However, the town is absent from any geographies or histories written in the last three centuries before the rise of Islam.
According to The Encyclopaedia Britannica, "before the rise of Islam it was revered as a sacred sanctuary and was a site of pilgrimage." According to the German historian Eduard Glaser, the name "Kaaba" may have been related to the southern Arabian or Ethiopian word "mikrab", signifying a temple. Again, Crone disputes this etymology.
Islamic tradition
Picture of the Kaaba taken in 1880
According to the Qur'an, the Kaaba was first built by Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Ismāʿīl (Ishmael). Islamic traditions assert that the Kaaba "reflects" a house in heaven called al-Baytu l-Maʿmur (Arabic: البيت المعمور) and that it was first built by the first man, Adam. Muhammad earned the enmity of his tribe by claiming the shrine for the new religion of Islam that he preached.
In 630, Muhammad and his followers returned to Mecca as conquerors, and he destroyed the 360 idols in and around the Kaaba. While destroying each idol, Muhammad recited which says "Truth has arrived and falsehood has perished for falsehood is by its nature bound to perish."
A 1315 illustration from the Persian Jami al-Tawarikh, inspired by the story of Muhammad and the Meccan clan elders lifting the Black Stone into place when the Kaaba was rebuilt in the early 600s.
The Kaaba was re-dedicated as an Islamic house of worship, and henceforth, the annual pilgrimage was to be a Muslim rite, the Hajj, which visits the Kaaba and other sacred sites around Mecca. Islamic histories also mention a reconstruction of the Kaaba around 600. A story found in Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasūl Allāh, one of the biographies of Muhammad (as reconstructed and translated by Guillaume), describes Muhammad settling a quarrel between Meccan clans as to which clan should set the Black Stone cornerstone in place.
According to Ishaq's biography, Muhammad's solution was to have all the clan elders raise the cornerstone on a cloak, and then Muhammad set the stone into its final place with his own hands. Ibn Ishaq says that the timber for the reconstruction of the Kaaba came from a Greek ship that had been wrecked on the Red Sea coast at Shu'ayba, and the work was undertaken by a Coptic carpenter called Baqum.
It is also claimed by the Shīʿa that the Kaaba is the birth place of ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib, the fourth caliph and cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Since Muhammad's time
The Kaaba has been repaired and reconstructed many times since Muhammad's day.
Abd-Allah ibn al-Zubayr, an early Muslim who ruled Mecca for many years between the death of ʿAli and the consolidation of Ummayad power, is said to have demolished the old Kaaba and rebuilt it to include the hatīm, a semi-circular wall now outside the Kaaba. In 693 he had the remnants of al-Zubayr's Kaaba razed, and rebuilt on the foundations set by the Quraysh. The Kaaba returned to the cube shape it had taken during Muhammad's lifetime.
During the Hajj of 930, the Qarmatians attacked Mecca, defiled the Zamzam Well with the bodies of pilgrims and stole the Black Stone, removing it to the oasis region of Eastern Arabia known as al-Aḥsāʾ, where it remained until the Abbasids ransomed it back in 952 CE.
Apart from repair work, the basic shape and structure of the Kaaba have not changed since then.
The Kaaba is depicted on the reverse of 500 Saudi Riyal, and the Iranian 2000 rials banknotes.
Cleaning
The building is opened twice a year for a ceremony known as "the cleaning of the Kaaba." This ceremony takes place roughly fifteen days before the start of the month of Ramadan and the same period of time before the start of the annual pilgrimage.
The keys to the Kaaba are held by the Banī Shaybat (بني شيبة) tribe.
A small number of dignitaries and foreign diplomats are invited to participate in the ceremony. The governor of Mecca leads the honored guests who ritually clean the structure, using simple brooms. "The Ka'ba-i Zardušt", Orient, XV (1979), The Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan, pp.
Inside Mecca, View Of Kaaba
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