Bakkah


Bakkah, is a place mentioned in sura 3, ayah 96 of the Qur'an, a verse sometimes translated as: " Verily the first House set apart unto mankind was that at Bakkah, blest, and a guidance unto the worlds",
According to Muslim scholars, Bakkah is an ancient name for Mecca, the most holy city of Islam.
Most Muslims believe Mecca and Bakkah are synonyms, but to Muslim scholars there is a distinction: Bakkah refers to the Kaaba and the sacred site immediately surrounding it, while Mecca is the name of the city in which they are both located.
According to Lisān al-‘Arab of Ibn Manẓūr, the site of the Kaaba and its surroundings was named Bakkah due to crowding and congestion of people in the area. The Arabic verb bakka, with double "k", means to crowd like in a bazaar. This is not to be confused with another unrelated Arabic verb bakā which is the past participle of yabkī, to cry.

Bakkah and Mecca

Without offering any evidence, the muslim tradition identify Bakkah as the ancient name for the site of Mecca. An Arabic language word, its etymology, like that of Mecca, is obscure.
One meaning ascribed to it is "narrow", seen as descriptive of the area in which the valley of the holy places and the city of Mecca are located, pressed in upon as they are by mountains. Widely believed to be a synonym for Mecca, it is said to be more specifically the early name for the valley located therein, while Muslim scholars generally use it to refer to the sacred area of the city that immediately surrounds and includes the Kaaba.
The form Bakkah is used for the name Mecca in the Quran in 3:96, while the form Mecca is used in 48:24. In South Arabic, the language in use in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Muhammad, the b and m were interchangeable. The Quranic passage using the form Bakkah says: "The first sanctuary appointed for mankind was that at Bakkah, a blessed place, a guidance for the peoples." Other references to Mecca in the Quran call it Umm al-Qura, meaning "mother of all settlements".
In Islamic tradition, Bakkah is where Hagar and Ishmael settled after being taken by Abraham to the wilderness, a story parallel to the Bible's Book of Genesis. Genesis tells of how after Hagar and Ishmael ran out of water to drink. In Arab tradition, Hagar runs back and forth between two elevated points seven times to search for help before sitting down in despair, at which point the angel speaks as recorded in Genesis 21:17-19: Here, the tradition holds that a spring gushed forth from the spot where Hagar had laid Ishmael, and this spring came to be known as the Well of Zamzam. When Muslims on hajj run between the hills of Safa and Marwah seven times, it is to commemorate Hagar's search for help and the resulting revelation of the well of Zamzam.
In addition to the Islamic tradition that Hagar and Ishmael settled in Bakkah, the Quran relates that Abraham came to Mecca to help his son Ishmael build the Kaaba adjacent to the well of Zamzam. However, in the Bible and ancient Jewish, Christian, and pre-Islamic tradition, Abraham is never mentioned as traveling far south into Arabia. Ishmael is mentioned in Genesis at Abraham's funeral.
Ibn Ishaq, the 8th-century Arab Muslim historian, relates that during the renovation of Kaaba undertaken by the Quraysh before Islam, found an inscription in one of the corners of the foundation of the building that mentions Bakkah. Composed in Syriac, it was incomprehensible to the Quraysh until a Jew translated it for them as follows: "I am Allah, the Lord of Bakka. I created it on the day I created heaven and earth and formed the sun and the moon, and I surrounded it with seven pious angels. It will stand while its two mountains stand, a blessing to its people with milk and water."
The name Bakkah is woven into the kiswa, the cloth covering the Kaaba that is replaced each year before the Hajj.

Valley of Baca

Valley of Baca is mentioned in the Book of Psalms Chapter 84, in the following passage:
The original Hebrew-language phrase for the Valley of Baca is emeq ha-Baka עמק הבכא. A literal translation of the Hebrew name is "valley of the Baka,", although the ancient Greek translation assumed a similar-sounding word בכה "crying" and translated ἐν τῇ κοιλάδι τοῦ κλαυθμῶνος "valley of mourning". The same Hebrew word בכא is associated with a famous battle in 2 Samuel 5:23-24 in the Valley of Rephaim, about 4-7 kilometers southwest of the present day Old City of Jerusalem. David is advised to engage the Philistines in battle when he hears the sound of marching in the Baka trees.
Islamic scholars and commentators attempt to identify Baca in Psalms 84 with Mecca, which however is identified in Psalms 84 itself as a place passed by pilgrims on their journey to Sion