Mecca gained importance after the Justinian plague. This affected the medditerranean trade routes massively and favoured the trade routes using the persian Gulf and red Sea. The history of Mecca however is obscured by tonnes of hadith garbage and zero archaelogical studies. So one can't tell how Mecca gained importance for sure. All we know is during the life of Muhammad it had so little significance villages consisting of very few inhabitants can be found in historical records of neighbouring powers but none of Mecca. To me it doesn't really matter, it's an insignificant place and a good catalyst to draw sectarian arabs towards displaying their pagan traditions.http://religionresearchinstitute.org/mecca/archeology.htm
How many "non-hadith" mentions do you have of places like 'lahore' or 'peshawar' of that time? Does that mean that just because the outsiders never mentioned it and it was only mentioned by the locals then it never existed?
Check the link posted above, it deals with the issue in much detail. I assume you are one that accepts Mecca to be their qibla?Peace
So are you saying that Mecca may have existed?
Yes I accept Mecca as qibla. I assume you are of those who like to create new history for the local inhabitants of that area.
Well not only is the absence of historical records for Mecca problematic, so is the fact Mecca has never been acknowledged by any pre-quranic Abrahamic faith. Don't you think that's odd knowing they speak about the same abraham?Peace
I'm not rewriting history. The history of Jerusalem is well established and backed up by Quran.Peace
It possibly existed as a meaningless village. We don't know for sure however. Contrast this absence of archaelogical evidence with that of Sharif Al-Haram. Peace