Behold it at last, the bourn of long and weary travel, realising the plans and hopes of many and many a year! This, then, is the kibbal, or direction, towards which every Moslem has turned in prayer since the days of Mohammed, and which for long ages before the birth of Christianity was reverenced by the patriarchs of the East.
No wonder that the scene is one of the wildest excitement! Here are worshippers clinging to the curtain and sobbing as though their hearts would break; here some poor wretch with arms thrown high, so that his beating breast may touch the stone of the house, appears ready to faint, and there men prostrate themselves on the pavement, rubbing their
foreheads against the stones, shedding floods of tears, and pouring forth frenzied ejaculations. The most careless, indeed, never contemplate it for the first time without fear and awe. There is a popular jest against new-comers that in the presence of the Kaabah they generally inquire the direction of prayer, although they have all their lives been praying towards it as the early Christian fronted Jerusalem.
But we must look more critically at the celebrated shrine.
The word Kaabah means a cube, a square, a maison carrée. It is called Bayt Ullah (House of God) because according to the Koran it is “certainly the first temple erected for mankind.” It is also known as the “Bride of Meccah,” probably from the old custom of typifying the Church Visible by a young married woman—hence probably its face-veil, its covering, and its guard of eunuchs. Externally it is a low tower of fine grey granite laid in horizontal courses of irregular depth; the stones are tolerably fitted, and are not cemented. It shows no signs of decay, and indeed, in its present form, it dates only from 1627. The shape is rather a trapezoid than a square, being forty feet long by thirty-five broad and forty-five high, the flat roof having a cubit of depression from south-west to north-east, where a gold or gilt spout discharges the drainage. The foundation is a marble base two feet high, and presents a sharp inclined plane.
All the Kaabah except the roof is covered with
a kiswatu garment. It is a pall-like hanging, the work of a certain family at Cairo, and annually renewed. The ground is dully black, and Koranic verses interwoven into it are shining black. There is a door curtain of gold thread upon red silk, and a bright band of similar material, called the face-veil of the house, two feet broad, runs horizontally round the Kaabah at two-thirds of its height. This covering when new is tucked up by ropes from the roof; when old it is fastened to large metal rings welded into the basement of the building. When this peculiar adjunct to the shrine is swollen and moved by the breeze, pious Moslems believe that angels are waving their wings over it.
The only entrance to the Kaabah is a narrow door of aloe wood, in the eastern side. It is now raised seven feet, and one enters it hoisted up in men’s arms. In A.D. 686, when the whole building took its present shape, it was level with the external ground. The Kaabah opens gratis ten or twelve times a year, when crowds rush in and men lose their lives. Wealthy pilgrims obtain the favour by paying for it. Scrupulous Moslems do not willingly enter it, as they may never afterwards walk about barefooted, take up fire with their fingers, or tell lies. It is not every one who can afford such luxuries as slippers, tongs, and truth. Nothing is simpler than the interior of the building. The walls are covered with handsome red damask, flowered over with gold, tucked up beyond the pilgrim’s reach. The flat roof apparently
rests upon three posts of carved and ornamented aloe wood.
Between the three pillars, and about nine feet from the ground, run metal bars, to which hang lamps, said to be gold. At the northern corner there is a dwarf door; it leads into a narrow passage and to the dwarf staircase by which the servants ascend to the roof. In the south-eastern corner is a quadrant-shaped sofa, also of aloe wood, and on it sits the guardian of the shrine.