The sack of Mecca followed millenarian excitement among the Qarmatians (and in Persia) over the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 928. Bahrain became the seat of the Qarmatian Mahdi-Caliph from Isfahan who abolished Sharīa law. The new Mahdi also changed the qibla of prayer from Mecca to that of fire, a specifically Zoroastrian practice. Some scholars take the view that "they may not have been Isamailis at all at the outset, and their conduct and customs gave plausibility to the belief that they were not merely heretics but bitter enemies of Islam."