Black Stone

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For other uses, see Black Stone (disambiguation).
The Black Stone, surrounded by its silver frame and the black cloth kiswah on the Kaaba in Mecca

The Black Stone (called الحجر الأسود al-Hajar-ul-Aswad in Arabic) is a Muslim relic, which according to Islamic tradition dates back to the time of Adam and Eve. Some consider it to be a tektite or a meteorite.[1] It is the eastern cornerstone of the Kaaba, the ancient sacred stone building towards which Muslims pray, in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.[2] The Stone is roughly 30 cm (12 in.) in diameter, and 1.5 metres (5 ft.) above the ground.[3]

When pilgrims circle the Kaaba as part of the Tawaf ritual of the Hajj, many of them try, if possible, to stop and kiss the Black Stone seven times, emulating the kiss that it, according to Islamic tradition, received from the Islamic prophet Muhammad.[4] If they cannot reach it, they point to it on each of their seven circuits around the Kaaba.[5]

The Stone was broken into a number of pieces from damage inflicted during the Middle Ages. The pieces are held together by a silver frame, which is fastened by silver nails to the Stone.

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[edit] Origins and history

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[edit] Islamic views

A 1315 illustration from the Jami al-Tawarikh, inspired by the Sirah Rasul Allah story of Muhammad and the Meccan clan elders lifting the Black Stone into place[6]

According to Islamic tradition, the Stone fell from Heaven to show Adam and Eve where to build an altar and offer a sacrifice to God. The Altar became the first temple on Earth. Muslims believe that the stone was originally pure and dazzling white, but has since turned black because of the sins it has absorbed over the years.[7] Islamic tradition holds that Adam's altar and the stone were lost in the process of Noah's Flood and forgotten. It was Abraham who found the Black Stone at the original site of Adam's altar when the Archangel Gabriel revealed it to him.[8] Abraham ordered his son—and the ancestor of Muhammad--Ishmael to build a new temple in which to embed the Stone. This new temple is the Kaaba in Mecca.

Muhammad is credited with playing a key part in the history of the Black Stone. In 602, before the first of his prophetic revelations, he was present in Mecca during the rebuilding of the Kaaba. The Black Stone had been temporarily removed while a new structure was being constructed. A story found in Ibn Ishaq's Sirah Rasul Allah (as reconstructed and translated by Guillaume) shows Muhammad settling a quarrel between Makkan clans as to which clan should set the Black Stone in place. His solution was to have all the clan elders raise the cornerstone on a cloak, and then Muhammad set the Stone into its final place with his own hands.[6][9][10]

[edit] Other views

The reverence of the Black Stone evidently preceded the rise of Islam. The Semitic cultures of the Middle East had a tradition of using unusual stones to mark places of worship, a phenomenon which is reflected in the Hebrew Bible as well as the Qur'an.[8]

Grunebaum, in Classical Islam, says that the Kaaba was a place of pilgrimage even in pre-Islamic times, and was probably the only sanctuary built of stone, but that there are other sources which indicate there were other "Kaaba" structures in other parts of Arabia. A "red stone" was the deity of the south Arabian city of Ghaiman, and there was a "white stone" in the Ka'ba of al-Abalat (near the city of Tabala, south of Mecca). He points out that the experience of divinity of that time period was often associated with stone fetishes, mountains, special rock formations, or "trees of strange growth."[11]

The physical properties of the Black Stone were first described in Western literature in the 19th and early 20th centuries by European travelers in Arabia who visited the Kaaba in the guise of pilgrims. The Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who visited Mecca around 1815 in the guise of a pilgrim, provided a detailed description in his 1829 book Travels in Arabia:

It is an irregular oval, about seven inches in diameter, with an undulating surface, composed of about a dozen smaller stones of different sizes and shapes, well joined together with a small quantity of cement, and perfectly well smoothed; it looks as if the whole had been broken into as many pieces by a violent blow, and then united again. It is very difficult to determine accurately the quality of this stone which has been worn to its present surface by the millions of touches and kisses it has received. It appeared to me like a lava, containing several small extraneous particles of a whitish and of a yellow substance. Its colour is now a deep reddish brown approaching to black. It is surrounded on all sides by a border composed of a substance which I took to be a close cement of pitch and gravel of a similar, but not quite the same, brownish colour. This border serves to support its detached pieces; it is two or three inches in breadth, and rises a little above the surface of the stone. Both the border and the stone itself are encircled by a silver band, broader below than above, and on the two sides, with a considerable swelling below, as if a part of the stone were hidden under it. The lower part of the border is studded with silver nails.

