"Yes, the Hanifs (ascetics), who utterly reject polytheism. Waraka, a cousin of the wife of Mohammed, is one of the chief of these; and Mohammed himself has, for several years, been accustomed to retire to the cave of Hira for meditation and prayer. It is said that he has preached and taught for some time in the city, but only to his immediate friends and relatives. Well, here we are at last,"—as a pretentious stone building was reached. "Amzi the benevolent bids Yusuf the Persian priest welcome."
Amzi led the priest into a house furnished with no small degree of Oriental splendor.
"Right to the carven cedarn doors,
Flung inward over spangled floors,
Broad-based flights of marble stairs
Ran up with golden balustrade,
After the fashion of the time."
A meal of Oriental dishes, dried fruit and sweetmeats was prepared; and, when the coolness of evening had come, the two friends proceeded to the temple.
Entering by a western gate, they found the great quadrangle crowded with men, women and children, some standing in groups, with sanctimonious air, at prayers, while others walked or ran about the Caaba, which loomed huge and somber beneath the solemn light of the stars. A few solitary torches—for at that time the slender pillars with their myriads of lamps had not been erected—lit up the scene with a weird, wavering glare, and threw deep shadows across the white, sanded ground.
A curious crowd it seemed. The wild enthusiasm that marked the conduct of the followers of Mohammed at a later day was absent, yet every motion of the motley crowd proclaimed the veneration with which the place inspired the impressionable and excitable Arabs.
Here stood a wealthy Meccan, with flowing robes, arms crossed and eyes turned upward; there stalked a tall and gaunt figure whose black robes and heavy black head-dress proclaimed the wearer a Bedouin woman. Here ran a group of beggars; and there a number of half-naked pilgrims clung to the curtained walls. Once a corpse was carried into the enclosure and borne in solemn Tawaf round the edifice.
"Look!" cried poor Dumah. "The son of the widow of Nain! The son of the widow of Nain! Oh, why does not he whom Dumah sees in his dreams come to raise him! But then, there are idols here, and he cannot come where there are other gods before him."
On surveying the temple, Yusuf discovered that the door of the edifice was placed seven feet above the ground. Amzi informed him that the temple might be entered only at certain times, but that it contained an image of Abraham holding in its hand some arrows without heads; also a similar statue of Ishmael likewise with divining arrows, and lesser images of prophets and angels amounting almost to the number of three hundred.
Passing round the temple to the north-eastern corner, Yusuf looked curiously at the Black Stone, which was set in the wall at a few spans from the ground, and which seemed to be black with yellowish specks in it.[6] Many people were pressing forward to kiss it, while many more were drinking and laving themselves with water from a well a few paces distant,—the well Zem-Zem,—believing that in so doing their sins were washed off in the water.