GATES.

21 Bābu ʾs-Salām. 28 Bābu,, ʾr-Raḥmah. 35 Bābu,, ʾl-Atik.
22 Bābu,, ʾn-Nabī. 29 Bābu,, ʾl-Jiyād. 36 Bābu,, ʾl-Ajlah or Bābu ʾl-Basitiyah.
23 Bābu,, ʾl-ʿAbbās. 30 Bābu,, ʾl-Ujlān or Bābu ʾsh-Sharīf. 37 Bābu,, Kutubi.
24 Bābu,, ʿAlī or Binī Hashim. 31 Bābu,, ʾl-Umm Hani. 38 Bābu,, ʾz-Ziyādah or Bābu ʾl-Nadwah.
25 Bābu,, ʾz-Zait or Bābu ʾl-ʿAshrah. 32 Bābu,, ʾl-Wadāʿ. 39 Bābu,, Paraibah.
26 Bābu,, ʾl-Bag͟hlah. 33 Bābu,, Ibrāhīm or the Tailors.
27 Bābu,, ʾṣ-Ṣafā. 34 Bābu,, Binī Saham, or Bābu ʾl-ʿUmrah.

Some of the columns are strengthened with broad iron rings or bands, as in many other Saracen buildings of the East; they were first employed here by Ibn Dhaher Berkouk, King of Egypt, in rebuilding the mosque, which had been destroyed by fire in A.H. 802.

This temple has been so often ruined and repaired, that no traces of remote antiquity are to be found about it. On the inside of the great wall which encloses the colonnades, a single Arabic inscription is seen, in large characters, but containing merely the names of Muḥammad and his immediate successors, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUs̤mān, and ʿAlī. The name of Allāh, in large characters, occurs also in several places. On the outside, over the gates, are long inscriptions, in the S̤ulus̤ī character, commemorating the names of those by whom the gates were built, long and minute details of which are given by the historians of Makkah.

The inscription on the south side, over Bābu Ibrahīm, is most conspicuous; all that side was rebuilt by the Egyptian Sultān al-G͟haurī, A.H. 906. Over the Bābu ʿAlī and Bābu ʾl-ʿAbbās is a long inscription, also in the S̤ulus̤ī character, placed there by Sultān Murād ibn Sulaimān, A.H. 984, after he had repaired the whole building. Qut̤bu ʾd-dīn has given this inscription at length; it occupies several pages in his history, and is a monument of the Sultān’s vanity. This side of the mosque having escaped destruction in A.D. 1626, the inscription remains uninjured.

Some parts of the walls and arches are gaudily painted, in stripes of yellow, red, and blue, as are also the minarets. Paintings of flowers, in the usual Muslim style, are nowhere seen; the floors of the colonnades are paved with large stones badly cemented together.

Seven paved causeways lead from the colonnades towards the Kaʿbah, or holy house, in the centre. They are of sufficient breadth to admit four or five persons to walk abreast, and they are elevated about nine inches above the ground. Between these causeways, which are covered with fine gravel or sand, grass appears growing in several places, produced by the zamzam water oozing out of the jars, which are placed in the ground in long rows during the day. The whole area of the mosque is upon a lower level than any of the streets surrounding it. There is a descent of eight or ten steps from the gates on the north side into the platform of the colonnade, and of three or four steps from the gates, on the south side.

Towards the middle of this area stands the Kaʿbah; it is one hundred and fifteen paces from the north colonnade, and eighty-eight from the south.

For this want of symmetry we may readily account, the Kaʿbah having existed prior to the mosque, which was built around it, and enlarged at different periods.

The Kaʿbah is an oblong massive structure, eighteen paces in length, fourteen in breadth, and from thirty-five to forty feet in height. I took the bearing of one of its longest sides, and found it to be N.N.W. ½ W. It is constructed of the grey Makkan stone, in large blocks of different sizes, joined together in a very rough manner, and with bad cement. It was entirely rebuilt as it now stands in A.D. 1627: the torrent, in the preceding year, had thrown down three of its sides; and, preparatory to its re-erection, the fourth side was, according to Assamī, pulled down, after the ʿUlamāʾ, or learned divines, had been consulted on the question, whether mortals might be permitted to destroy any part of the holy edifice without incurring the charge of sacrilege and infidelity.