Qarmatians sack Mecca and carry off the Black Stone

The Qarmatians — Isma'ilis who in 899 had refused to recognise the future Fatimid caliph as imam — ruled a state in Bahrayn, on the Arabian shore of the Gulf, centred on the oasis of al-Ahsa. From 923, under the young Abu Tahir, they sacked Basra and Kufa, destroyed or turned back the pilgrim caravans, and in 927–928 invaded Iraq and threatened Baghdad itself. The Qarmatians expected the arrival of the mahdi in 928, when Saturn and Jupiter would be in conjunction, and Abu Tahir became convinced that the awaited mahdi had appeared in a young Persian captive, Abu'l-Fadl al-Isfahani.

In 929 the pilgrim caravans were resumed under military escort. On 11 (or 12) January 930, 8 Dhu al-Hijja 317, as the rites of the Hajj were about to begin, Abu Tahir appeared before Mecca, claimed a Muslim's right of entry and promised safety to all. Once inside, his men killed the pilgrims gathered around the Kaaba, mockingly reciting Qur'anic verses that promise protection in the sanctuary, and threw bodies into the well of Zamzam; the governor of Mecca was among the dead. The Kaaba was stripped of its relics, its ornaments and even its doors, and at last the Black Stone was dislodged and carried away to Bahrayn. The killing and looting went on for more than a week; of the city's relics only the Maqam Ibrahim was smuggled to safety.

Historians differ on the motive. Hugh Kennedy suggests that the Qarmatians hoped to extract concessions for the Stone's return and perhaps to divert the lucrative pilgrimage to their own capital, a view others have doubted since de Goeje; Heinz Halm and Farhad Daftary see the sacrilege as a deliberate break with Islam, announcing the end of its era on the eve of the mahdi's manifestation. That manifestation, staged in 931, ended in fiasco: the ‘mahdi’ was exposed and killed, and the Qarmatians returned to Islamic law. They made peace with Baghdad in 939, and in 951 (952 by other accounts), after long negotiations — by one report for a ransom of 30,000 dinars paid by the caliph al-Muti — they gave back the Black Stone, damaged and broken into pieces, which have been held together by a silver frame ever since.