Ibn Saʿd relays two separate traditions regarding the discovery of a well by ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, one involving Zamzam's discovery and water disputes among the Quraysh, the other involving the series of dreams and said artefacts but neither water nor the name Zamzam. Hawting's analysis argues that the oral traditions surrounding the , a dry well inside the Kaʿba reputed to have been used as the treasury of the Kaʿba and as a place for religious offerings in pre-Islamic Mecca and Zamzam merged at some point with stories concerning the former being adapted to feature the latter. Subsequent history Commentators of the Abbasid-era mystic discourses surrounding the well, like al-Masʿūdī expanded on these extra-Quranic accounts. They further connect the site to Zoroastrianism via what they interpret to be Zoroastrian religious artefacts uncovered by ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib in combination with their etymological analyses. Ultimately arguing that due to the well's history supposedly being related to (what they perceive to have been) the true religion of the peoples of Iran, the Islamisation of Iran is to be understood and framed as a rediscovery. The traditional Islamic account of the well's history relayed by al-Azraqī traces the lineage of its management via to Abū Tālib as inherited from its (re)-discoverer and his father ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. The usage rights to the well were then supposedly sold due to Abū Tālib's financial troubles to his brother, al-ʿAbbās, who is meant to have instituted the first new ordinance concerning the well by banning all non-religious body-hygienic uses of it. Thus the management of the Zamzam Well was reputedly a hereditary position of the Abbasids, ie the progeny of al-ʿAbbās, who ended up seizing control over Mecca as a whole using their caliphate. Buildings called the , variously referred to also as the , were structures used to store jars of Zamzam water away from the heat. One of which is claimed to have been initially built on orders from and named after Abbas, founder of the Abbasid Dynasty himself. In the years 775-778 CE the second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, sponsored extensive construction projects in the Masjid al-Haram, which included paving the area around Zamzam with marble. Beginning in the years 833-855 CE, during the rule of al-Muʿtasim, a civil servant called ʿUmar ibn Faraǧ ar-Ruḫḫaǧī began a series of construction projects related to the well, all marked by their intricate use of mosaics. He ended up constructing a