—until successive generations came to worship whatever stones they found attractive and appealing, forgetting altogether the way they had once followed.

In an authentic report, Abū Rajāʾ al-ʿAṭāridī said: “In the pre-Islamic days, whenever we could not find a stone, we would gather a handful of earth, bring a ewe, milk it over the earth, and then circumambulate around it.”

Ibn Isḥāq states: “They replaced the religion of Abraham and Ishmael—peace be upon them—with something else: they worshipped idols and lapsed into the very errors embraced by the nations before them. Even so, some vestiges from the era of Abraham remained among them: revering the House, circumambulating it, performing the ḥajj and ʿumrah, standing at ʿArafāt and al-Muzdalifah, driving the sacrificial camels, and entering the state of consecration for ḥajj and ʿumrah, though they added to these rites things that did not belong to them.

Thus Kinānah and Quraysh, when they entered the state of consecration, would say:
“Here we are, O God, here we are!
Here we are; You have no partner—
except a partner who belongs to You;
You own him and all he owns.”

With this talbiyah they affirmed His oneness, yet at the same time they brought their idols into it, assigning their ownership to Him.

God the Exalted said to Muḥammad ﷺ: “Most of them do not believe in God without associating partners with Him” (Yūsuf 12:106)—that is, they do not affirm My oneness out of recognition of My right without setting beside Me a partner drawn from My creation.

Al-Suhaylī and others mention that the first to utter this talbiyah was ʿAmr b. Luḥay. Iblīs appeared to him in the form of an old man and taught it to him; ʿAmr repeated what he heard, and the Arabs followed his lead.

It is authentically reported that whenever the Messenger of God ﷺ heard them say, “Here we are; You have no partner,” he would respond, “Qad, qad,” meaning, “Enough—stop there.”

Al-Bukhārī narrated—without parallel through this chain—that Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm told us, Yaḥyā b. Ādam told us, Isrāʾīl told us, from Abū Ḥuṣayn, from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Prophet ﷺ, who said:
“ʿAmr b. Luḥay son of Qamʿah son of Khindif—the forefather of Khuzaʿah.”

ʿAbd Allāh, the son of Imām Aḥmad, said: “I read to my father: ʿAmr b. Mujammaʿ narrated to us; Ibrāhīm al-Hijrī narrated to us, from Abū al-Aḥwaṣ, from ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd, from the Prophet ﷺ, who said: ‘The first to set free the sāʾibah…’”