A Dictionary of Islam Being a cyclopedia of the...

Some of the columns are strengthened with broad iron rings or bands, as in many other Saracen buildings of the East; they were first employed here by Ibn Dhaher Berkouk, King of Egypt, in rebuilding the mosque, which had been destroyed by fire in A.H. 802.

This temple has been so often ruined and repaired, that no traces of remote antiquity are to be found about it. On the inside of the great wall which encloses the colonnades, a single Arabic inscription is seen, in large characters, but containing merely the names of Muḥammad and his immediate successors, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUs̤mān, and ʿAlī. The name of Allāh, in large characters, occurs also in several places. On the outside, over the gates, are long inscriptions, in the S̤ulus̤ī character, commemorating the names of those by whom the gates were built, long and minute details of which are given by the historians of Makkah.

The inscription on the south side, over Bābu Ibrahīm, is most conspicuous; all that side was rebuilt by the Egyptian Sultān al-G͟haurī, A.H. 906. Over the Bābu ʿAlī and Bābu ʾl-ʿAbbās is a long inscription, also in the S̤ulus̤ī character, placed there by Sultān Murād ibn Sulaimān, A.H. 984, after he had repaired the whole building. Qut̤bu ʾd-dīn has given this inscription at length; it occupies several pages in his history, and is a monument of the Sultān’s vanity. This side of the mosque having escaped destruction in A.D. 1626, the inscription remains uninjured.

Some parts of the walls and arches are gaudily painted, in stripes of yellow, red, and blue, as are also the minarets. Paintings of flowers, in the usual Muslim style, are nowhere seen; the floors of the colonnades are paved with large stones badly cemented together.

Seven paved causeways lead from the colonnades towards the Kaʿbah, or holy house, in the centre. They are of sufficient breadth to admit four or five persons to walk abreast, and they are elevated about nine inches above the ground. Between these causeways, which are covered with fine gravel or sand, grass appears growing in several places, produced by the zamzam water oozing out of the jars, which are placed in the ground in long rows during the day. The whole area of the mosque is upon a lower level than any of the streets surrounding it. There is a descent of eight or ten steps from the gates on the north side into the platform of the colonnade, and of three or four steps from the gates, on the south side.

The Kaʿbah is an oblong massive structure, eighteen paces in length, fourteen in breadth, and from thirty-five to forty feet in height. I took the bearing of one of its longest sides, and found it to be N.N.W. ½ W. It is constructed of the grey Makkan stone, in large blocks of different sizes, joined together in a very rough manner, and with bad cement. It was entirely rebuilt as it now stands in A.D. 1627: the torrent, in the preceding year, had thrown down three of its sides; and, preparatory to its re-erection, the fourth side was, according to Assamī, pulled down, after the ʿUlamāʾ, or learned divines, had been consulted on the question, whether mortals might be permitted to destroy any part of the holy edifice without incurring the charge of sacrilege and infidelity.

The Kaʿbah stands upon a base two feet in height, which presents a sharp inclined plane; its roof being flat, it has at a distance the appearance of a perfect cube. The only door which affords entrance, and which is opened but two or three times in the year, is on the north side, and about seven feet above the ground. In entering it, therefore, wooden steps are used; of them I shall speak hereafter. In the first periods of Islām, however, when it was rebuilt in A.H. 64, by Ibn Zubair, Chief of Makkah, the nephew of ʿĀyishah, it had two doors even with the ground-floor of the mosque. The present door (which, according to Azraqī, was brought hither from Constantinople in A.D. 1633), is wholly coated with silver, and has several gilt ornaments. Upon its threshold are placed every night various small lighted wax candles, and perfuming pans, filled with musk, aloe-wood, &c.

At the north-east corner of the Kaʿbah, near the door, is the famous “Black Stone”; it forms a part of the sharp angle of the building, at four or five feet above the ground. It is an irregular oval, about seven inches in diameter, with an undulated surface, composed of about a dozen smaller stones of different sizes and shapes, well joined together with a small quantity of cement, and perfectly smoothed; it looks as if the whole had been broken into many pieces by a violent blow, and then united again. It is very difficult to determine accurately the quality of this stone, which has been worn to its present surface by the millions of touches and kisses it has received. It appeared to me like a lava, containing several small extraneous particles, of a whitish and of a yellowish substance. Its colour is now a deep reddish brown, approaching to black; it is surrounded on all sides by a border, composed of a substance which I took to be a close cement of pitch and gravel, of a similar, but not quite the same brownish colour. This border serves to support its detached pieces; it is two or three inches in breadth, and rises a little above the surface of the stone. Both the border and the stone itself are encircled by a silver band, broader below than above and on the two sides, with a considerable swelling below, as if a part of the stone were hidden under it. The lower part of the border is studded with silver nails.

In the south-east corner of the Kaʿbah, or, as the Arabs call it, Ruknu ʾl-Yamānī, there is another stone, about five feet from the ground; it is one foot and a half in length, and two inches in breadth, placed upright and of the common Makkah stone. This the people walking round the Kaʿbah touch only with the right hand; they do not kiss it.

