Monotheistic Pilgrimage: Ka’bah Bait Al-Muqaddas Jerusalem Beit HaMiqdash

The first Gobekli Tepe Temple appears to have been deliberately filled in about 10,000 years ago. We have no knowledge of why this earliest major sanctuary was buried, though the time was a period of significant change. We have vague ideas about the people living in the region at the time but do not understand them in detail. This isn’t a question of being “hidden”. Rather, this is a consequence of the early Neolithic in the region still being inadequately investigated.

However, it’s quite clear that whatever they were, they were not an urban society (which is what historians and archaeologists mean by “civilization”). Remains of various artifacts in the backfill indicate that whoever did it had fairly unremarkable early Neolithic technology like low-fired pottery but none of the hallmarks usually regarded as indicative of more sophisticated societies.

If Prophets Adam or Noah had lived at that time, it is possible that one of them might have influenced the polytheism people living in that area (about 10,000 years ago) to bury Gobekli Tepe.

Archaeologists in Turkey, digging at a sister site to the famous Göbekli Tepe Temple, have reached its lowest layer, unearthing incredible 11,500 year old carved pillars at a settlement called Karahan Tepe, showing that hunter gatherer societies were building elaborate communal gathering spaces before the invention of farming or the wheel.

The discovery comes from the Taş Tepeler region of southeastern Turkey, an area now recognized as home to multiple Pre Pottery Neolithic sites that are rewriting the timeline of human civilization. Karahan Tepe, located approximately 23 miles (37 kilometers) from Göbekli Tepe, features T shaped limestone pillars weighing up to 30 tons each, carved with stylized human arms, hands, belts, and animal figures including snakes, foxes, and birds.

The site also contains a large “building with a phallus,” a carved stone chamber used for what researchers describe as “bloody rituals,” and a basin that may have held water or offerings.

The architects of these structures were not farmers. They were hunter gatherers who returned to the same holy site generation after generation, lowering massive stones with ropes and wooden levers, carving symbols into solid rock using only flint tools.

This monumental discovery is rewriting history textbooks by flipping a century old assumption. For decades, archaeologists believed that agriculture came first: humans learned to farm, settled into permanent villages, and only then developed the surplus labor and social hierarchy needed to build temples. Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe reverse that sequence.

The desire for communal worship and spiritual gathering may have actually driven people to settle down and eventually develop agriculture, rather than the other way around. People gathered to build temples. They built temples to worship.

And then, because they kept gathering, they needed food, then stored food, then planted food. Agriculture followed worship, not the reverse. An 11,500 year old pillar carved with human hands. A hunter gatherer who became an architect. A temple built before anyone knew how to grow a single seed.

The two ancient temples buried in Turkey, have been replaced by Monotheistic Pilgrimage to Jerusalem’s Temple and to Mecca’s Ka’bah a Bait Al-Muqaddas.

People who attended religious services at least once a week were significantly less likely to die from deaths related to suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning, according to a May 2020 research report from the Harvard School of Public Health. If this is true for routine daily and weekly prayer it should be even more true for annual holy days and for Hajj.

Hajj is a duty unto Allah, for him or her who can find a way or means to get there (Qu’ran 3:97). Prophets Ibrahim and Ishmael built this House for devout worship to one God. But within a few generations the local Arabs began to put idols inside the Ka’bah. The Ancient Arabs did not understand why idols were an abomination, and out of reverence, started filling the place with idols again.

They thronged to this place annually and worshipped their own personal gods. Only after two thousand plus years later did Prophet Abraham’s descendant Prophet Muhammad Ibn Abdullah enter Makka triumphantly, and destroy the 300 plus idols surrounding the Ka’bah.

“Narrated Ibn Abbas: When Allah’s Apostle arrived in Mecca, he refused to enter the Ka’bah while there were idols in it. So he ordered that they be taken out. The pictures of (Prophets) Ibrahim and Ishmael, holding arrows of divination in their hands, were carried out. The Prophet said, “May Allah ruin them (the Quraish) for they knew very well that they (Prophets Ibrahim and Ishmael) never drew lots by these (divination arrows). Then the Prophet entered the Ka’bah saying: “Allahu Akbar” in all its directions and come out not offering any prayer therein.” (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Book 59, Hadith 584)

But what did the people of Makka do during the many centuries that the Ka’bah, rebuilt by Prophets Abraham and Ishmael, was polluted by the presence of dozens, and in later times three hundred plus idols?

