Kaaba
The Kaaba, also spelled Kaba, Kabah or Kabah, sometimes referred to as al-Kaba al-Musharrafa, is a stone building at the center of Islam's most important mosque and holiest site, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is considered by Muslims to be the Baytullah and determines the qibla for Muslims around the world.
According to Islamic tradition, the Kaaba was rebuilt several times throughout history, most famously by Ibrahim and his son Ismail, when he returned to the valley of Mecca several years after leaving his wife Hajar and Ismail there upon Allah's command. The current structure was built after the original building was damaged by a fire during the siege of Mecca by the Umayyads in 683 CE. Circling the Kaaba seven times counterclockwise, known as Tawaf, is a Fard rite for the completion of the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages. The area around the Kaaba where pilgrims walk is called the Mataaf.
In early Islam, Muslims faced in the general direction of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem as the qibla in their prayers before changing the direction to face the Kaaba, believed by Muslims to be a result of a Quranic verse revelation to Muhammad. The Kaaba and the Mataaf are surrounded by pilgrims every day of the Islamic year, except the 9th of Dhu al-Hijjah, known as the Day of Arafah, on which the cloth covering the structure, known as the Kiswah, is changed. However, the most significant increase in their numbers is during Ramadan and the Hajj, when millions of pilgrims gather for Tawaf. According to the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, 6,791,100 external pilgrims arrived for the Umrah pilgrimage in.
Etymology and pre-Islamic usage
In Arabic, the literal meaning of the word Ka'ba is cube. Therefore, the most popular etymology has been that the Kaaba was named after its kaʿb form. Some have questioned that the cubic sense of kaʿb is pre-Islamic, seeking etymologies elsewhere. One disputed hypothesis suggests that the name "Kaaba" is related to the southern Arabian or Ethiopian word "mikrab", signifying a temple. Another relates it to Kʿbt, which is related to the Kaaba of Najran.The architectural style of the Meccan Kaaba is shared by a number of pre-Islamic religious buildings, which have broadly been labelled as Kaabas. They are primarily known from the Arabian Peninsula, but some have also been found in other regions, including the Kaaba of Zoroaster. Imoti contends that there were numerous such Kaaba sanctuaries in Arabia at one time, although only the Meccan Kaaba was built of stone. The Black Stone of the Kaaba has been compared to pre-Islamic religious stones called baetyls, which were often black, thought to be of meteorite origins, and venerated in houses or temples of worship for a particular deity. Imoti argues that the other Kaabas also allegedly had their own counterparts of the Black Stone. There was a "Red Stone", in the Kaaba of the South Arabian city of Ghaiman; and the "White Stone" in the Kaaba of al-Abalat. Grunebaum, in Classical Islam, points out that the experience of divinity of that period was often associated with the fetishism of stones, mountains, special rock formations, or "trees of strange growth."
History
and a group of historians later called the revisionist school of Islamic studies has cast doubt on the claim that Mecca was a major historical trading outpost, and proposed a more northern region as the origin of Islam. Other scholars such as Glen Bowersock disagree and assert that it was.Before Muhammad
In pre-Islamic Arabic poetry attributed to Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma, the builders of the Kaaba are said to be the Quraysh and Jurhum tribes. Christian J. Robin argues that the Kaaba may have become prominent in the last decades of the 6th century in the aftermath of the military defeat of Abraha by the Quraysh. However, Peter Webb, based on pre-Islamic poetry, argues that the Kaaba was never a prominent site of pilgrimage and that it largely played a local role in Western Arabia as opposed to a pan-Arabian one.In Islamic cosmology, the Zurah pilgrimage site was the precursor to the Kaaba. According to Islamic tradition, the pre-Islamic Kaaba was a site of worship for various Arabian Bedouin tribes, who would make pilgrimage once every lunar year, setting aside their tribal feuds. The Kaaba hosted 360 pagan idols including sculptures and paintings before Islam, notably including a statue of Hubal, the principal idol of Mecca. Paintings of angels, of Ibrahim holding divination arrows, and of Isa and his mother Maryam, which Muhammad spared. Undefined decorations, money and a pair of ram's horns were recorded to be inside the Kaaba. The pair of ram's horns were said to have belonged to the ram sacrificed by Ibrahim in place of his son Ismail as held by Islamic tradition. Islamic tradition traces the polytheism of the Kaaba to the descendants of Ishmael who settled around the Zamzam Well and gradually turned it away from its original monotheist practice during the time of Abraham. The Book of Idols by Hisham ibn al-Kalbi describes the origins of idolatry at the Kaaba: about 400 years before the birth of Muhammad, a man named 'Amr ibn Luhay, who descended from Qahtan and was the king of Hijaz, placed an idol of Hubal on the roof of the Kaaba. This idol was one of the chief deities of the ruling Quraysh tribe. The idol was made of red agate and shaped like a human, but with the right hand broken off and replaced with a golden hand. When the idol was moved inside the Kaaba, it had seven arrows in front of it, which were used for divination. To maintain peace among the perpetually warring tribes, Mecca was declared a sanctuary where no violence was allowed within of the Kaaba. This combat-free zone allowed Mecca to thrive not only as a place of pilgrimage, but also as a trading center. A king named Tubba' is considered the first one to have a door be built for the Kaaba according to sayings recorded in Al-Azraqi's.