On the north side of the Kaʿbah just by its door, and close to the wall, is a slight hollow in the ground, lined with marble, and sufficiently large to admit of three persons sitting. Here it is thought meritorious to pray. The spot is called Miʿjan, and supposed to be that where Abraham and his son Ishmael kneaded the chalk and mud which they used in building the Kaʿbah; and near this Miʿjan the former is said to have placed the large stone upon which he stood while working at the masonry. On the basis of the Kaʿbah, just over the Miʿjan, is an ancient Cufic inscription, but this I was unable to decipher, and had no opportunity of copying it. I do not find it mentioned by any of the historians.

On the west side of the Kaʿbah, about two feet below its summit, is the famous Miʾzāb, or water-spout, through which the rain-water collected on the roof of the building is discharged so as to fall upon the ground. It is about four feet in length, and six inches in breadth, as well as I could judge from below, with borders equal in height to its breadth. At the mouth hangs what is called the beard of the Miʾzāb, a gilt board, over which the water falls. This spout was sent hither from Constantinople in A.H. 981, and is reported to be of pure gold. The pavement round the Kaʿbah, below the Miʾzāb, was laid down in A.H. 826, and consists of various coloured stones, forming a very handsome specimen of mosaic. There are two large slabs of fine verde-antico in the centre, which, according to Makrīzī, were sent thither as presents from Cairo in A.H. 241. This is the spot where, according to Muḥammadan tradition, Ishmael, the son of Abraham, and his mother Hagar, are buried; and here it is meritorious for the pilgrim to recite a prayer of two rakʿahs.

On this west side is a semi-circular wall, the two extremities of which are in a line with the sides of the Kaʿbah, and distant from it three or four feet, leaving an opening which leads to the burying-place of Ishmael. The wall bears the name of Ḥat̤īm, and the area which it encloses is called Ḥijr, or Ḥijru Ismāʿīl, on account of its being “separated” from the Kaʿbah; the wall itself, also, is sometimes so called; and the name Ḥat̤īm is given by the historians to the space of ground between the Kaʿbah and the wall on one side, and the Biʾru ʾz-Zamzam and Maqāmu Ibrāhīm on the other. The present Makkans, however, apply the name Ḥat̤īm to the wall only.

Tradition says that the Kaʿbah once extended as far as the Ḥat̤īm, and that this side having fallen down just at the time of the Ḥajj, the expenses of repairing it were demanded from the pilgrims, under a pretence that the revenues of government were not acquired in a manner sufficiently pure to admit of their application towards a purpose so sacred, whilst the money of the pilgrims would possess the requisite sanctity. The sum, however, obtained from them, proved very inadequate: all that could be done, therefore, was to raise a wall, which marked the space formerly occupied by the Kaʿbah. This tradition, although current among the Makkans, is at variance with history, which declares that the Ḥijr was built by the Banū Quraish, who contracted the dimensions of the Kaʿbah, that it was united to the building by Ḥajjāj, and again separated from it by Ibn Zubair.

It is asserted by Fasy, that a part of the Ḥijr, as it now stands, was never comprehended within the Kaʿbah. The law regards it as a portion of the Kaʿbah, inasmuch as it is esteemed equally meritorious to pray in the Ḥijr as in the Kaʿbah itself; and the pilgrims who have not an opportunity of entering the latter, are permitted to affirm upon oath that they have prayed in the Kaʿbah, although they may have only prostrated themselves within the enclosure of the Ḥat̤īm. The wall is built of solid stone, about five feet in height, and four in thickness, cased all over with white marble, and inscribed with prayers and invocations, neatly sculptured upon the stone in modern characters. These and the casing are the work of al-G͟haurī, the Egyptian Sultān, in A.H. 917, as we learn from Qut̤bu ʾd-dīn.

The walk round the Kaʿbah is performed on the outside of the wall—the nearer to it the better. The four sides of the Kaʿbah are covered with a black silk stuff, hanging down, and leaving the roof bare. This curtain, or veil, is called kiswah, and renewed annually at the time of the Ḥajj, being brought from Cairo, where it is manufactured at the Sultān’s expense. On it are various prayers, interwoven in the same colour as the stuff, and it is, therefore, extremely difficult to read them. A little above the middle, and running round the whole building, is a line of similar inscriptions, worked in gold thread. That part of the kiswah which covers the door is richly embroidered with silver. Openings are left for the black stone, and the other in the south-east corner, which thus remain uncovered.

The kiswah is always of the same form and pattern; that which I saw on my first visit to the mosque was in a decayed state, and full of holes. On the 25th of the month Ẕū ʾl-Qadah, the old one is taken away, and the Kaʿbah continues without a cover for fifteen days. It is then said that “The Kaʿbah has assumed the iḥrām,” which lasts until the tenth of Ẕū ʾl-Ḥijjah, the day of the return of the pilgrims from ʿArafah to Wādī Minā, when the new kiswah is put on. During the first days, the new covering is tucked up by cords fastened on the roof, so as to leave the lower part of the building exposed; having remained thus for many days, it is let down, and covers the whole structure, being then tied to strong brass wings in the basis of the Kaʿbah. The removal of the old kiswah was performed in a very indecorous manner; and a contest ensued among the pilgrims and the people of Makkah, both young and old, about a few rags of it. The pilgrims even collect the dust which sticks to the walls of the Kaʿbah, under the kiswah, and sell it, on their return, as a sacred relic. [KISWAH.]