The Grandfather Of Mohammed, Abd El Motalleb Ibn Hesham, Had Restored
The Well Of Zemzem By An Excavation Some Time Before The Burning Of The
Kaaba.
When the victorious Mohammed entered the town of his fathers, he
destroyed the images in the temple, and abolished the idolatrous worship
of his countrymen; and his Mueddin, the negro Belal, called the Moslems
to prayers from the top of the Kaaba.
The Koreysh had built a small town round the Kaaba, which they venerated
so much that no person was permitted to raise the roof of his house
higher than that of the sacred structure. The pilgrimage to this holy
shrine, which the pagan Arabs had instituted, was confirmed by Islam.
[p.165] Omar Ibn Khatab first built a mosque round the Kaaba. In the
year of the Hedjra 17, having purchased from the Koreysh the small
houses which enclosed it, and carried a wall round the area, Othman Ibn
Affan, in A.H. 27, enlarged the square; and in A.H. 63, when the heretic
and rebel Yezyd was besieged at Mekka by Abdallah Ibn Zebeyr, the nephew
of Aysha, the Kaaba was destroyed by fire, some say accidentally, while
others affirm it to have been done by the slinging machines directed
against it by Yezyd from the top of Djebel Kobeys, where he had taken
post. After his expulsion, Ibn Zebeyr enlarged the enclosure of the wall
by purchasing some more houses of the Mekkawys, and by including their
site, after having levelled them, within the wall.
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