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At an awful distance they cast away their garments: seven times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and kissed the black stone: seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Mina; and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground.
"This day have I appointed your religion unto you," are his words after fixing the forms of the pilgrimage, "and applied Islam for you to be your religion." Islam adopts the Mecca rites, and thereby becomes the national religion of Arabia. Hubal, the chief god of the Caaba, disappears; Allah becomes the sole god of the shrine.
"Hashem," say the authors of the "Modern Universal History," "succeeded his father Abd al Menaf in the principality of the Koreish, and consequently in the government of Mecca, and the custody of the Caaba." So far the genealogy of the prophet is supported by authentic history that he was descended from the princes of his people cannot be denied.
The Caaba is the same to the Mahomedan as the Holy Sepulchre to the Christian. I am a Hakim; i.e. Physician, an almost sacred character in the East. Threw their wanton jerreeds in the air. The Persians are more famous for throwing the jerreed than any other nation.
A place was set apart for the competitions of the bards, whose highest ambition was to conquer in this literary arena, and the victorious compositions were inscribed in golden letters upon Egyptian paper, and suspended upon the doors of the Caaba, the ancient national sanctuary of Mecca.
The naked worshipper is by no means an uncommon figure in the early Babylonian art, and it would appear that at one time it was customary to remove one's garments preliminary to stepping into the god's presence, just as among the Arabs the cult of the Caaba in Mecca was conducted by the worshippers at an early period without their clothes.
The faith and hope of the pilgrims were rekindled by the prospect of Mecca: their swords were sheathed; seven times in the footsteps of the apostle they encompassed the Caaba: the Koreish had retired to the hills, and Mahomet, after the customary sacrifice, evacuated the city on the fourth day.
In the midst of these transactions the embassy returned which had been sent in pious times to Mecca. It consisted of the most reverend Moullahs, who had fulfilled their commission and brought back one of those precious besoms which are used to sweep the sacred Caaba: a present truly worthy of the greatest potentate on earth!
A large room, like a county ball-room, with glass chandeliers, carpeted with common carpet, all but a space at the entrance, railed off for shoes; the Caaba and pulpit at one end; over the niche, a crescent painted; and over the entrance door a crescent, an Arabic inscription, and the royal arms of England!
Sophia, and looked upon these Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich Cloth, which the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself: How many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy, besides this Arabian Whinstone!
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