Ali Bey Erroneously Applies The Words Al-Hajar Ismail
To The Parapet About The Slab.
[FN#30] My Measurements Give Five Feet Six Inches.
In Al-Idrisi’s day the
wall was fifty cubits long.
[FN#31] Al-Hatim ([Arabic] lit.
The “broken”). Burckhardt asserts that the
Mekkawi no longer apply the word, as some historians do, to the space
bounded by the Ka’abah, the Partition, the Zemzem, and the Makam of
Ibrahim. I heard it, however, so used by learned Meccans, and they gave
as the meaning of the name the break in this part of the oval pavement
which surrounds the Ka’abah. Historians relate that all who rebuilt the
“House of Allah” followed Abraham’s plan till the Kuraysh, and after them
Al-Hajjaj curtailed it in the direction of Al-Hatim, which part was
then first broken off, and ever since remained so.
[FN#32] Al-Hijr ([Arabic]) is the space separated, as the name denotes,
from the Ka’abah. Some suppose that Abraham here penned his sheep.
Possibly Ali Bey means this part of the Temple when he speaks of
Al-Hajar ([Arabic]) Ismail—les pierres d’Ismail.
[FN#33] “Al-Hajjaj”; this, as will afterwards be seen, is a mistake. He
excluded the Hatim.
[FN#34] As well as memory serves me, for I have preserved no note, the
inscriptions are in the marble casing, and indeed no other stone meets
the eye.
[FN#35] It is a fine, close, grey polished granite:
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