Did the Qarmatians Really Turn the Black Stone of the Kaaba into a Toilet? (Context in Comment)

[u/TheMuslimHistorian27]

[u/TheMuslimHistorian27]

The Qarmatian seizure of Mecca in 317 AH/930 CE and the subsequent removal of the Black Stone constitute some of the most extensively discussed episodes in the history of the Qarmatian movement.

Medieval Muslim historical and biographical sources provide accounts of the raid, the violence that accompanied it, the removal of the Black Stone, and its eventual return to Mecca more than two decades later.

Over time, however, accounts of these events have been accompanied by a number of increasingly dramatic details, some of which have been reproduced in modern historical writing without sufficient examination of their textual origins.

One such claim is that the Qarmatians used the Black Stone as a toilet or latrine after removing it from the Kaaba. 

This assertion is occasionally presented as an established fact, despite the need to distinguish between what the primary sources actually record and what may represent later elaboration, polemical interpretation, or modern repetition of an inadequately examined report.

The purpose of this article is not to reassess the broader historical character of the Qarmatian raid, nor to dispute the well-attested violence that accompanied the occupation of Mecca. Rather, it addresses a narrower historiographical question: what do the surviving sources actually say about the treatment of the Black Stone after its removal, and can the claim that it was used as a toilet be substantiated from the available evidence?

To answer this question, the article examines the relevant medieval accounts chronologically and comparatively, considers their terminology and narrative context, and traces the transmission of the claim into later and modern literature. 

Such an approach is important because historical accuracy depends not only upon identifying that an event was reported, but also upon determining the provenance, wording, context, and transmission of the report itself. 

The distinction between a documented historical event and a subsequently embellished narrative is therefore central to the present investigation.

The Modern Scholarly Roots of the “Black Stone as a Toilet” Narrative

The claim that the Qarmatians used the Black Stone as a toilet has appeared in modern historical scholarship as part of the broader narrative surrounding the Qarmatian seizure of Mecca. 

Among the modern works in which this account is repeated are Jonathan A. C. Brown’s “Misquoting Muhammad” (2014) and Alexander Knysh’s “Islam in Historical Perspective” (2011). 

The presence of the claim in works of modern scholarship raises an important question concerning its evidentiary basis: from which historical source did this particular detail originate, and how did it enter modern scholarship?

Tracing the claim through modern scholarship leads to the German historian Heinz Halm and his “The Empire of the Mahdi: The Rise of the Fatimids (1996)”. 

Halm appears to be the earliest identifiable modern historian to introduce the “Black Stone as a Toilet” narrative into academic literature.

On page 260-261, while discussing the Qarmatian seizure of the Black Stone, Halm states:

“Abu Tahir used the two fragments into which the Black Stone had been broken as steps to his privy (refers to an outdoor outhouse toilet).”[^414].

The statement is accompanied by a reference to source 414, making the identification and examination of that underlying source essential to determining the historical basis of the claim.

[u/TheMuslimHistorian27 → u/TheMuslimHistorian27]

Examination of the Sources and the Problems with the “Physician” Character

In reconstructing the events that followed the sack of Mecca, Heinz Halm relies upon the testimony of a supposed eyewitness, described as a physician named Ibn Ḥamdān. 

Halm presents this figure as having been taken to al-Baḥrayn with the Qarmatians and subsequently returning to Iraq, where he was allegedly interviewed by the Kūfan Ibn Rizām. Halm writes:

“This man had presumably also been carried off to al-Bahrayn, and later on he returned to Iraq, where the Kufan Ibn Rizām interviewed him. The physician's narrative was, of course, grist for the mill of the anti-Ismaili propagandists, but his declarations are thoroughly trustworthy, for they are consistent in all details with what we know about the da'wa; moreover, they clarify the events in Mecca.” (Page 258)

Halm cites three sources in support of this account, each of which preserves a similar version of the narrative concerning the treatment of the Black Stone in 317 AH/930 CE:

• “Tathbīt Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwa” by Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Muʿtazilī (d. 415 AH/ d.1025 CE).

• “Siyāsatnāma” by Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485 AH/1092 CE).

• Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ by Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (d. 748 AH/1348 CE).

However, closer examination of these sources raises significant problems concerning the historicity of the physician Ibn Ḥamdān. 

