Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
Scholars and historians say that the Kabah has been reconstructed between 5 to 12 times. According to some of them, the very first construction of the Kabah was done by Prophet Adam (peace and blessings be upon him). After this, Prophet Ibrahim and Isma`il (peace and blessings be upon them) rebuilt the Kabah.
In response to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
We have no clear evidence in the sources about this, although there are some reports that indicate that the Kabah was built by Prophet Adam (peace and blessings be upon him) and it had been a site of pilgrimage from ancient times; as such, it had been visited by various prophets.
These reports, however, do not pass the rigorous standards of scientific verification established by the scholars of Hadith. It is certainly possible, however, to infer from the Quran that Prophet Ibrahim and his son Isma`il (peace and blessings be upon them) only rebuilt the Kabah, and that Prophet Ibrahim (peace and blessings be upon him) was guided to the site.
The Hadith reports indicate that it had been in ruins and buried by a heap of sand. We cannot go any farther than this to elaborate the details for lack of clear evidences in the sources.
It is better to leave the issue of building the Kabah at this point and stop speculating on such matters, leaving them to the knowledge of Allah.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.