I Was Asked Five Dollars For Permission To Enter; But The Sum Was Too High For My Finances.

Learned men told me that the stone shows the impress of two feet, especially the big toes, and devout pilgrims fill the cavities with water, which they rub over their eyes and faces.

When the Caliph al-Mahdi visited Meccah, one Abdullah bin Osman presented himself at the unusual hour of noon, and informing the prince that he had brought him a relic which no man but himself had yet seen, produced this celebrated stone. Al-Mahdi, rejoicing greatly, kissed it, rubbed his face against it, and pouring water upon it, drank the draught. Kutb al-Din, one of the Meccan historians, says that it was visited in his day. In Ali Bey’s time it was covered with “un magnifique drap noir brode en or et en argent avec de gros glands en or;” he does not say, however, that he saw the stone. Its veils, called Sitr Ibrahim al-Khalil, are a green “Ibrisham,” or silk mixed with cotton and embroidered with gold. They are made at Cairo of three different colours, black, red, and green; and one is devoted to each year. The gold embroidery is in the Sulsi character, and expresses the Throne-verse, the Chapter of the Cave, and the name of the reigning Sultan; on the top is “Allah,” below it “Mohammed”; beneath this is “Ibrahim al-Khalil”; and at each corner is the name of one of the four caliphs. In a note to the “Dabistan” (vol. ii. p. 410), we find two learned Orientalists confounding the Black Stone with Abraham’s Station or Platform. “The Prophet honoured the Black Stone, upon which Abraham conversed with Hagar, to which he tied his camels, and upon which the traces of his feet are still seen.” [FN#48] Not only here, I was told by learned Meccans, but under all the oval pavements surrounding the Ka’abah. [FN#49] The spring gushes from the southern base of Mount Arafat, as will afterwards be noticed. It is exceedingly pure. [FN#50] The author informs us that “the first pulpit was sent from Cairo in A.H. 818, together with the staircase, both being the gifts of Moayed, caliph of Egypt.” Ali Bey accurately describes the present Mambar. [FN#51] The curious will find a specimen of a Moslem sermon in Lane’s Mod. Egypt. Vol. i. ch. iii. [FN#52] Burckhardt “subjoins their names as they are usually written upon small cards by the Metowefs; in another column are the names by which they were known in more ancient times, principally taken from Azraky and Kotoby.” I have added a few remarks in brackets[.]

[Mention is made of Modern names; Arches; and Ancient names.]

1. Bab el Salam, composed of gates or arches; 3; Bab Beni Shaybah (this is properly applied to the inner, not the outer Salam Gate.) 2. Bab el Neby; 2; Bab el Jenaiz, Gate of Biers, the dead being carried through it to the Mosque. 3.

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