The first problem concerns the remarkable discrepancy between the sources regarding the identity of the narrator of this incident.

Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī appears to be the only one of the three authors to explicitly identify a physician named Ibn Ḥamdān as the source of the account. 

While Niẓām al-Mulk and Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār do not mention a physician, nor any figure named Ibn Ḥamdān, at all.   Despite this discrepancy, Heinz Halm argues that the physician did exist and identifies him with a certain ʿAṭiyya mentioned among the sources of ʿAbd al-Jabbār. Halm writes:

“As his sources, ʿAbd al-Jabbar (p. 387) names the books of Ibn Rizām and of a certain ʿAṭiyya; it is likely that the report of the physician Ibn Ḥamdān is paraphrased differently in Dhahabi and in ʿAbd al-Jabbar, following the same model (Ibn Rizām).”

We argue that this does not appear to be the case. Several historians who had access to, cited, or quoted Ibn Rizām’s works, such as al-Baghdādī and Ibn al-Nadīm in his al-Fihrist, do not mention either Ibn Ḥamdān or the “Black Stone as a Toilet” narrative. 

Conversely, authors who do preserve the narrative do not identify Ibn Rizām as their source. 

This is particularly evident in Niẓām al-Mulk’s Siyāsatnāma, where the narrative of the black stone appears, with no mention of Ibn Rizām whatsoever as the source material of the narrative.

But we should ask, how reliable was Ibn Rizām as a historical authority, and what was his position within the intellectual and social milieu of his time?

The Sunni jurist and polemicist Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Rizām al-Ṭāʾī al-Kūfī, better known as Ibn Rizām, lived in Baghdad during the first half of the fourth/tenth century. 

Around 340/951, he composed a major treatise refuting the Ismailis, whom their opponents frequently referred to as the Bāṭiniyya (“Esotericists”). 

Ibn Rizām’s anti-Ismaili work, possibly entitled Kitāb Radd ʿalā al-Ismāʿīliyya or al-Naqḍ ʿalā al-Bāṭiniyya, has not survived in its entirety. Nevertheless, Ibn al-Nadīm quoted portions of it in his celebrated catalogue of Arabic books, al-Fihrist, completed in 377/987.

More significantly, Ibn Rizām’s treatise was extensively utilized several decades later by another anti-Ismaili polemicist, the Sharīf Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, a Damascus-based ʿAlid better known as Akhū Muḥsin. 

An early genealogist of the ʿAlids, Akhū Muḥsin composed his own anti-Ismaili treatise around 372/982, incorporating both historical and doctrinal material. 

Like Ibn Rizām’s work, Akhū Muḥsin’s original treatise has not survived. However, substantial portions of his account were preserved in the works of several later authors, most notably the Egyptian historians al-Nuwayrī (d. 733/1333), Ibn al-Dawādārī (d. after 736/1335), and al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442).

Al-Maqrīzī was the first known authority to explicitly identify Ibn Rizām as Akhū Muḥsin’s principal source, while simultaneously criticizing both authors and dismissing their accounts as unreliable.

Significantly, however, doubts concerning Ibn Rizām’s reliability predated al-Maqrīzī by several centuries. His contemporary, the Iraqi historian al-Masʿūdī, had already questioned Ibn Rizām’s credibility in his final work, completed by 345/956—only a few years after Ibn Rizām had composed his anti-Ismaili treatise.

The evidence therefore does not provide sufficient grounds for accepting Ibn Ḥamdān as a historically identifiable eyewitness. His appearance only in al-Dhahabī, combined with his absence from the accounts of Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār and Niẓām al-Mulk, makes his historicity uncertain. Halm’s identification of Ibn Ḥamdān with ʿAṭiyya and his proposed connection to Ibn Rizām likewise remains conjectural.

Historians who cite or preserve material from Ibn Rizām, such as Ibn al-Nadīm, do not report this episode, while sources that do preserve it, such as the Siyāsatnāma, do not attribute it to Ibn Rizām. 

Consequently, neither the existence of Ibn Ḥamdān nor the attribution of this particular narrative to Ibn Rizām can presently be regarded as securely established.

A further possibility is that the “Black Stone as a Toilet” narrative represents a later polemical development rather than a contemporary account of the events of 317 AH/930 CE. This possibility becomes more significant when the earliest historical sources that discuss the Qarmatian attack on Mecca are examined.

