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"Hakem b'amr Illah, the mad King of Egypt, who sent one of his emissaries to destroy the black stone of the Kaaba, also made an unsuccessful attempt to take from the mosque of Medina Mohammed's tomb, and transport it to Cairo.
After a long struggle, Serour succeeded at length in reducing He had often made peace with his enemies; but fresh wars as repeatedly broke forth. It is said that he once discovered a conspiracy to murder him in one of his nightly walks round the Kaaba; and that he generously spared the lives of the conspirators, and only banished them.
For a month subsequent to the conclusion of the Hadj, I found, almost every morning, corpses of pilgrims lying in the mosque; myself and a Greek hadjy, whom accident had brought to the spot, once closed the eyes of a poor Mogrebyn pilgrim, who had crawled into the neighbourhood of the Kaaba, to breathe his last, as the Moslems say, "in the arms of the prophet and of the guardian angels."
There, before the sacred Kaaba of Mecca, men of all races, tongues, and cultures meet and mingle in an ecstasy of common devotion, returning to their homes bearing the proud title of "Hajjis," or Pilgrims a title which insures them the reverent homage of their fellow Moslems for all the rest of their days. The political implications of the Hajj are obvious.
But all this, however creditable to the culture of the Arab tribes, was not sufficient for the purposes of Islam. The Kaaba, which had been a rude heathen temple, was raised to the dignity of a shrine of the true God, or rather it was restored, for it was said to have been built by Adam after a divine pattern. The story was this: At the time of the Fall, Adam and Eve had somehow become separated.
At sun-set, great numbers assemble for the first evening prayer: they form themselves into several wide circles, sometimes as many as The Imam takes his post near the gate of the Kaaba, and his genuflexions are imitated by the whole assembled multitude.
It being toward the going down of the sun, he preached here till sunset; then going to Mosdalefa, between Arafa and the valley of Mena, he made the evening and the late prayers, with two calls to prayer, and two risings up. Then he lay down till the dawn, and, having made the morning prayer, went to the enclosure of the Kaaba, where he remained standing till it grew very light.
In the year of the Hedjra 17, having purchased from the Koreysh the small houses which enclosed it, and carried a wall round the area, Othman Ibn Affan, in A.H. 27, enlarged the square; and in A.H. 63, when the heretic and rebel Yezyd was besieged at Mekka by Abdallah Ibn Zebeyr, the nephew of Aysha, the Kaaba was destroyed by fire, some say accidentally, while others affirm it to have been done by the slinging machines directed against it by Yezyd from the top of Djebel Kobeys, where he had taken post.
The visit to the interior of the Kaaba forms no part of the religious duty of the pilgrim, and many of them quit Mekka without seeing it. I saw it twice; on the 15th of Zulkade, and the 10th of Moharram. At the latter period the new hangings, brought from Cairo by Mohammed Aly, had been put up: they were of very rich stuff, much finer and
It should seem also, that the tomb of Mohammed inspires the people of Medina with much greater awe, and religious respect, than the Kaaba does those of Mekka; which sentiment deters them from approaching it with idle thoughts, or as a mere pastime: much more decorum is therefore observed within its precincts than within those of the Beitullah.
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