Zamzam Well
well located within the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca
The Zamzam Well (Arabic: بئر زمزم, romanized: Biʾru Zamzam Arabic pronunciation: [biʔru zam.zam]) is a well located within the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is located 20 m (66 ft) east of the Kaaba, the holiest place in Islam.
In Islamic narratives, the well is a miraculously generated source of water, which opened up thousands of years ago when Ismaʿil (Ishmael), the son of Ibrahim (Abraham), was left with his mother Hajar (Hagar) in the desert. It is said to have dried up or been buried while the tribe Jurhum lived in the area. The well is claimed to have been rediscovered and excavated in the 6th century by Abd al-Muttalib, grandfather of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Etymology
The origin of the name is uncertain. According to historian Jacqueline Chabbi, the noun Arabic: زمزم, romanized: Zamzam is an onomatopoeia. She associates the noun with the adjectives Arabic: زمزم, romanized: zamzam and Arabic: زمازم, romanized: zumāzim which are onomatopoeic denoting a dull sound stemming from either a distant roll (of thunder) or a guttural sound emitted with a closed mouth by animals or people, however meaning either 'an abundant supply of water' or 'a source of water which does not dry up' if applied to Arabic: ماء, romanized: māʾ, lit. 'water'. She states that this latter meaning of an unintelligible guttural sound encompasses a layer of meaning associated with the sacred and mystical, in addition to the basic notion of the sound possibly being related to the concept of an abundant flow of water.
Early Islamic sources use the terms Arabic: زمزم, romanized: zamzama and Arabic: زمازم, romanized: zamāzima to refer to the religious rites of Zoroastrianism and the Zoroastrians.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q146038. VIAF identifies the subject as 238804302. The Library of Congress control number is sh97001708. Authority coordinates are 21.423, 39.827. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zamzam Well” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.