Zamzam Well

The Zamzam Well (بئر زمزم biʔru zam.zam) is a well located within the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is located east of the Kaʿba, the holiest place in Islam. According to Islamic narratives, the well is a miraculously generated source of water, which opened up thousands of years ago when the son of Ibrahim (Abraham), Ismaʿil (Ishmael), was left with his mother Hajar (Hagar) in the desert. It is claimed to have dried up during the settlement of the Jurhum in the area and to have been rediscovered in the 6th century by ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, grandfather of Muhammad. Millions of pilgrims visit Mecca and Medina each year while performing the Hajj or Umrah pilgrimages in order to drink its water. The origin of the name is uncertain. According to historian Jacqueline Chabbi, the noun زمزم is an onomatopoeia. She associates the noun with the adjectives زمزم and زمازم which are onomatopoeic denoting a dull sound stemming from either a distant roll (of thunder) or a guttural sound emitted with a closed mouth by animals or people, however meaning either 'an abundant supply of water' or 'a source of water which does not dry up' if applied to ماء. She states that this latter meaning of an unintelligible guttural sound encompasses a layer of meaning associated with the sacred and mystical, in addition to the basic notion of the sound possibly being related to the concept of an abundant flow of water. Early Islamic sources use the terms زمزم and زمازم to refer to the religious rites of Zoroastrianism and the Zoroastrians. The terms are onomatopoeic and derive from what Arabs perceived to be an indistinct, droning sound of the recitation of Avestan prayers and scriptures by Magi. Mediaeval Arabic writers like al-Masʿūdī generally claim the well is named on the account of زمزم. They argue that based on their "kinship with Abraham" Zoroastrians regularly made pilgrimages to Mecca to pray over the well. A later account by al-ʿAynī claims that the well is named after زمازم supposedly meaning "bridles" which had been donated to the well by and named after Sasan, the Zoroastrian progenitor of the Sasanian Empire.