On the western side of the Arabian peninsula is a region known as the Hejaz, or “barrier.” The Hejaz rises from the western coastal plain from Yemen in the south to the Sinai peninsula in the north. One of the oases in the Hejaz is Mecca, set among the barren hills fifty miles inland from the sea.

Mecca possessed a well (the Zemzem) of great depth, and two ancient caravan routes met there. An east-to-west route ran from Africa through the peninsula to Iran and Central Asia, and a northwest-southeast route brought the spices of India to the Mediterranean world. Another significant advantage of Mecca was its importance as a religious sanctuary. This is the location of where Abraham brought Hagar and Ishmael..

An ancient temple, an almost square structure built of granite blocks, stood near the well of Mecca. Known as the Kaaba (cube), this square temple contained the sacred Black Stone, which was said to have been brought to Abraham and his son Ishmael by the Angel Gabriel. According to tradition, the stone, probably a meteorite, was originally white but had become blackened by the sins of those touching it.

For centuries the Kaaba had been a holy place of annual pilgrimage for the Arabic tribes and a focal point of Arabic cultural and linguistic unity. The Kaaba itself was draped with the pelts of sacrificial animals, and supposedly held the images and shrines of 360 gods and goddesses.

By the sixth century, Mecca was controlled by the Koraysh tribe, whose rulers organized themselves into syndicates of merchants and wealthy businessmen. The Koraysh held lucrative trading agreements with Byzantine and Persian contacts, as well as with the southern Arabian tribes and the Abyssinians (Ethiopians) across the Red Sea.

In addition, a number of neighboring merchant fairs, such as one usually held at Ukaz, were taken over by the Koraysh to extend the economic influence of Mecca. The Koraysh were also concerned with protecting the religious shrine of the Kaaba, in addition to ensuring that the annual pilgrimage of tribes to the holy place would continue as a source of revenue for the merchants of the city.
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The Black Stone is broken into a number of fragments, with varying accounts putting the number at between seven and fifteen, held together by a silver frame. There are differing accounts of how the damage occurred. According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, the damage occurred during a siege in 638. The editors of Time-Life Books state that the damage occurred during a siege launched by a general of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (646-705). Other sources, including the 2007 Britannica, state that the damage occurred as the result of a theft in 930 CE, when Qarmatian warriors sacked Mecca and carried the Black Stone away to their base in Ahsa, in medieval Bahrain. According to the historian Al-Juwayni, the Stone was returned twenty-two years later, in 951, under somewhat mysterious circumstances; wrapped in a sack, it was thrown into the Friday Mosque of Kufa accompanied by a note saying “By command we took it, and by command we have brought it back.” Its abduction and removal caused further damage, breaking the stone into seven pieces.

The Black Stone has been described variously as basalt lava, an agate, a piece of natural glass or most popularly a stony meteorite. A significant clue to its nature is provided by an account of the Stone’s recovery in 951 AD after it had been stolen 21 years earlier; according to a chronicler, the Stone was identified by its ability to float in water. If this account is accurate, it would rule out the Black Stone being an agate, basalt lava or stony meteorite, though it would be compatible with it being glass or pumice.

It has been suggested that the Black Stone may be a glass fragment from the impact of a fragmented meteorite some 6,000 years ago at Wabar, a site in the Rub’ al Khali desert some 1,100 km east of Mecca. The craters at Wabar are notable for the presence of blocks of silica glass, fused by the heat of the impact and impregnated by beads of nickel-iron alloy from the meteorite (most of which was destroyed in the impact). Some of the glass blocks are made of shiny black glass with a white or yellow interior and gas-filled hollows, which allow them to float on water. Although scientists did not become aware of the Wabar craters until 1932, they were located near a caravan route from Oman and were very likely known to the inhabitants of the desert. The wider area was certainly well-known; in ancient Arabic poetry, Wabar or Ubar (also known as “Iram of the Pillars” was the site of a fabulous city that was destroyed by fire from the heavens because of the wickedness of its king. If the estimated age of the crater is accurate, it would have been well within the period of human habitation in Arabia and the impact itself may have been witnessed. However, a recent (2004) scientific analysis of the Wabar site suggests that the impact event happened much more recently than first thought and might have occurred only within the last 200–300 years.