Black Stone
The Black Stone is a rock set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the ancient building in the center of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by most Muslims as an Islamic relic which, according to tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve.
The stone was venerated at the Kaaba in pre-Islamic Arabia. According to tradition, it was set intact into the Kaaba's wall by Muhammad in 605, five years before his first revelation. Since then, it has been broken into fragments and is now encased in a silver frame on the side of the Kaaba. Its physical appearance is that of a fragmented, dark rock, polished smooth by the hands of pilgrims. It has often been described as a meteorite, but it has never been analysed with modern techniques, so its [|scientific origins] remain the subject of speculation.
Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba as a part of the tawaf ritual during the Hajj and many try to stop to kiss the Black Stone, emulating the kiss that Islamic tradition records that it received from Muhammad. While the Black Stone is revered, theologians emphasize that it has no divine significance and that its importance is historical in nature.
Physical description
The Black Stone was originally a single piece of rock but today consists of several pieces that have been cemented together. They are surrounded by a silver frame which is fastened by silver nails to the Kaaba's outer wall. The fragments are, in turn, made up of smaller pieces that have been combined to form the seven or eight fragments visible today. The Stone's exposed face measures about by. Its original size is unclear and the recorded dimensions have changed considerably over time, as the pieces have been rearranged in their cement matrix on several occasions. In the 10th century, an observer described the Black Stone as being one cubit long. By the early 17th century, it was recorded as measuring. According to Ali Bey in the 18th century, it was described as high, and Muhammad Ali Pasha reported it as being long by wide.The Black Stone is attached to the east corner of the Kaaba, known as al-Rukn al-Aswad. The choice of the east corner may have had ritual significance; it faces the rain-bringing east wind and the direction from which Canopus rises.
The silver frame around the Black Stone and the black kiswah or cloth enveloping the Kaaba were for centuries maintained by the Ottoman Sultans in their role as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The frames wore out over time due to the constant handling by pilgrims and were periodically replaced. Worn-out frames were brought back to Istanbul, where they are still kept as part of the sacred relics in the Topkapı Palace.
Appearance of the Black Stone
The Black Stone was described by European travellers to Arabia in the 19th- and early-20th centuries, who visited the Kaaba disguised as pilgrims. Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt visited Mecca in 1814, and provided a detailed description in his 1829 book Travels in Arabia:Visiting the Kaaba in 1853, Richard Francis Burton noted that:
Ritter von Laurin, the Austrian consul-general in Egypt, was able to inspect a fragment of the Stone removed by the Ottoman ruler Muhammad Ali in 1817 and reported that it had a pitch-black exterior and a silver-grey, fine-grained interior in which tiny cubes of a bottle-green material were embedded. There are reportedly a few white or yellow spots on the face of the Stone, and it is officially described as being white with the exception of the face.
History and tradition
The Black Stone was held in reverence long before the advent of Islam. It had long been associated with the Kaaba, which was built in the pre-Islamic period and was a site of pilgrimage for the Nabataeans of northern Arabia and the southern Levant, who visited the shrine once a year to perform their pilgrimage. Idolatry is forbidden in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. However, the use of aniconic stones, called baetyls, is known from the eastern Mediterranean; "baetyl" originates in the Bethel narrative of Jacob's Ladder. The Kaaba allegedly held 360 idols of the Meccan gods. The meteoritic origin theory of the Black Stone has seen it likened by some writers to the meteorite which was placed and worshipped in the Temple of Artemis.A "red stone" was associated with the deity of the South Arabian city of Ghaiman, and there was a "white stone" in the Kaaba of al-Abalat. Worship at that time period was often associated with stone reverence, mountains, special rock formations, or distinctive trees. The Kaaba marked the location where the sacred world intersected with the profane, and the embedded Black Stone was a further symbol of this as an object as a link between heaven and earth. Aziz Al-Azmeh claims that the divine name ar-Rahman was used for astral gods in Mecca and might have been associated with the Black Stone. Muhammad is said to have called the stone "the right hand of al-Rahman".