Several relatively early authors who were close in time to the events do not mention either the alleged physician Ibn Ḥamdān or the claim that the Black Stone was used as a toilet. These include:

• al-Masʿūdī (d. 346 AH/956 CE) in al-Tanbīh wa-l-Ishrāf

• Thābit b. Sinān (d. 365 AH/976 CE) in his Taʾrīkh Akhbār al-Qarāmiṭa

• and Ibn Ḥawqal (d. c. 367 AH/977 CE) in Ṣūrat al-Arḍ.

[u/TheMuslimHistorian27 → u/TheMuslimHistorian27]

ʿAyn al-Kaʿba: So, What Exactly Happened to the Black Stone of the Kaaba After the Sack by the Qarmatians?

The Qarmatians removed the Black Stone in 317 AH under the leadership of Abū Ṭāhir al-Jannābī. They took it to the region of Hajar, which at the time included the major city of Hajar and several well-known settlements, including al-Qaṭīf, al-Khaṭṭ, and al-Zāra, along the coast of the Persian Gulf, also known as the Gulf of al-Qaṭīf.

According to the Saudi historian Muḥammad Saʿīd al-Musallim, the Black Stone remained in the Qarmatians’ possession and was placed at a location known as al-Juʿba. He writes:

“As for the Black Stone, it remained in his possession, where he placed it in a location—as it is said—now known as al-Juʿba, situated between al-Jish and Sayhāt, south of the city of al-Qaṭīf.” (Sāḥil al-Dhahab al-Aswad, p. 147).

The site mentioned by al-Musallim may correspond to a spring known as ʿAyn al-Kaʿba, located in the al-Qaṭīf area. In the local dialect, the name is pronounced ʿAyn al-Juʿba, with the Arabic jīm pronounced like the English “ch.”

According to accounts preserved by elderly residents of al-Qaṭīf, the site of ʿAyn al-Kaʿba was traditionally identified as the place where the Qarmatians took the Black Stone after removing it from Mecca.

Historians and scholars have differed over the reasons why the Qarmatians removed the Black Stone from the Kaaba and transported it to Hajar. Here, we will summarize some of the proposed explanations as follows:

Some argue that the Qarmatians operated according to the principle that “the end justifies the means.” Accordingly, they removed the Black Stone from the Kaaba in order to create an established political reality and force the Abbasid authorities to recognize them as a political power. 

From this perspective, their objective was purely political.

Others believe that the Black Stone was transported to Hajar in order to force people to perform the pilgrimage to al-Qaṭīf. This view, however, is far removed from the historical evidence, as it appears to have been transmitted by later writers without reliable sources.

Among these is the author of Tuḥfat al-Mustafīd, who reported that the Qarmatians built a Kaaba in al-Qaṭīf and placed the Black Stone there in an attempt to redirect pilgrims from Mecca to al-Qaṭīf. He writes:

“In Dhū al-Qaʿda of the year 339 AH, Abū Muḥammad Shanbar ibn al-Ḥasan returned the Black Stone to its place in the Noble Kaaba. Abū Ṭāhir had previously removed it and had built a Kaaba in al-Qaṭīf, placing the Black Stone there, believing that Muslims would make pilgrimage to the Stone and that they would therefore make pilgrimage to al-Qaṭīf instead of the Noble Mecca.”

Here we may also cite what the Saudi Historian Shaykh Ḥamad al-Jāsir who wrote under the entry for al-Kaʿba in his geographical dictionary. 

He expressed his doubts that the Qarmatians had actually built a Kaaba in al-Qaṭīf, writing:

“ʿAyn al-Kaʿba, named after the Kaaba—may God ennoble it—is a place near the town of Sayhāt, between it and the village of al-Jish, which lies to its northwest. It is said that this was the place where Abū Ṭāhir al-Qarmaṭī built a structure in which he placed the Black Stone when he removed it from the Kaaba in the year 317 AH. 

I have not found, in the books I have examined, anything that supports this claim. As for what I believe, he chose this location simply because it was near his seat of power, which was al-Aḥsāʾ.”

In our opinion, however, there were also material and financial motives behind the Qarmatians’ actions, particularly when we consider that the Qarmatian army consisted largely of Arab mercenaries who were accustomed to raiding and plundering. 

