Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

by Kim Ghattas

According to one interpretation of the Quran, after being exiled from paradise, Eve and Adam were reunited on Mount Arafat near Mecca. Legend had it that Eve, the mother of mankind, was later buried in Jeddah, the city whose name means “grandmother” in Arabic. There had even been a tomb in the city that was said to be Eve’s. For centuries, pilgrims would visit the site, especially barren women, with supplications to the divine. Famed travelers wrote about and sketched the tomb, which was approximately five hundred feet long with a carved square stone representing the navel. It had survived the passage of time and the weight of countless pleas, only to be destroyed during the 1926 conquest of the Hejaz by Abdelaziz ibn Saud, who was working to unify the provinces of the Arabian Peninsula under his rule. His son Faisal, the future king, had led the assault on Jeddah after the city had been besieged and starved for over a year. Barely nineteen, Faisal was named viceroy of the province, and he ordered the destruction of the tomb. An ancient cemetery in Medina dating back to the days of the prophet was also razed. The