The Kaʿba of Mecca
By Simon O’Meara
Figure 1. The Kaʿba of Mecca. Photograph: Moataz Egbaria; source: Wikimedia Commons.
Centrally located in the courtyard of Mecca’s Sacred Mosque in today’s Saudi Arabia, the Kaʿba comprises two adjacent structures: a large, cuboid structure, and a low, semicircular one (Fig. 1). The larger structure is an irregular oblong; it has a height of approximately 14m and a sloping base that measures at the bottom approximately 11.5 by 13m. Over it is draped a covering robe, the kiswa, which since the thirteenth century has almost always been black, a colour that has proved instrumental in giving the Kaʿba its iconic quality. The smaller structure, now linked to the larger one by swing gates, is a semicircular wall, approximately 1.3m high and 1.6m wide. It encloses the area of the Kaʿba commonly called the ‘hijr of Ishmael’, a reference to the widespread Islamic belief that the biblical personage of that name lies buried there. Early Islamic sources allege that about 3m of it was once incorporated within the larger structure, which accordingly was longer than now. The same sources assert that both structures were originally built by another biblical figure, either Adam or Abraham. Except possibly for the foundations, what they erected has been repeatedly rebuilt over the centuries, because of fire, war and especially flooding (O’Meara 2020).
The Kaʿba is the ‘House of God’ according to the Qur’an and towards it Muslims must turn for a number of ritual actions, including prayer. Contrary to what is sometimes said, in daily seeking the Kaʿba this way, Muslims do not worship the Kaʿba. Rather, they orient their lives about it; for as God’s House, it is a conduit to the Divine.
As God’s House, too, a priceless collection of relics, votives and treasure is said in medieval Islamic histories to have accumulated there, as will be related below. This is unsurprising and in complete conformity with the Gods’ Collections project. More surprising is where this collection is today; for as will also be related, only some of it is accounted for, the so-called sacred trusts: the relics that are housed at the Topkapı Palace Museum in Istanbul (Fig. 2).
Figure 2. The Pavilion of the Sacred Trusts, Topkapı Palace Museum, Istanbul. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
In his eleventh-century work, The Book Most Comprehensive in Knowledge on Precious Stones, the Iranian polymath Biruni (d. 1048) says the following about the origins and growth of the Kaʿba’s collection:
Muslim kings held the Kaʿba in great reverence and, following the practice of [the Prophet’s grandfather] ʿAbd al-Muttalib, used to send precious objects there. When ʿAbd al-Muttalib had the [Sacred Mosque’s] well of Zamzam dug out (after it had become plugged), two bright swords were discovered. These were placed at the gate of the Kaʿba. Two golden deer with patterns etched on them were also excavated. One was set at the door for decorative purposes, the other inside. The Holy Prophet also did the same thing: he had the Golden Book of the Zoroastrians, sent to him by Badhan the Persian after having embraced Islam in the Yemen, suspended in the Kaʿba. Badhan had sent the book to the Prophet to convince him that he had abjured the faith of his forbears. Caliph ʿUmar b. Khattab (r. 634-44) also followed the practice of the Holy Prophet. Two crescents, together with a pail and two precious cups made from extremely costly stones, were suspended in the Kaʿba, having been sent to him after the conquest of Madaʾin [in 637]. All of them were engraved with precious stones.
[The second Umayyad caliph] Yazid b. Muʿawiyya (r. 680-3) had two crescents, which were previously in a church in Damascus, sent to the Kaʿba. These were decorated with the ruby called the Red Sulphur. Each crescent was worth a hundred thousand dinars. Accompanying the crescents were two cups, one made of agate, the other crystalline, and two bottles, made of agate and ruby. [The fifth Umayyad caliph] ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwan (r. 685-705) had two parasols and two crystal cups installed in the Kaʿba. [His son] Walid b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 705-15) sent two cups, but authorities have not mentioned what these were made of.
[The first Abbasid caliph] al-Saffah (r. 750-4) sent a green plate he had purchased for four thousand dinars, while [his brother] al-Mansur (r. 754-75) sent a Pharaonic bottle along with a silver tablet, which had been presented to him by the Byzantine emperor. [The seventh Abbasid caliph] al-Maʾmun (r. 813-33) sent the gold and silver idols surrendered by the commander-in-chief of Kabul after he had embraced Islam, together with the ruby which used to be suspended on the front of Kaʿba during the month of Pilgrimage. [The tenth Abbasid caliph] al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-61) sent a golden parasol studded with pearls, rubies and chrysolite. It was suspended each year during the Pilgrimage (Biruni 1989, 56-7).
Had Biruni’s account included the dynasty after the Abbasids, the Fatimids, he would have added to the list of prophetic and caliphal treasures gifted to the Kaʿba the extraordinary item they sent in the tenth century: the shamsa. As described by Jonathan Bloom, ‘this was a sun-shaped circular ornament measuring twelve spans (ca. 9 feet) across. Its background was of red brocade, around it were 12 golden crescents containing a pierced golden sphere, each holding 50 pearls the size of pigeon eggs, as well as red, yellow and blue stones, and it was filled with powdered musk. Around the edge was written Surat al-Hajj (the pilgrimage chapter, Qurʾan 22) in green emeralds against a ground of huge white pearls’ (Bloom 2017).
