting stuff appears.

[00:17:10]When the P. S. Nezer pilgrim had surmounted the summit of Mount Sinai, his party was totally amazed by a supernatural occurrence.

[00:17:19]This was to be expected, of course.

[00:17:21]Christians elaborating on the Exodus account had long described the noises and divine fire emanating from Mount Sinai.

[00:17:30]It had long been tradition that no one could sleep on the summit because of its sanctity and because the thunder and mystical happenings were too frightening.

[00:17:40]What is surprising about this incident is that the Pia Sinza pilgrim was witnessing a Saracen ritual in which a priest, presumably not a Christian priest, but who was said to reside on the mountainside, tended to a white marble idol.

[00:18:00]When the Saracens began to worship the idol at the beginning of their festival, the idol's color changed to black.

[00:18:08]After the festival, the idol reverted to its original white color.

[00:18:13]Now, uh this pilgrim, as we'll see, visited there in 570, approximately AD. So, this is before the rise of Islam.

[00:18:26]And so, what the witness is saying is the Saracens were worshipping an idol made of white stone, that during a particular moment during the festival, um the idol turned from white to black and then back to white again.

[00:18:47]Does that sound familiar?

[00:18:49]You might remember that the Hadiths talk about the black stone being originally white.

[00:18:55]Is there a connection?

[00:18:57]Perhaps.

[00:18:59]This passage stands as a reminder that Christians did not occupy an uninhabited Sinai.

[00:19:06]In addition to the Paranites, inhabitants of the town of Paran, who cultivated a Christian connection to Moses described in chapter 3.

[00:19:17]The Sinai was home to nomadic pastoralist groups who lived among the settled population.

[00:19:25]And roamed widely throughout the semi-arid region.

[00:19:31]These nomads were the peoples whose lands became dotted with monastic dwellings.

[00:19:37]And these were the people described in pejorative language by the Sinai Christian sources.

[00:19:44]Ethnographic, archaeological, and literary evidence suggests that the nomads and the settled communities interacted in complex ways depending on the political, social, economic, and cultural environment despite what our sources say.

[00:19:59]Much of the research uh on the interaction between these groups has occurred in the Negev desert, which is an extension of the Sinai LT Plateau.

[00:20:14]Modern nomads there are dependent on the sedentary population for survival. This seems true for earlier periods as well, and likely extends to the nomads of the southern Sinai in late antiquity.

[00:20:29]Whereas the pastoralists required food supplies from the sedentary population to survive, the settled communities acquired animal products from the nomads.

[00:20:40]A fact suggesting that these two populations could engage in mutually beneficial economic activities.

[00:20:47]Nevertheless, the cooperative view is largely absent in the extant literary sources from the later Roman Near East.

[00:20:56]In the Sinai sources, almost exclusively written by Christian monks and pilgrims, the nomadic inhabitants are accused of being anything but cooperative.

[00:21:07]Rather, these sources almost universally present an antagonistic relationship between the sedentary communities of the Sinai and the nomadic inhabitants.

[00:21:20]These inhabitants are known in the literary sources as Saracens, although other names are occasionally used.

[00:21:27]The sources accuse the Saracens of being uncivilized, pagan, treacherous, and dangerous.

[00:21:34]Despite these accusations, some nomads proved valuable as Roman allies against the Sassanid Empire on many occasions.

[00:21:44]And there are there were even several military units composed of Saracen troops.

[00:21:50]In addition, there is ample evidence that many nomads were not pagan, but Christian, though often of a non-orthodox variety.

[00:21:59]Okay. So, uh the the pilgrim uh is found here in this source, and it's in Latin.

[00:22:11]And my Latin isn't so good, so I will be translating it to see what it has to say.

[00:22:19]Um now, the source is actually anonymous, but it's uh falsely or mistakenly uh mentioned as Antonius, but there's a mix-up, as we'll see later.

[00:22:31]Here's the translation.

[00:22:35]Mount Sinai is rocky and seldom has any soil.

[00:22:39]On it all around are many cells of the servants of God, and likewise on Horeb.

[00:22:45]Indeed, they say that Horeb is fertile good land.

