"A Temple, From Its First
Day Founded In Piety; There Thou Best Standest Up To Prayers.
There men
live who like to be purified:
And God loves the clean." In this passage
an allusion is discovered to the extraordinary personal cleanliness of
those who inhabited Koba, more especially in certain acts of ablution.
I saw no inscriptions in this mosque, except those of hadjys who had
written their names on the white-washed walls; a practice in which
Eastern travellers indulge as frequently as European tourists, adding
often to the names some verses of favourite poets, or sentences of the
Koran. The mosque forms a narrow colonnade round a small open courtyard,
in which the Mobrak el Naka stands, with a small cupola over it, rising
to the height of about six feet. On issuing from the mosque, we were
assailed by a crowd of beggars. At a short distance from it, among the
cluster of houses, stands a small chapel, called Mesdjed Aly, in honour
of Aly, the cousin of Mohammed. Close to it, in a garden, a deep well is
shown, called Ayn Ezzerka, with a small chapel, built at its mouth. This
was a favourite spot with Mohammed, who used often to sit among the
trees with his disciples, enjoying the pleasure of seeing the water
issuing in a limpid stream; an object which at the present day
powerfully attracts the natives of the East, and, with the addition of a
shady tree, is perhaps the only feature of landscape which they admire.
When he once was sitting here, the Prophet's seal-ring dropped into the
well, and could never be again found; and the supposition that the ring
is still there, renders the well famous. The water is tepid at its
source, with a slight sulphureous taste, which it loses in its course.
It is collected together with that of several other springs into the
canal which supplies Medina, and which is kept constantly flowing by the
supply of various channels of well-water. Omar el Khatab first carried
the spring to Medina; but the present canal was built at the expense of
the Sultan Soleyman, son of Selim I., about A.H. 973: it is a very solid
subterranean work.
[p.369] This canal, and that of Mekka, are the greatest architectural
curiosities in the Hedjaz. Near to the mosque of Koba stands a building
erected by Sultan Morad, for dervishes. A little beyond the village, on
the road towards the town, stands a small chapel, called Mesdjed Djoma,
in remembrance of the spot where the people of Medina met Mohammed upon
his arrival.
EL KEBLETYN. - Towards the N.W. of the town, about one hour distant, a
place is visited bearing this name. It is said to consist of two rude
pillars (for I did not see it myself,) and was the spot where Mohammed
first changed the Kebly, or the direction in which prayers are said, in
the seventeenth month after the Hedjra, or his flight to Medina.
Together with the Jewish Bedouins, his own adherents had till then
Jerusalem as their Kebly; but Mohammed now turned it towards the Kaaba,
to which that fine passage of the Koran alludes:
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