Zamzam Well

Zamzam Well, or Zamzam, is a water well in the Grand Mosque in the Holy City of Mecca, located 21 meters east of the Kaaba. It has an ancient history, and historians date it to 2000 BC at the latest, from the era of the Prophet Abraham and his son Ismail. It is 30 meters deep and a number of water flows into it. The springs of water are as old as the well itself, and according to the hadiths contained in the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, its water is blessed and contains a cure for illnesses, and therefore it has great specialness among Muslims.

Zamzam water was mentioned in several hadiths from the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, which narrate that its water is blessed. It sprang from the ground after the Angel Gabriel dug it up with his heel (or his wing) for the Prophet of God Ismail (young) and his mother Hagar, when they ran out of water and more, so the Prophet of God left them. Abraham, by order of God, in that barren valley in which there was no crops or water, and Hagar struggled and tired of searching, running between Safa and Marwah, looking at the distant horizon, hoping to find someone to help her, until she walked between them seven times, then she returned to her son, and she heard a voice; She said: I hear your voice, so help me if you have any good. So Gabriel hit the ground. Then the water appeared, and Umm Ismail filled it with sand, which she returned for fear that it would miss it, before bringing the container. So she drank and went to her son. Al-Bukhari narrated this incident at great length in his Sahih.

Chilled Zamzam water for drinking
Chilled Zamzam water for drinking in the Holy Mosque of Mecca
The Zamzam Well is considered one of the important elements inside the Grand Mosque, and it is the most famous well on the face of the Earth due to its distinguished spiritual status and its connection in the conscience of Muslims in general, and those performing Hajj and Umrah rituals in particular. Studies have reported that the springs feeding the well pump between 11 and 18.5 liters of water per second.

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The story of the well in the Islamic narrative as reported by the Prophet Muhammad in Sahih Al-Bukhari, the book of Hadiths of the Prophets. It is that when the Prophet Abraham came to Mecca with his wife Hagar and their son Ishmael, he placed them in a place near the Kaaba, which was not standing at that time, and then he left them alone in that place, and Hagar had nothing with him except a small waterskin made of leather, which quickly ran out, and Abraham bid them farewell and left without paying attention to Hagar. Despite her repeated calls, he told her that he had done it by God’s command, so she accepted and agreed, and Abraham went on until he had passed them a distance and realized that they could not see him. He called on his Lord by saying:

“Our Lord, I have settled some of my descendants in a valley devoid of crops near Your Sacred House, our Lord, so that they may establish prayer, so cause the hearts of the people to incline towards them Provide them with fruits that they may be grateful. (37) (Surat Ibrahim: Verse 37).

After the water ran out, the child began to cry, and his mother could not bear to see him crying, so she turned away from him so that she would not hear his crying, and she went walking in search of water, so she climbed Mount Al-Safa, then Mount Al-Marwah, then Al-Safa, then Al-Marwah, and she did that seven times exactly as the quest that began after her, so when she reached Al-Marwah in The last time I heard a voice, it said, “Help me if you have any good.” Then the owner of the voice, Gabriel, hit the well’s site with the heel of his foot, and water gushed out from the ground. Hagar kept surrounding the sand and piling it up to preserve the water, and she used to say while pushing the sand, “Zam Zam,” Zam Zam, meaning to gather in the Syriac language, which is What is the reason behind the name?

Zamzam in the past, before modern pumps were used to flow water.
Ibn Abbas narrated on the authority of the Prophet of God Muhammad:

Zamzam, may God have mercy on Ismail’s mother. If you had left Zamzam, or he said, if you had not scooped out the water, Zamzam would have been a spring. Zamzam.
– A prophetic hadith

A drawing dating back to the 18th century AD showing a Saqqa (water-bender) in Mecca.
The well disappeared once in the pre-Islamic era, and its location was not known. Before Islam, the grandfather of the Prophet Abdul Muttalib at that time dreamed of someone directing him to the location of the well and asking him to open the well. He woke up and ran quickly to the side of the Kaaba and dug in the place he saw in his dream until the vision came true. As he saw that someone said to him, “Dig Taiba,” because it is for the good men and women from the sons of Abraham and Ishmael, and he was told: “Dig outside.” And it was said: Dig the madnoonah, which you thought about people except for you, and it is indicated by three signs: by the crow’s crow’s peck, that it is between dung and blood, and at the village of ants. It was narrated that when he got up to dig it, he saw what he had drawn of the anthill and the crow’s peck, but he did not see the dung and the blood. While he was like that, a cow called to her butcher, but he did not catch it until it entered the Sacred Mosque, so he slaughtered it in the place he had drawn, and the dung and blood flowed there, so Abd al-Muttalib dug it where Draw him. It was said to Abd al-Muttalib regarding its description that it never bleeds, and this is great proof because it has never bled from that time until today. An Ethiopian fell into it and fled because of him, and they found its water bubbling from three springs, the strongest and most abundant of which was the water of a spring on the side of the Black Stone, narrated by Al-Daraqutni. The well of Zamzam was divided into three tribes: Hudhayl, Khuza’a, and Quraysh. Hudhail had a third of Zamzam and a bucket, Khuza’a had a third of Zamzam and a bucket, and Quraysh had two-thirds and a bucket, and none of the Arabs shared it with them.