from which Ishmael and his mother once drank—namely, the Well of Zamzam. Its story is related in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās, who said:

“The very first time women ever wore a waist-sash was because of the mother of Ishmael; she fastened one around herself so that her tracks would be effaced from Sarah.

“Abraham then set out with her and her infant son Ishmael, whom she was still nursing, until he settled her beside the House, beneath a large tree that stood above Zamzam, at the upper end of the Sacred Precinct—at a time when Mecca was still uninhabited.”