Dār al-Nadwa (lit. house of assembly), a building situated to the north of the Kaʿba where, before the emergence of Islam and for a short while thereafter, the nobles of the Quraysh gathered for council.

The Arabic word nadwa derives from the root n-d-w, meaning ‘gathering’, ‘group’ (Ibn Manẓūr, 3/610–613). The assembly that met in the Dār al-Nadwa was a kind of consultative or governing council that apparently had no precedent among the Arabs (Zaryāb, 42; for more detail see al-ʿAsalī, 1/78 ff.). The nobles or elders of the Quraysh asse…