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Updated: May 16, 2025
Most of the town is situated in the valley itself; but there are also parts built on the sides of the mountains, principally of the eastern chain, where the primitive habitations of the Koreysh, and the ancient town appear to have been placed.
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.
To the Shiahs, especially, a descendant of Ali could not but be acceptable; and to the Arabs of Oman and Yemen a Caliph of the Koreysh would be at least less repugnant than a Caliph of the Beni Othman.
Along the middle, on both sides of the way, is a row of buildings, the far greater part in ruins: they belong to Mekkans or Bedouins of the Koreysh, by whom they are either let out, or occupied during the three days of the Hadj, and left empty the rest of the year, when Muna is never inhabited.
Arabia would in all probability have by this time asserted its independence, and under a new Caliphate of the Koreysh would have been attracting the sympathies and the adhesion of the Eastern world. There might have been schisms and religious convulsions, but at least there would have been life; and what Islam requires is to live.
The Caliphate, for one alien as Abd el Hamid is to the Koreysh, must be constantly maintained in arms, and on the first substantial success of a new pretender his present following would fall off from him without compunction, transferring to this last their loyalty on precisely the same ground on which Abd el Hamid now receives it.
The district of Medina is occupied by the Harb Bedouins, a larger and more powerful tribe than the Koreysh, who also recognize the Sherif, but their allegiance is precarious; while to the east and south of Mecca the Ateybeh and Assir, more powerful still, are wholly independent.
The Sultans, neither of Egypt nor of India, nor till Selim's time of the Turkish Empire, ever claimed for themselves the title of Khalifeh, nor did the Sherifal family of Mecca, who alone of them might have claimed it legally as Koreysh. Neither did Tamerlane nor any of the Mussulman Mongols who reigned at Bagdad.
I have seen among them Arabs of the tribes of Koreysh, Thekyf, Hodheyl, and Ateybe; and it was said that, in time of peace, individuals of all the great tribes of the Desert, and of Nedjed, are occasionally found here. They live, as I have already observed in speaking of those who occupy another part of Mekka, much in the same manner as they would do in the Desert.
Near it is a small tank, and in its vicinity a cluster of Arab huts similar to those at Hadda, and bearing the name of Kahwet Arafat, or the coffee-house of Arafat. They are inhabited chiefly by Beni Koreysh, who cultivate vegetables in a valley extending from hence towards the south. We rested here some hours; a caravan from Tayf, composed of mules and asses, arrived at the same time.
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