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
[P.137] side was, according to Asamy, pulled down, after the olemas, 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 Kaaba 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
Islam, however, when it was rebuilt in A.H. 64, by Ibn Zebeyr, chief of
Mekka, the nephew of Aysha, it had two doors even with the ground-floor
of the mosque. The present door (which, according to Azraky, was brought
hither from Constantinople in 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 Kaaba, 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
[p.138] 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 Kaaba, or, as the Arabs call it, Roken
el Yemany, 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 Mekka stone.
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