Muhammad
According to Islamic belief, Muhammad is credited with setting the Black Stone in its current place in the wall of the Kaaba. A story found in ibn Ishaq's Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah tells how the clans of Mecca renovated the Kaaba following a major fire which had partly destroyed the structure. The Black Stone had been temporarily removed to facilitate the rebuilding work. The clans could not agree on which one of them should have the honour of setting the Black Stone back in its place.They decided to wait for the next man to come through the gate and ask him to make the decision. That person was 35-year-old Muhammad, five years before his prophethood. He asked the elders of the clans to bring him a cloth and place the Black Stone at its center. Each of the clan leaders held the corners of the cloth and carried the Black Stone to the right spot. Then, Muhammad set the stone in place, satisfying the honour of all of the clans. After his Conquest of Mecca in 630, Muhammad is said to have ridden round the Kaaba seven times on his camel, touching the Black Stone with his stick in a gesture of reverence.
Desecrations
The Stone has suffered repeated desecrations and damage over time. It is said to have been struck and smashed to pieces by a stone fired from a catapult during the Umayyad Caliphate's siege of Mecca in 683. The fragments were rejoined by Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr using a silver ligament. In January 930, it was stolen by the Qarmatians, who carried the Black Stone away to their base in Hajar. According to Ottoman historian Qutb al-Din, writing in 1857, the Qarmatian leader Abu Tahir al-Jannabi set the Black Stone up in his own mosque, the Masjid al-Dirar "Mosque of Dissent", with the intention of redirecting the Hajj away from Mecca. This attempt failed, as pilgrims continued to venerate the spot where the Black Stone had been located.According to the historian al-Juwayni, the Stone was returned twenty-three years later, in 952. The Qarmatians held the Black Stone for ransom and attempted to force the Abbasids to pay a huge sum for its return. It was wrapped in a sack and thrown into the Great Mosque of Kufa, accompanied by a note saying "By command we took it, and by command we have brought it back." Its abduction and removal caused further damage, breaking the stone into seven pieces. Its abductor, Abu Tahir, is said to have met a terrible fate; according to Qutb al-Din, "the filthy Abu Tahir was afflicted with a gangrenous sore, his flesh was eaten away by worms, and he died a most terrible death." To protect the shattered stone, the custodians of the Kaaba commissioned a pair of Meccan goldsmiths to build a silver frame to surround it, and it has been enclosed in a similar frame ever since.
In the 11th century, a man allegedly sent by the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah attempted to smash the Black Stone but was killed on the spot, having caused only slight damage. In 1674, according to Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, someone allegedly smeared the Black Stone with excrement so that "every one who kissed it retired with a sullied beard". According to the archaic Sunni belief, by the accusation of one boy, the Persian of an unknown faith was suspected of sacrilege, where Sunnis of Mecca "have turned the circumstance to their own advantage" by assaulting, beating random Persians and forbidding them from Hajj until the ban was overturned by the order of Muhammad Ali. The explorer Richard Francis Burton pointed out on the alleged "excrement action" that "it is scarcely necessary to say that a Shi'a, as well as a Sunni, would look upon such an action with lively horror", and that the real culprit was "some Jew or Christian, who risked his life to gratify a furious bigotry".
Ritual role
The Black Stone plays a central role in the ritual of, when pilgrims kiss the Black Stone, touch it with their hands or raise their hands towards it while repeating the "God is Greatest". They perform this in the course of walking seven times around the Kaaba in a counterclockwise direction, emulating the actions of Muhammad. At the end of each circuit, they perform and may approach the Black Stone to kiss it at the end of. In modern times, large crowds make it practically impossible for everyone to kiss the stone, so it is currently acceptable to point in the direction of the Stone on each of their seven circuits around the Kaaba. Some even say that the Stone is best considered simply as a marker, useful in keeping count of the ritual circumambulations that one has performed.Writing in Dawn in Madinah: A Pilgrim's Passage, Muzaffar Iqbal described his experience of venerating the Black Stone during a pilgrimage to Mecca:
The Black Stone and the Kaaba's opposite corner,, are both often perfumed by the mosque's custodians. This can cause problems for pilgrims in the state of , who are forbidden from using scented products and will require a as a penance if they touch either.