16. The Muslims Who Sacked Mecca and Defiled the Kaaba
When they sacked Mecca, the Qarmatians slaughtered over 30,000 pilgrims, desecrated religious sites, and ritually and literally polluted the holy Well of Zamzam by stuffing it full with the corpses of their victims. They also seized the Black Stone, a meteorite rock affixed to the Kaaba and deemed holy by Muslims, took it back to their republic, and smashed it to pieces. Cementing their jerk reputation in the minds of contemporaries, the Qarmatians held the Black Stone’s shards for a huge ransom. It was paid by the Abbasid Caliphate, who reassembled the bits and restored them to the Kaaba.
Pilgrimage came to a halt for nearly a decade. It only resumed after the Qarmatians were paid protection money from the region’s states, the Abbasid and Fatimid Caliphates, to refrain from attacking the holy cities. The tribute payments continued until a defeat in 976 to the Abbasids sent the Qarmatians’ fortunes into a decline. Their radicalism waned along with their power, and by 1058 they had abandoned the beliefs deemed heretical by mainstream Muslims and reverted to orthodox Islam. A decade later, the Seljuk Turks inflicted a decisive and final defeat upon the Qarmatians, and brought their republic to an end.