Alfred Guillaume, in his translation of the Ibn Ishaq's seerah, says that the Kaaba itself might be referred to in the feminine form. Circumambulation was often performed naked by men and almost naked by women. It is disputed whether Allah and Hubal were the same deity or different. According to a hypothesis by Uri Rubin and Christian Robin, Hubal was only venerated by Quraysh and the Kaaba was first dedicated to Allah, a supreme god of individuals belonging to different tribes, while the pantheon of the gods of Quraysh was installed in the Kaaba after they conquered Mecca a century before Muhammad's time.
Ptolemy and Diodorus Siculus
Writing in the Encyclopedia of Islam, Wensinck identifies Mecca with a place called Macoraba mentioned by Ptolemy. G. E. von Grunebaum states: "Mecca is mentioned by Ptolemy. The name he gives it allows us to identify it as a South Arabian foundation created around a sanctuary." In Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Patricia Crone argues that the identification of Macoraba with Mecca is false and that Macoraba was a town in southern Arabia in what was then known as Arabia Felix. A recent study has revisited the arguments for Macoraba and found them unsatisfactory.Based on an earlier report by Agatharchides of Cnidus, Diodorus Siculus mentions a temple along the Red Sea coast, "which is very holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians". Edward Gibbon believed that this was the Kaaba. However, Ian D. Morris argues that Gibbon had misread the source: Diodorus puts the temple too far north for it to have been Mecca.
In the Quran
In the Qur'an, from the era of the life of Muhammad, the Kaaba is mentioned by the following names:- al-Bayt in 2:125 by Allah
- Baytī in 22:26 by Allah
- Baytik al-Muḥarram in 14:37 by Ibrahim
- al-Bayt al-Ḥarām in 5:97 by Allah
- al-Bayt al-ʿAtīq in 22:29 by Allah
Ibn Kathir, in his famous exegesis of the Quran, mentions two interpretations among the Muslims on the origin of the Kaaba. One is that the temple was a place of worship for before the creation of man. Later, a house of worship was built on the location and was lost during the flood in Nuh 's time and was finally rebuilt by Ibrahim and Ismail as mentioned later in the Quran. Ibn Kathir regarded this tradition as weak and preferred instead the narration by Ali ibn Abi Talib that although several other temples might have preceded the Kaaba, it was the first , dedicated solely to him, built by his instruction, and sanctified and blessed by him, as stated in. A hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari states that the Kaaba was the first on Earth, and the second was Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem.
After the construction was complete, God enjoined the descendants of Ismail to perform an annual pilgrimage: the Hajj and the Qurban, sacrifice of cattle. The vicinity of the temple was also made a sanctuary where bloodshed and war were forbidden.
During Muhammad's lifetime
During Muhammad's lifetime, the Kaaba was considered a holy site by the local Arabs. Muhammad took part in the reconstruction of the Kaaba around 600 CE, after its structure was weakened by a fire, and then damaged by a subsequent flood. Sources including Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasūl Allāh, one of the biographies of Muhammad, as well as Al-Azraqi's chronicle of Mecca, describe Muhammad settling a quarrel between the Meccan clans as to which clan should set the Black Stone in its place. According to Ishaq's biography, Muhammad's solution was to have all the clan elders raise the cornerstone on a cloak, after which Muhammad set the stone into its final place with his own hands. The timber for the reconstruction of the Kaaba was purchased by Quraysh from a Byzantine ship that had been wrecked on the Red Sea coast at Shu'aybah. The work was undertaken by a Coptic Egyptian carpenter from the same ship, called Baqum, the name indicates an Egyptian Origin, The name Pachomius means "eagle" or "falcon", It comes from the Coptic word "akhōm", which originally meant "divine image" in Middle Egyptian. Financial constraints during this rebuilding caused Quraysh to exclude six cubits from the northern part of the Kaaba. This portion is what is currently known as Al-Hateem الحطيم or Hijr Ismail حجر اسماعيل.Muhammad's Isra' is said to have taken him from the Kaaba to the Masjid al-Aqsa and heavenwards from there.
Muslims initially considered Jerusalem as their qibla, or prayer direction, and faced toward it while offering prayers; however, pilgrimage to the Kaaba was considered a religious duty though its rites were not yet finalized. During the first half of Muhammad's time as a prophet while he was at Mecca, he and his followers were severely persecuted which eventually led to their migration to Medina in 622 CE. In 624 CE, Muslims believe the direction of the qibla was changed from the Masjid al-Aqsa to the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, with the revelation of. In 628 CE, Muhammad led a group of Muslims towards Mecca with the intention of performing the Umrah, but was prevented from doing so by the Quraysh. He secured a peace treaty with them, the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, which allowed the Muslims to freely perform pilgrimage at the Kaaba from the following year.
At the culmination of his mission, in 630 CE, after the allies of the Quraysh, the Banu Bakr, violated the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, Muhammad conquered Mecca. His first action was to remove statues and images from the Kaaba. According to reports collected by Ibn Ishaq and al-Azraqi, Muhammad spared a painting of Mary and Jesus, and a fresco of Ibrahim.
Al-Azraqi further conveys how Muhammad, after he entered the Kaaba on the day of the conquest, ordered all the pictures erased except that of Maryam:
After the conquest, Muhammad restated the sanctity and holiness of Mecca, including its Great Mosque, in Islam. He performed the Hajj in 632 CE called the Hujjat ul-Wada' since Muhammad prophesied his impending death on this event.
After Muhammad's conquest of Mecca, it is said that the 360 idols of the Kaaba were destroyed. The Kaaba became a site for the veneration of Allah only, identified as the same God as that of other monotheists. The Kaaba continued to be a site of annual pilgrimage, and Muslims would perform the Salat prayer facing Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, as instructed by Muhammad, and turning their backs on the pagan associations of the Kabah.