Mecca was imagined as holding Muhammad’s tomb like a Christian shrine.

Evidence

In many accounts the influence of truth can only dimly be discerned. It was very generally believed that the Prophet’s body was in Mecca; this cardinal error was found in a fine variety of forms which presuppose that the hajj was imagined as a Christian pilgrimage to the relics of a saint. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1224

Categorization

• XREF: The insistence on misreading Islam’s geography of sacredness through Christian relic logic parallels Anidjar on how ‘Islam’ is cast as inverted Christianity.