[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. It is, however, difficult to be accurate, as the four colonnades and the porticos about the two great gates are irregular; topographical observations, moreover, must here be made under difficulties.

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