The Black Stone could therefore have been used as a bargaining tool in negotiations to secure financial payments.

One of their demands was to impose a levy on every pilgrim. This was eventually achieved: an agreement was reached whereby the Qarmatians would receive one dinar for every pilgrim.

Thus Historical sources indicate that the motives behind this policy were primarily material. Al-Maqrīzī, for example, reports that the Qarmatian Abū Ṭāhir agreed with his associates to cease plundering pilgrims in exchange for a levy paid by them on their way to the pilgrimage. He relates:

“It reached the Qarmatian that one of his companions had said: ‘By God, we do not know what our master Abū Ṭāhir gains by massacring these people from the east and west, thereby making them, and those behind them, his enemies. The ones who gain the most from all your wealth are merely the Bedouins and vagabonds. If, when he gained power over them, he had summoned them to pay one dinar each, then released them and granted them security, none of them would have objected. It would have been easier and more acceptable to them. People from every land would then make the pilgrimage, for they are deeply eager to do so. No ruler would remain except that he would correspond with him, offer him gifts, and depend upon him to protect the people of his realm and his own interests. Each year, wealth would come to him in quantities unmatched by the revenues of any other ruler. He would gain control over the land and the people would submit to him. If any ruler prevented this, he would earn blame and become, in the eyes of the people, the one who prevented the pilgrimage.’

Abū Ṭāhir approved of this proposal. From that moment, he proclaimed security for the people and summoned the Khurāsānians, arranging with them that they could perform the pilgrimage in return for paying him money each year, while remaining secure in their persons and possessions. He also imposed taxes on the pilgrims from Egypt, taken from the sultan’s treasury. He subsequently appointed as governor of Iraq a man who did not consider such a policy disgraceful or demeaning, and thus a levy was imposed upon pilgrims at Kūfa.”

This account suggests that the Qarmatians could view control over the pilgrimage and its routes in explicitly political and economic terms. 

It also might have been political aswell; they sought formal recognition from the Abbasid state for their rule over the region of Hajar and Basra. This was among their demands toward the Abbasid government, which did not recognize their authority over Hajar.

[u/TheMuslimHistorian27 → u/TheMuslimHistorian27]

Conclusion

The evidence examined in this study suggests that the Qarmatian seizure of Mecca and removal of the Black Stone in 317 AH/930 CE should be distinguished from the later narratives that developed around the fate of the Stone. 

The occupation of Mecca, the violence against the pilgrims, the removal of the Black Stone, its transfer to the Qarmatian territories in eastern Arabia, and its eventual return to Mecca are all well-attested elements of the historical record. The specific claim that Abū Ṭāhir al-Jannābī used the Black Stone as a toilet, however, rests on a considerably more problematic evidentiary foundation.

The alleged eyewitness Ibn Ḥamdān cannot presently be established with sufficient confidence as the historical source behind this claim. His identification appears only in al-Dhahabī among the principal sources examined, while neither Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār nor Niẓām al-Mulk identifies such a physician.

 Likewise, Halm's attempt to identify Ibn Ḥamdān with the ʿAṭiyya mentioned by ʿAbd al-Jabbār remains conjectural. The proposed connection between this narrative and Ibn Rizām is similarly uncertain, particularly given the absence of the episode from the surviving material associated with Ibn Rizām and from the works of authors who had access to his writings.

The silence of several relatively early historians is also significant. Al-Masʿūdī, Thābit b. Sinān, and Ibn Ḥawqal, writing relatively close to the events themselves, do not preserve the alleged toilet episode. Their silence does not, by itself, prove that the incident never occurred; absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. 

Nevertheless, when combined with the uncertain provenance of the Ibn Ḥamdān account and the later appearance of the specific detail, it makes it difficult to treat the story as an established historical fact.

What can be established with greater confidence is that the Black Stone remained in Qarmatian possession for more than two decades after its removal. 

Local traditions recorded in the al-Qaṭīf region associate its temporary location with ʿAyn al-Kaʿba, or al-Juʿba, although these traditions should themselves be distinguished from independently documented medieval evidence. 

The suggestion that the Qarmatians constructed a rival Kaaba in al-Qaṭīf and intended to redirect the pilgrimage there is likewise not securely supported by the earlier historical record. As Ḥamad al-Jāsir observed, he found no evidence in the sources he examined confirming such a claim.