Visiting the Kaaba in 1853, Sir Richard Francis Burton noted that:

The colour appeared to me black and metallic, and the centre of the stone was sunk about two inches below the metallic circle. Round the sides was a reddish brown cement, almost level with the metal, and sloping down to the middle of the stone. The band is now a massive arch of gold or silver gilt. I found the aperture in which the stone is, one span and three fingers broad.[12]

The Black Stone has been described variously as basalt lava, an agate, a piece of natural glass or — most popularly — a stony meteorite. It is evidently a hard rock, having survived so much handling. A significant clue to its nature is provided by an account of the Stone's recovery in 951 AD after it had been stolen 21 years earlier; according to a chronicler, the Stone was identified by its ability to float in water. If this account is accurate, it would rule out the Black Stone being an agate, basalt lava or stony meteorite, though it would be compatible with it being glass or pumice.[13]

It has been suggested that the Black Stone may be a glass fragment from the impact of a fragmented meteorite some 6,000 years ago at Wabar, a site in the Rub' al Khali desert some 1,100 km east of Mecca. The craters at Wabar are notable for the presence of blocks of silica glass, fused by the heat of the impact and impregnated by beads of nickel-iron alloy from the meteorite (most of which was destroyed in the impact). Some of the glass blocks are made of shiny black glass with a white or yellow interior and gas-filled hollows, which allow them to float on water. Although scientists did not become aware of the Wabar craters until 1932, they were located near a caravan route from Oman and were very likely known to the inhabitants of the desert. The wider area was certainly well-known; in ancient Arabic poetry, Wabar or Ubar (also known as "Iram of the Pillars") was the site of a fabulous city that was destroyed by fire from the heavens because of the wickedness of its king. If the estimated age of the crater is accurate, it would have been well within the period of human habitation in Arabia and the impact itself may have been witnessed.[13]. However, a recent (2004) scientific analysis of the Wabar site suggests that the impact event happened much more recently than first thought and might have occurred only within the last 200–300 years[14].

[edit] Ritual role

The current ritual of the Hajj involves pilgrims attempting to kiss the Black Stone seven times (once for each circumambulation of the Kaaba), emulating the actions of Muhammad. When Umar ibn al-Khattab (580-644), the second Caliph, came to kiss the Stone, he said in front of all assembled: "No doubt, I know that you are a stone and can neither harm anyone nor benefit anyone. Had I not seen Allah's Messenger [Muhammad] kissing you, I would not have kissed you."[15] Many Muslims follow Umar: they pay their respects to the Stone in a spirit of trust in Muhammad, not with any belief in the Stone itself. This, however, does not indicate their disrespect to the Black Stone but their belief that harm and benefit are in the hands of God, and nothing else. In modern times, large crowds no longer make it practically possible for everyone to kiss the stone, so it is currently acceptable for pilgrims to simply point in the direction of the Stone on each of their circuits around the building. Some even say that the Stone is best considered simply as a marker, useful in keeping count of the ritual circumambulations (tawaf) one has performed.[16]

Some Muslims also accept this hadith, from Tirmidhi, which asserts that at the Last Judgement (Qiyamah), the Black Stone will speak for those who kissed it:

"It was narrated that Ibn 'Abbas said: The Messenger of Allah said concerning the Stone: "By Allah, Allah will bring it forth on the Day of Resurrection, and it will have two eyes with which it will see and a tongue with which it will speak, and it will testify in favour of those who touched it in sincerity." "[17]

Apart from the ritual role of the Black Stone, its black colour is deemed to symbolise the essential spiritual virtue of detachment and poverty for God (faqr) and the extinction of ego required to progress towards God (qalb).[8]

