section_path: Etymology/Other names
section_name: Other names
paragraph_text: Other names
  
  Another name used for Mecca in the Quran is at 6:92 where it is called Umm al-Qurā (أُمّ ٱلْقُرَى, meaning "Mother of all Settlements"). The city has been called several other names in both the Quran and ahadith. Another name used historically for Mecca is Tihāmah. According to an Islamic suggestion, another name for Mecca, Fārān, is synonymous with the Desert of Paran mentioned in the Old Testament at Genesis 21:21. Arab and Islamic tradition holds that the wilderness of Paran, broadly speaking, is the Tihamah coastal plain and the site where Ishmael settled was Mecca. Yaqut al-Hamawi, the 12th-century Syrian geographer, wrote that Fārān was "an arabized Hebrew word, one of the names of Mecca mentioned in the Torah."