Pre-Islamic Mecca is often described through two compressed images. One presents the Kaʿbah as an uncontested religious center for Arabia, while the other explains Quraysh authority through long-distance trade. Both images overlook the plurality of Arabian cults and the institutional work required to sustain recurrent pilgrimage. This article examines how the Kaʿbah became a center of religious mobility without erasing regional sanctuaries or placing the Arabian Peninsula under Meccan rule. Historical and textual analysis is applied to Ibn al-Kalbī’s Kitāb al-Aṣnām, Ibn Isḥāq–Ibn Hishām’s al-Sīrah al-Nabawiyyah, Ibn Ḥabīb’s al-Munammaq fī Akhbār Quraysh, and later Meccan histories, read alongside modern scholarship on pilgrimage, mobility, and early Arabian history. The evidence indicates a polycentric sacred landscape in which Manāt, al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā, and other cults remained active, while Mecca acquired wider ritual significance through recurrent pilgrimage and intertribal encounter. Quraysh superiority grew through custodianship, collective provisioning, deliberation, and negotiated route security rather than systematic territorial conquest. These practices strengthened Meccan authority by linking ritual service with mobility, exchange, and recognition among diverse tribal groups. The article argues that the Kaʿbah functioned as sacred infrastructure. Its recurrent rituals gathered people, goods, obligations, and recognition, enabling Quraysh to convert ritual centrality into relational authority across tribal boundaries without requiring political sovereignty over Arabia. This perspective reframes Meccan centrality as negotiated, recurrent, and institutionally sustained authority.