Although it has been asserted that such priceless votives and trophies gifted to the Kaʿba were deposited and then exhibited within the Kaʿba itself, the temple thereby becoming ‘a history-revealing locale’ (Shalem 2005, 278), the evidence in support of this assertion is far from clear. Indeed, according to the early Islamic sources, at the start of the ninth century, the Kaʿba’s treasure – which by this time was contained in a transportable treasury, possibly chest-like in form – was removed from the Kaʿba to the house of one of the Kaʿba’s custodians. The sources do not elaborate upon its return. In fact, one source relates that the treasury remained in that custodian’s house for at least two years, suggesting that it might never have returned to the Kaʿba. The details are as follows.
Referring to a throne sent to the Kaʿba by a conquered king of Tibet, the early historian of Mecca, al-Azraqi (d. c. 864), reports that this elaborate offering, complete with a crowned, golden idol at its zenith, was initially displayed in a public space in Mecca for three days of the pilgrimage season of 816. Thereafter, it was sent for safe keeping in the Kaʿba’s treasury in the aforementioned custodian’s house. Two years later, it was removed from this house and melted down to pay for war preparations, leaving only the throne’s silver dedication and the idol’s crown, both of which ‘thus stayed,’ or perhaps ‘then stayed’ (fa-baqiya), inside the Kaʿba until al-Azraqi’s time (O’Meara 2020, 116).
Was the Kaʿba’s treasury ever returned to the Kaʿba? Rafique Jairazbhoy implies that it was, but only to be hidden away there, in the space between the temple’s false ceiling and roof (Jairazbhoy 1986). Although he does not add the following, presumably the treasury was later removed from this location, because the crawl space has frequently been traversed during maintenance activities in the modern period but with no treasure found! To my knowledge, medieval sources do not support Jairazbhoy’s theory. Rather, if they mention the Kaʿba’s treasury and/or treasures at all, they do so in the past: as a limited number of objects that ‘used to be’ in the Kaʿba (cf. Rabbat 1993).
Might the fate of the Tibetan throne, melted down to pay for war, account for the apparent disappearance of all the treasury’s content? In other words, might all the votives and treasure the early records show the treasury contained have been melted down and/or broken up and sold? More research is needed to know. Research is also needed to know what became of the caliphal practice of sending priceless votives to the Kaʿba after the first millennium.
Regarding now the Kaʿba’s relics, or sacred trusts, as mentioned they are held at Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace Museum, in the Pavilion of the Sacred Trusts, which until 1924 was the palace’s privy chamber (Fig. 2). They are exhibited there alongside the sacred trusts from the city of Medina, the other sacred pole of Islam, which like Mecca is in today’s Saudi Arabia. For political reasons, both city’s sacred trusts began to be relocated to Topkapı Palace in the sixteenth century, with the last transfer occurring near the end of World War I, via a train out of Medina (Aydin 2004) (Fig. 3).
Figure 3. Train departing Medina for Istanbul during World War I, laden with sacred trusts and other items from Mecca and Medina. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
The name sacred trusts derives from the fact that included among the objects are personal items that once belonged to the Prophet Muhammad. In Arabic those items are called amanat: items entrusted to the care of the Muslim community following his death. As described by Hilmi Aydin, the Topkapı Palace Museum collection of sacred trusts ‘consists of many objects, like the Prophet Muhammad’s mantle, standard, sandal, cup, footprint on a stone, swords, bow, a broken piece of his tooth, soil he used for ritual ablution, and his seal. It also includes a cooking vessel of the prophet Abraham; the turban of the prophet Joseph; the sword of the prophet David; a strand from Abu Bakr’s beard; the Qur’an that is believed to be the one Caliph ʿUthman was reading when he was assassinated; swords of the Prophet’s companions; Fatima al-Zahra’s blouse, veil, and mantle; her son Husayn’s robe, his turban, and a piece of his mantle [etc.]’ (Aydin 2004, 9). Reproduced below is one such sacred trust on display at the Topkapı Palace Museum: a letter allegedly written by Prophet Muhammad to an Egyptian administrator called al-Muqawqis (Fig. 4).
Figure 4. Prophet Muhammad’s letter to an Egyptian administrator called al-Muqawqis. Topkapı Palace Museum, Inv. No. 21/174. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Sources
Hilmi Aydin, The Sacred Trusts: Pavilion of the Sacred Relics, Topkapı Palace Museum, Istanbul (New Jersey: The Light, Inc., 2004)
Abu al-Rayhan Biruni, The Book Most Comprehensive in Knowledge on Precious Stones: al-Beruni’s Book on Mineralogy = Kitab al-Jamahir fi maʿrifat al-jawahir, translated by Hakim Mohammad Said (Islamabad: Pakistan Hijra Council, 1989)
Jonathan M. Bloom, ‘Gifts of the Fatimids’, the.ismaili (22.12.2017), https://the.ismaili/usa/gifts-fatimids? (last accessed 10.04.2023)
Rafique Jairazbhoy ‘The Architecture of the Holy Shrine in Makkah’, in Hajj in Focus, edited by Zafarul-Islam Khan and Yaqub Zaki (London: The Open Press, 1986), 151–69
Simon O’Meara, The Kaʿba Orientations: Readings in Islam’s Ancient House (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
Nasser Rabbat, ‘The Dome of the Rock Revisited: Some Remarks on al-Wasiti’s Accounts’, Muqarnas 10 (1993): 67-75
Avinoam Shalem, ‘Made for the Show: The Medieval Treasury of the Kaʿba in Mecca,’ in The Iconography of Islamic Art: Studies in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand, edited by Bernard O’Kane (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 269-83
Simon O’Meara is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic art history at SOAS University of London. In 2020 he published a monograph on the Kaʿba and is currently working towards a monograph on Medina, specifically the Prophet’s tomb.