[00:22:48]And on that mountain, in one part of the mountain, the Saracens have set up their idol made of marble white as snow.

[00:22:57]There also remains their priest clothed in a dalmatic and a linen cloth. A A dalmatic cloak would be one with kind of wide sleeves on it, a bit like what a priest today might wear, but it wasn't a a Christian liturgical garment, just so we're clear.

[00:23:19]And when the time of their festival arrives with the returning moon, before the moon rises on the day of their feast, that marble begins to change its color.

[00:23:31]And as soon as the moon comes in and when they begin to worship, that marble becomes black like pitch.

[00:23:39]When the time of the festival is completed, it returns to its former color, from which we were utterly astonished.

[00:23:48]So, because this is a Christian pilgrim, I think we can take it that the person is being honest and truthful of what they witnessed. Um obviously, I would suggest that if this really did happen, this is something diabol- uh demonic.

[00:24:04]Um and that's uh something Christian that's going on here. And and they the link with the moon uh is uh is another confirmation of the paganism of this.

[00:24:19]Um okay, so that's that part.

[00:24:22]Um so, a little bit more about this uh pilgrim. It's this uh witness is from the 570s.

[00:24:30]It's an anonymous pilgrim.

[00:24:32]Was a 6th-century Christian pilgrim from uh Piacenza in northern Italy who traveled to the Holy Land at the height of Byzantine rule in the 570s.

[00:24:42]And wrote a narrative of his pilgrimage.

[00:24:45]Uh and it's not to be confused with someone else called Antonius of the same place.

[00:24:52]Uh okay, who died in 303.

[00:24:55]Okay, so it's mis- mis-labeled even in the book there.

[00:25:00]In any case, um there's also this other passage that I looked up to see what else is there. Uh so I'll give you a translation of it here now.

[00:25:11]80 military detachments are maintained at public expense together with their wives receiving rations and clothing from the public supply from Egypt.

[00:25:21]They have no labor to perform because there is none there since the whole place is sand.

[00:25:27]And in addition, each day they are provided with Saracen mares.

[00:25:31]Okay.

[00:25:32]Receiving fodder, straw, and barley from the public supply, they ride about with them through the desert for the protection [clears throat] of the monasteries and hermits against the ambushes of the Saracens.

[00:25:44]And by fear of them, the Saracens are not provoked to attack. Now, it's interesting that the author Aeria is doubtful that the Saracens were so antagonistic.

[00:25:56]Thinks that, you know, there was good relationships even though the sources are saying opposite, but um the fact that there are 80 military detachments is a good indication that it was uh an antagonistic relationship where the Saracens were essentially raiding people and stealing from them and so on.

[00:26:19]For when they go out from the city, they shut the gates and take the keys with them. And those who are inside likewise do the same because of the ambushes of the Saracens since they have nowhere to go outside except sky and sand.

[00:26:35]So, there you have it. Um what you make of that? Uh so, we have if we if we think back to what we've looked at, let's let's just go back. We have a a 7th-century mention of Mecca, but it's it's in what location?

[00:26:52]Let's have a look at the map again. So, it's in Faran in southern Sinai. Okay, so that's the first issue.

[00:27:01]So, near the reference to Mecca, but in the wrong location. It cannot be argued that it's the even in the Hijaz.

[00:27:11]Uh it's in Sinai if this source is correct. And it's an Armenian source. Um so, there's a danger that things can get mixed up and confused and so forth.

[00:27:25]That's the That's what the source is saying.

[00:27:28]And we also looked at what a witness to that had said.

[00:27:36]And again, it says that the Saracens have set up their idol made of marble white as snow.

[00:27:42]And uh that marble becomes black like pitch.

[00:27:47]When the time of the festival is completed, it returns to its former color from which we were utterly astonished.

[00:27:54]So, two very anomalous sources uh to consider today.

[00:28:00]Um we may if we take this into account, we have to tear up everything we've thought of up to now.

[00:28:08]Um I'm not sure uh how to weigh this up.

[00:28:12]Uh but give your thoughts in the the comments below and tell me what you think.

[00:28:17]All the best for now.

[00:28:19]Take care. Bye.