[edit] Damage

The Black Stone is broken into a number of fragments, with varying accounts putting the number at between seven and fifteen, held together by a silver frame.[13] There are differing accounts of how the damage occurred. According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, the damage occurred during a siege in 638.[18] The editors of Time-Life Books state that the damage occurred during a siege launched by a general of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (646-705).[19] Other sources, including the 2007 Britannica, state that the damage occurred as the result of a theft in 930 CE, when Qarmatian warriors sacked Mecca and carried the Black Stone away to their base in Ahsa, in medieval Bahrain. According to the historian Al-Juwayni, the Stone was returned twenty-three years later, in 952. The Qarmatian, holding the Black Stone to ransom they forced the Abbasids to pay a huge sum for its return; wrapped in a sack, it was thrown into the Friday 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.[8][20][21]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Horejsi, Martin. "The Meteorites of the US National Museum of Natural History", Meteorite-Times Magazine, undated
  2. ^ Sheikh Safi-ur-Rahman al-Mubarkpuri (2002). Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar): Biography of the Prophet. Dar-us-Salam Publications. ISBN 1591440718. 
  3. ^ SaudiCities - The Saudi Experience. "Makkah - The Holy Mosque:The Black Stone". http://www.saudicities.com/mmosque.htm. Retrieved August 13, 2006. 
  4. ^ Elliott, Jeri (1992). Your Door to Arabia. Lower Hutt, N.Z.: R. Eberhardt. ISBN 0-473-01546-3. 
  5. ^ Mohamed, Mamdouh N. (1996). Hajj to Umrah: From A to Z. Amana Publications. ISBN 0-915957-54-x. 
  6. ^ a b University of Southern California. "The Prophet of Islam - His Biography". http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/prophet/profbio.html. Retrieved August 12 2006. 
  7. ^ Shaykh Tabarsi, Tafsir, vol. 1, pp. 460, 468. Quoted in translation by Francis E. Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam, p. 5. SUNY Press, 1994. ISBN 0-7914-1876-6
  8. ^ a b c d Cyril Glasse, New Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 245. Rowman Altamira, 2001. ISBN 0-7591-0190-6
  9. ^ Guillaume, A. (1955). The Life of Muhammad. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  pp. 84-87
  10. ^ Saifur Rahman al-Mubarakpuri, translated by Issam Diab (1979). "Muhammad's Birth and Forty Years prior to Prophethood". Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar): Memoirs of the Noble Prophet. http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Books/SM_tsn/ch1s6.html. Retrieved 2007-05-04. 
  11. ^ Grunebaum, p. 24
  12. ^ Quoted in Thomas Patrick Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam, p. 154. W. H. Allen & Co, 1885
  13. ^ a b c Alex Bevan, John De Laeter, Meteorites: A Journey Through Space and Time, pp. 14-15. UNSW Press, 2002. ISBN 0-86840-490-X
  14. ^ Prescott, J.R., Robertson, G.B., Shoemaker, C., Shoemaker, E.M. and Wynn, J. (2004) "Luminescence dating of the Wabar meteorite craters, Saudi Arabia", Journal of Geophysical Research, 109 (E01008), doi:10.1029/2003JE002136
  15. ^ University of Southern California. "Pilgrimage (Hajj)". http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/026.sbt.html#002.026.667. Retrieved August 12, 2006. 
  16. ^ The Saudi Arabia Information Resource. "The Holy City of Makkah". http://www.saudinf.com/main/a83.htm. Retrieved August 12, 2006. 
  17. ^ http://www.icct.org/Hajj/BlackStone.html (broken) http://web.archive.org/web/20070517210047/http://www.icct.org/Hajj/BlackStone.html
  18. ^ Wikisource-logo.svg "Mecca" in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
  19. ^ Time-Life Books (1988). Time Frame AD 600-800: The March of Islam. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books. pp. 47. ISBN 0-8094-6420-9. 
  20. ^ "Qarmatiyyah". Overview of World Religions. St. Martin's College. http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/islam/shia/qarma.html. Retrieved 2007-05-04. 
  21. ^ "Black Stone of Mecca." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 25 June 2007 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9015514>.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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