In Al-Idrisi’s time (twel[f]th century A.D.) the Kiswah was
composed of black silk, and renewed every year by the Caliph of
Baghdad. Ibn Jubayr writes that it was green and gold. The Kiswah
remained with Egypt when Sultan Kalaun[FN#33] (thirteenth century A.D.)
conveyed the rents of two villages, “Baysus” and “Sindbus,[FN#34]” to the
expense of providing an outer black and an inner red curtain for the
Ka’abah, with hangings for the Prophet’s tomb at Al-Madinah. When the Holy
Land fell under the power of Osmanli, Sultan Salim ordered the Kiswah
to be black; and his son Sultan Sulayman the Magnificent (sixteenth
[p.215] century A.D.), devoted considerable sums to the purpose. The
Kiswah was afterwards renewed at the accession of each Sultan. And the
Wahhabis, during the first year of their conquest, covered the Ka’abah
with a red Kiswah of the same stuff as the fine Arabian Aba or cloak,
and made at Al-Hasa.
The Kiswah is now worked at a cotton manufactory called Al-Khurunfish,
of the Tumn Bab al-Sha’ariyah, Cairo. It is made by a hereditary family,
called the Bayt al-Sadi, and, as the specimen in my possession proves,
it is a coarse tissue of silk and cotton mixed.
