THE House of Allah[FN#1] has been so fully described by my predecessors, that there is little inducement to attempt a new portrait. Readers, however, may desire a view of the great sanctuary, and, indeed, without a plan and its explanation, the ceremonies of the Harim would be scarcely intelligible. I will do homage to the memory of the accurate Burckhardt, and extract from his pages a description which shall be illustrated by a few notes.
The Kaabah stands in an oblong square (enclosed by a great wall) 250 paces long, and 200 broad,[FN#2] none of the sides of which runs quite in a straight line, though at first sight the whole appears to be of a regular shape. This open square is enclosed on the eastern side by a colonnade. The pillars stand in a quadruple row; they are three deep on the other sides, and are united by pointed arches, every four of which support a small dome plastered and whitened on the outside. These domes, according to Kotobeddyn, are 152 in number.[FN#3] The
[p.295] pillars are above twenty feet in height, and generally from one foot and a half to one foot and three quarters in diameter; but little regularity has been observed in regard to them. Some are of white marble, granite or porphyry; but the greater number are of common stone of the Meccah mountains.[FN#4] El Fasy states the whole at 589, and says they are all of marble excepting 126, which are of common stone, and three of composition. Kotobeddyn reckons 555, of which, according to him, 311 are of marble, and the rest of the stone taken from the neighbouring mountains; but neither of these authors lived to see the latest repairs of the Mosque, after the destruction occasioned by a torrent in A.D. 1626.[FN#5] Between every three or four column stands an octagonal one, about four feet in thickness. On the east side are two shafts of reddish grey granite in one piece, and one fine grey porphyry with slabs of white feldspath. On the north side is one red granite column, and one of fine-grained red porphyry; these are probably the columns which Kotobeddyn states to have been brought from Egypt, and
[p.296] principally from Akhmim (Panopolis), when the chief (Caliph) El Mohdy enlarged the Mosque in A.H. 163. Among the 450 or 500 columns which form the enclosure I found not any two capitals or bases exactly alike. The capitals are of coarse Saracen workmanship; some of them, which had served for former buildings, by the ignorance of the workmen, have been placed upside down upon the shafts. I observed about half a dozen marble bases of good Grecian workmanship. A few of the marble columns bear Arabic or Cufic inscriptions, in which I read the dates 863 and 762 (A.H.).[FN#6] A column on the east side exhibits a very ancient Cufic inscription, somewhat defaced, which I could neither read nor copy. Some of the columns are strengthened with broad iron rings or bands,[FN#7] as in many other Saracen buildings of the East. They were first employed by Ibn Dhaher Berkouk, king of Egypt, in rebuilding the Mosque, which had been destroyed by fire in A.H. 802.[FN#8]