In The Twelfth Century, At All Times But The
Evening, The Shafe’I Began, Then Came The Maliki And Hanbali
Simultaneously, And, Lastly, The Hanafi.
Now the Shaykh al-Mu’ezzin
begins the call, which is taken up by the others.
He is a Hanafi; as
indeed are all the principal people at Meccah, only a few wild Sharifs
of the hills being Shafe’i.
[FN#41] The door of the Zemzem building fronts to the south-east.
[FN#42] This is not exactly correct. As the plan will show, the angle
of one building touches the angle of its neighbour.
[FN#43] Their names and offices are now changed. One is called the
Kubbat al-Sa’at, and contains the clocks and chronometers (two of them
English) sent as presents to the Mosque by the Sultan. The other, known
as the Kubbat al-Kutub, is used as a store-room for manuscripts
bequeathed to the Mosque. They still are open to Burckhardt’s just
criticism, being nothing but the common dome springing from four walls,
and vulgarly painted with bands of red, yellow, and green. In Ibn
Jubayr’s time the two domes contained bequests of books and candles. The
Kubbat Abbas, or that further from the Ka’abah than its neighbour, was
also called Kubbat al-Sharab (the Dome of Drink), because Zemzem water
was here kept cooling for the use of pilgrims in Daurak, or earthen
jars. The nearer was termed Kubbat al-Yahudi; and the tradition they
told me was, that a Jew having refused to sell his house upon the spot,
it was allowed to remain in loco by the Prophet, as a lasting testimony
to his regard for justice.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 414 of 630
Words from 112477 to 112761
of 175520
