Khuzaʿah retained custody of the Sacred House for roughly three hundred years—some say five hundred; God knows best. Their tenure, however, proved ill-omened, for it was in their time that idol-worship first appeared in the Ḥijāz. The immediate cause was their chief, ʿAmr b. Luhay—may God curse him—who was the first to invite them to this practice. He was exceedingly wealthy;

It is said that he “plucked out the eye of twenty camels,” an expression meaning that he owned twenty thousand camels, for the Arabs would pierce the eye of one beast out of every thousand as protection from envy. Al-Azraqī is among those who mention this.

Al-Suhaylī reports that during the pilgrimage season ʿAmr might slaughter ten thousand sacrificial camels, clothe ten thousand people in fine garments each year, feed the Arabs, prepare for them ḥays made with clarified butter and honey, and blend sawiq for them.

Because of his rank, esteem, and generosity, whatever he said or did was accepted among them as if it were revealed law.

Ibn Hishām relates: “A learned man told me that ʿAmr b. Luhay once left Mecca for Syria on some business. When he reached Maʾab in the district of al-Balqāʾ—then inhabited by the ʿAmālīq, descendants of ʿImlāq, or, as some say, ʿAmliq son of Lāwidh son of Shem son of Noah—he found them worshipping idols. He asked, ‘What are these idols that I see you worshipping?’ They replied, ‘These are gods we serve: we seek rain through them and they send it down; we seek their help in war and they grant us victory.’ He said, ‘Will you give me one of these idols so that I may take it to the land of the Arabs, where they too will worship it?’ They handed him an idol called Hubal. He brought it to Mecca, set it up, and ordered the people to venerate and worship it.”

Ibn Isḥāq adds: “They claim that the earliest form of stone-worship among the descendants of Ishmael, peace be upon him, arose when, as Mecca became crowded and they sought room elsewhere, no traveler would depart without taking a stone from the Sacred Precinct in reverence for it. Wherever he settled, he would place that stone and circumambulate it just as he had circumambulated the Kaʿbah—until that practice eventually wore away…"