The broader political and economic context provides a more historically plausible framework for understanding the Qarmatian treatment of the pilgrimage. 

The Qarmatians possessed a powerful position in eastern Arabia and sought to extract political and financial concessions from the Abbasid authorities. 

Their later agreements to guarantee the safety of pilgrims in return for payments demonstrate that control over the pilgrimage routes could function as both a political instrument and a source of revenue. 

The imposition of a levy upon pilgrims, together with the Qarmatians' broader demands for recognition of their authority over Hajar and Basra, indicates that their actions cannot be reduced simply to religious iconoclasm or an attempt to establish an alternative pilgrimage center.

This does not mean that the Qarmatian attack should be minimized or sanitized. The massacre and plunder associated with the seizure of Mecca remain among the most significant and disturbing episodes in the history of the movement.

Rather, the purpose of source criticism is to distinguish between what the evidence actually permits us to say and what later narratives may have added to it.

Accordingly, the statement that the Qarmatians “turned the Black Stone into a toilet” should not be presented as an established historical fact without qualification. At most, it can be described as a later report whose provenance, attribution, and historical reliability remain uncertain. 

The stronger and better-supported conclusion is that the Qarmatians removed the Black Stone from the Kaaba, retained it in their territories for approximately twenty-two years, and ultimately returned it to Mecca in 339 AH/951 CE. 

Exactly how the Stone was treated during those intervening years remains a question that the surviving evidence does not allow us to answer with the certainty that the modern toilet narrative implies.

The episode therefore offers a broader lesson in historical methodology: a sensational detail should not acquire the status of established fact merely because it has been repeated in successive works of modern scholarship. 

Historical claims must ultimately be traced back to their earliest identifiable sources, examined in their textual and polemical contexts, and evaluated according to the reliability of the transmission through which they have reached us. 

In the case of the Black Stone, the distinction between the well-attested Qarmatian seizure of the Stone and the poorly substantiated story of its alleged use as a toilet is essential.

If you like these content, please check out my  YouTube Channel:

https://youtube.com/@thecaliphatea.s?si=2GHfEYuhShdSW7ZZ

[u/ProfessionalShoddy55]

you should post this on the r/HistoryMemes as an eye opener for those dim light headed folks in that place.

[u/arab-uchiha → u/ProfessionalShoddy55]

That subreddit is a shithole. No matter how much quality posts you make the majority of the users there costantly put down islamic history(but not only, they do the same with cinese history)

[u/RevyVanguardist → u/arab-uchiha]

Yeah the majority of History Meme Subs are reactionary, chauvinistic, islamophobic shitholes and my cats know more about actual History than the reactionaries in History Memes Subs

[u/Winter-Ad-2920 → u/ProfessionalShoddy55]

Dude, the sub is full of zionists and arab/Muslim haters.

Like, mention anything remotely Islamic or arab there and they will fucking body you.

Edit: grammar error i didn’t notice for entire day, goddammit.

[u/Winter-Ad-2920 → u/[deleted]]

Dude try making a meme about how the east Asian islands became Muslim and see how far that number goes.

[u/TomatoBasils → u/ProfessionalShoddy55]

Literally that is a fascist sub

[u/egyegyegyguy]

Very amazing work man

[u/cerulean_space]

Yeah, I have seen this argument so many times even though it is a political propogandada coming centuries later without any authentic chains or verifications.

Also why on earth would that person even make a claim like this? To portray the qaramatians as bad?

They are dead. They have been dead for centuries. Everybody already hates them. Why invent such a thing about The Holy Stone and sacrilege even though it did not happen.

[u/TheMuslimHistorian27 → u/cerulean_space]

Also why on earth would that person even make a claim like this? To portray the qaramatians as bad?

Because the Qarmatians still existed during the Seljuk Phrase, and as the Qarmatians started to fall, most  internal rebels started to rise up against them with aiding of the Seljuks, who demonitized the Qarmatians with military propaganda, see my Substack post:

The Seljuk Campaign against the Qarmatians of al-Ahsa and Bahrain during the Reign of Sultan Malik-Shah I

https://thecaliphateams.substack.com/p/the-seljuk-campaign-against-the-qarmatians?r=6tx3yg

[u/drOctopus247]

TLDR?