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Updated: May 22, 2025
The army of the heretic sect of the Carmates, headed by their chief, Abou Dhaher, invaded the Hedjaz, and seized upon Mekka: fifty thousand of its inhabitants were slain during the sack of the city, and the temple and the Kaaba were stripped of all their valuable ornaments.
Under this impression, Abou Dhaher refused an offer of fifty thousand dinars as a ransom for the stone; but after his death, the Carmates, in A.H. 339, voluntarily sent it back, having been convinced by experience that their expectations of wealth, from the possession of it, were ill founded, and that very few moslems came to Hedjer for the purpose of kissing it.
In A.H. 802, a fire completely destroyed the north and west sides of the mosque: two years after, it was rebuilt at the expense of El Naszer Feradj Ibn Dhaher Berkouk, Sultan of Egypt. The wood necessary for that purpose was transported partly from Egypt and partly from Tayf, where the tree Arar, a species of cypress or juniper, furnished good timber.
Some of the columns are strengthened with broad iron rings or bands, as in many other Saracen buildings of the East: they were first employed here by Ibn Dhaher Berkouk, King of Egypt, in rebuilding the mosque, which had been destroyed by fire in A. H. 802. This temple has been so often ruined and repaired, that no traces of remote antiquity are to be found about it.
Makrisi, in his treatise "On those Khalifes and Sultans who performed the pilgrimage in person," says that Dhaher Bybars el Bondokdary, Sultan of Egypt, was the first who introduced the Mahmal, about A.H. 670. Since his time, all the Sultans who sent their caravans to Mekka, have considered it as a privilege to send one with each, as a sign of their own royalty.
This accident was ascribed to the Persian sectaries of Beni Hosseyn, who were then the guardians of the tomb. In the following year its restoration was undertaken at the expense of the Khalife Mostasem Billah, Ibn el Montaser Billah, and the lord of Yemen, El Mothaffer Shams eddyn Yousef, and completed by El Dhaher Bybars, Sultan of Egypt, in A.H. 657. The dome over the tomb was erected in 678.
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