For most of those centuries, hunafa’ monotheists went with Banu Isra’il to Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa (the Furthest Sanctuary) in Jerusalem “whose precincts We have blessed” (Qur’an 17:1)

Spiritually as Rumi wrote: “The space/place Prophet Solomon made to worship in, called the Far Mosque, is not built of earth, water and stone, but of intention, wisdom, mystical conversation and compassionate action. (“The Far Mosque” Chapter 17: Solomon Poems, page 191) Makka is named by Ptolemy and this allows us to identify it as a “South Arabian foundation created around a sanctuary.” (from my teacher G. E. Von Grunebaum, Classical Islam: A History 600–1258, p.19)

Physically, Jerusalem’s Qiblah, the Bait al-Maqdis or Al-Haram al-Sharif encloses 35 acres of buildings and open spaces. Within its southernmost space is the Al-Aqsa Mosque; and 200 yards north of Al-Aqsa is the Dome of the Rock. The entire Al-Haram al-Sharif area, enclosed within its own wall, is often regarded as Bait al-Maqdis or Al-Qudus and comprises less than one sixth of the total ancient walled Old City portion of Jerusalem, the City of David.

However, it is clear that the silver-domed Masjid al-Aqsa and the golden Dome of the Rock (Qubbat al-Sakhra) have always been two separate structures.

The two are not synonymous with each other—as is often mistakenly assumed by some people.This provides a potential future peaceful religious solution for the three religious communities of the heirs of Abraham’s Baitullah-BaitHaMikdash. “In it are clear signs [like] the standing place of Abraham. Whoever enters it shall be safe. And [due] to Allah from the [Muslim] people is a pilgrimage to the House – for whoever is able to find a way. But whoever disbelieves – then indeed, Allah is free from need of the worlds.” (Quran, 3:97)

“Behold! We gave the site to Abraham, of the (Sacred) House [the Ka’bah he built], (Saying): ‘Associate not anything (In worship) with Me; And sanctify My House For those who compass it round, Or stand up, Or bow, or prostrate themselves (in prayer). And proclaim the Pilgrimage among men: they will come to thee on foot and (mounted) on every kind of camel, lean on account of journeys through deep and distant mountain highways.” (Quran, 22:26-27)

Very few Jews and Muslims realize that for almost 950 years, while Jerusalem’s First and Second Temple —Bait Al-Muqaddas (Beit HaMiqdash in Hebrew)— stood, the Jewish festival of Hag Sukkot was celebrated as a Hajj, a monotheistic pilgrimage festival; one of three annual pilgrimages in the Torah. In Biblical times the Hebrew letter g was usually pronounced g as in good; and sometimes g as in gym; so Hag was pronounced the same as Hajj.

During the almost 950 years that the Jerusalem Temple stood it welcomed Jews and monotheistic non-Jews (Hanifs), to attend services daily for as Prophet Solomon himself said in his dedication service: “As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel, but has come from a distant land because of your name— for they will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this Temple, then hear from heaven your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I (Solomon) have built bears your Name.” (1 Kings 8:41-43)

In the centuries after the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Romans, pilgrimage ceased. Today the overwhelming majority of Jews outside the Land of Israel live in Protestant countries where pilgrimage plays little or no role in religious life. Thus, it is very hard for most Jews to feel the tremendous spiritual uplift that can occur to pilgrims on the long path to, and amidst the mass tumult of, a uniquely holy and sacred place.

We can however see in the Muslim Hajj, some of the spiritual uplift that occurs when large numbers of people from all over the world travel to one holy place and join together in a traditional religious ceremony. Muslims in turn, can see some similarities in the ancient Jewish practice of Hajj ceremonies.

The Torah declares: “Celebrate Hajj Sukkot for seven days after you have harvested the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns.

For seven days celebrate the festival to the Lord your God at the place the Lord will choose. For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete. Three times a year all your men must appear before the Lord your God at the place He will choose: at the Hajj of Matzah (Passover), the Hajj of Weeks (Shavuot), and the Hajj of Sukkot. (Bible, Deuteronomy 16:13-16)

The Hajj of Sukkot was chosen by Prophet Solomon to dedicate the First Temple in Jerusalem. (Bible, 1 Kings 8; 2). Hajj Sukkot was so important during the centuries when Solomon’s Temple stood that the holy week of Sukkot was often called simply “the Hajj” (1 Kings 8:3; 8:65; 12:62; 2 Chronicles 5:3; 7:8)  because of the very large numbers of Jews and non-Jews who came up to the Temple in Jerusalem,

On each of the first six days of Sukkot it was traditional to circle the Temple altar while reciting psalms. On the seventh day of Sukkot the custom was to circle the Temple altar seven times. As the Oral Torah says: “It was customary to make one procession around the altar on each day of Sukkot, and seven on the seventh day.” (Mishnah Sukkah 4:5) Each circle is done in honor of a prophet; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David.

Muslims will see some similarities and some differences between the Jewish Hajj and the Islamic Hajj.