It Is An
Evergreen, And Requires Very Little Water, As Its Arabic Name, Saber,
(Patience) Implies:
It is chosen for this purpose from an allusion to
the patience necessary in waiting for the resurrection.
On the whole,
this burial-ground is in a state of ruin, caused, it is said, by the
devastations
[p.174] of the Wahabys; but, I believe, still more by the little care
which the Mekkawys take of the graves containing the bodies of their
relations and friends.
The places visited out of the town are: -
Djebel Abou Kobeys. This mountain is one of the highest in the immediate
neighbourhood of the town, and commands it from the east. Muselman
tradition says that it was the first mountain created upon earth; its
name is found in almost every Arabic historian and poet. Two different
spots upon its summit are visited by the pilgrims. The one is called
Mekan el Hedjar (the spot of the stone), where Omar, who afterwards
succeeded to the Khalifat, used to call the people to prayers, in the
first years of Islam, when the Koreysh or inhabitants of Mekka were, for
the greater part, idolaters. Here is shown a cavity cut in the rock,
resembling a small tomb, in which it is said that God, at the deluge,
ordered the guardian angels to place the black stone, revered by them
long before Abraham built the Kaaba, and to make the rock unite over it,
that the waters might not touch it; and that, after the deluge, the
angel Gabriel split the rock, and conveyed the stone back to the site of
the Kaaba.
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