Book Review: Ahmed Zaki Yamani
The House of Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, in Makkah al-Mukarramah - Allah be pleased with her

The House of Khadījah bint Khuwaylid in Makkah al-Mukarramah—Allah be pleased with her documents with meticulous care a unique event in the modern history of Islamic archaeology. In the winter of 1410/1989, during the first phase of the expansion of the outer courtyard of the Masjid al-Ḥarām, construction workers uncovered the remains of ancient buildings on the south-eastern side of the masʿā—the space between the two hillocks, al-Ṣafāʾ and al-Marwah, described in the Qurʾān as being among the shaʿāʾir Allāh (“symbols of Allah”)—and near the former al-Muddaʿā market. The location, known as Barḥat al-Qubbān, lay close to the former site of the school for ḥuffāẓ built by Shaykh ʿAbbās Qaṭṭān, which Makkan historical tradition had long identified as standing over the house of the Mother of the Believers, Sayyida Khadījah bint Khuwaylid, the first wife of the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace.
The construction workers initially had no awareness of the historical significance of what had been uncovered. One of them, however, reported the discovery to higher authorities, and the news eventually reached Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the author of this study. Yamani—who had served as Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources from 1962 to 1986 and as a leading figure in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)—was uniquely positioned to intervene. Trained in law at Cairo University, New York University, and Harvard University, and holding a doctorate from the University of Exeter, he had long combined political authority with institutional reach. Although dismissed from office three years earlier, in October 1986, the fifty-nine-year-old Yamani immediately grasped the importance of the discovery.

Journal of Islamic Sciences, Vol. 18 (Winter 2025)​ No. 2

Muzaffar Iqbal

Muzaffar Iqbal is the President of the Center for Islamic Sciences and the General Editor of the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān.