Therein (Fihi) Are Manifest Signs, The Standing-Place Of
Abraham, Which Whoso Entereth Shall Be Safe” (Kor.
Ch.
3). The word “therein”
is interpreted to mean Meccah; and the “manifest signs” the Ka’abah, which
contains such marvels as the foot-prints on Abraham’s platform and the
spiritual safeguard of all who enter the Sanctuary.[FN#66] The other
“signs,” historical, psychical, and physical, are briefly these: The
preservation of the Hajar al-Aswad and the Makam Ibrahim from many
foes, and the miracles put forth (as in the War of the Elephant), to
defend the house; the violent and terrible deaths of the sacrilegious;
and the fact that, in the Deluge, the large fish did not eat the little
fish in the Harim. A wonderful desire and love impel men from distant
regions to visit the holy spot, and the first sight of the Ka’abah causes
awe and fear, horripilation and tears. Furthermore, ravenous beasts
will not destroy their prey in the Sanctuary land, and the pigeons and
other birds never perch upon the house, except to be
[p.326] cured of sickness, for fear of defiling the roof. The Ka’abah,
though small, can contain any number of devotees; no one is ever hurt
in it,[FN#67] and invalids recover their health by rubbing themselves
against the Kiswah and the Black Stone. Finally, it is observed that
every day 100,000 mercies descend upon the house, and especially that
if rain come up from the northern corner there is plenty in Irak; if
from the south, there is plenty in Yaman; if from the east, plenty in
India; if from the western, there is plenty in Syria; and if from all
four angles, general plenty is presignified.
[FN#1] “Bayt Ullah” (House of Allah) and “Ka’abah,” i.e. cube (house), “la maison
carree,” are synonymous.
[FN#2] Ali Bey gives 536 feet 9 inches by 356 feet: my measurement is
257 paces by 210. Most Moslem authors, reckoning by cubits, make the
parallelogram 404 by 310.
[FN#3] On each short side I counted 24 domes; on the long, 35. This
would give a total of 118 along the cloisters. The Arabs reckon in all
152; viz., 24 on the East side, on the North 36, on the South 36, one
on the Mosque corner, near the Zarurah minaret; 16 at the porch of the
Bab al-Ziyadah; and 15 at the Bab Ibrahim. The shape of these domes is
the usual “Media-Naranja,” and the superstition of the Meccans informs the
pilgrim that they cannot be counted. Books reckon 1352 pinnacles or
battlements on the temple wall.
[FN#4] The “common stone of the Meccah mountains” is a fine grey granite,
quarried principally from a hill near the Bab al-Shabayki, which
furnished material for the Ka’abah. Eastern authors describe the pillars
as consisting of three different substances, viz.: Rukham, white
marble, not “alabaster,” its general sense; Suwan, or granite (syenite?);
and Hajar Shumaysi,” a kind of yellow sandstone, so called from “Bir
Shumays,” a place on the Jeddah road near Haddah, the half-way station.
[FN#5] I counted in the temple 554 pillars.
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