48 Fun Facts About Kaaba

What does the Arabic word Kaaba literally mean?

The Cube: the shrine is usually said to be named for its shape, though it is not a perfect cube, standing taller than it is wide.

The Kaaba stands at the centre of which mosque?

Masjid al-Haram, the Great Mosque of Mecca, began as a simple wall that Caliph Umar built around the Kaaba in the 630s, and rulers have been enlarging it ever since.

Muslims call the Kaaba Baytullah, meaning what?

House of God: Muslims everywhere turn toward it for the five daily prayers, and they bury their dead facing it too.

How do pilgrims circle the Kaaba during tawaf?

Seven circuits, anti-clockwise: each one starts at the corner holding the Black Stone, which pilgrims try to kiss or touch if the crowd allows.

What is the area around the Kaaba where pilgrims perform tawaf called?

The Mataaf is the open paved space around the Kaaba; following the Prophet's reported example, men take their first circuits there at a brisk pace and walk the rest.

The black cloth covering the Kaaba is called what?

The Kiswah is black silk embroidered with Quranic verses in gold; when a new one goes up each year, the old cloth is cut into pieces that were long sold to pilgrims as relics.

Long changed on the Day of Arafah, the Kaaba's covering has since 2022 been replaced on which occasion?

Islamic New Year, 1 Muharram: the old date fell when the Hajj pilgrims are all out on the plain of Arafat, the one day of the year the Kaaba is not thronged.

Since 1962 the Kaaba's covering has been made in Saudi Arabia; which country produced it for most of Islamic history?

Egypt sent a new covering to Mecca with the pilgrim caravan each year; weaving moved partly to Mecca in 1927 and wholly in 1962, when the Cairo workshop stopped.

The Black Stone is set into which corner of the Kaaba?

East: legend says the stone came down from paradise white and was turned black by the sins of the countless pilgrims who have touched it.

The Black Stone is held together in a frame made of what metal?

Silver: the stone is said to have been shattered during a 7th-century siege, and Mecca's ruler bound the pieces together with a silver band, a repair renewed many times since.

What has the Black Stone often been described as, though it has never been analysed with modern techniques?

A meteorite is the popular guess, but the stone has never been tested; geologists doubt it, and other ideas range from basalt to glass fused by a meteorite strike in the Arabian desert.

After circling the Kaaba, pilgrims walk seven times between which two small hills?

Safa and Marwah: the walk, called the sa'y, recalls a mother's frantic search for water for her infant son, and today it runs along an enclosed gallery built onto the mosque.

The Maqam Ibrahim, a glass and metal enclosure near the Kaaba, is said to preserve what?

The imprint of a prophet's feet: in the best-known telling, Ibrahim stood on this stone to build the Kaaba's upper walls with his son Ismail.

Which low semicircular wall beside the Kaaba encloses ground that was once inside the building?

The Hatim, also called Hijr Ismail, marks where the older walls ran, so pilgrims circle outside it; tradition holds that praying within it counts as praying inside the Kaaba.

Why did the Quraysh rebuild the Kaaba smaller than its old foundations around 600 CE?

They ran short of money: the Quraysh had vowed to build only with honestly earned funds, and the shortfall left a strip of the old foundations outside the new north-west wall.

Where did the Quraysh get the timber to rebuild the Kaaba around 600 CE?

A wrecked Byzantine ship: it had run aground on the nearby Red Sea coast, and a carpenter who had been aboard, named Baqum, was hired to do the woodwork.

How did Muhammad settle the Meccan clans' quarrel over who would set the Black Stone in place?

Had them share a cloak: he laid the stone on the cloth, a leader from each clan took hold and they lifted it together, and Muhammad set it in the wall himself.

Before Islam, how many idols is the Kaaba said to have hosted?

360, perhaps one for each day of the year; when Muhammad took Mecca he is said to have struck them down with his staff, reciting 'Truth has come and falsehood has vanished'.

The chief idol of pre-Islamic Mecca, a red stone figure with a golden right hand, was named what?

Hubal: seven arrows lay before the statue, and the Quraysh cast them to settle questions of death, marriage and virginity.

In one early report, which picture did Muhammad spare when he cleared the Kaaba of images after taking Mecca?

Maryam and Isa: al-Azraqi's history of Mecca reports that he covered the painting of Mary and her child with his hands and had the rest erased; other accounts say every image was destroyed.

By one disputed tradition, which future caliph was born inside the Kaaba?

Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law: Shia Muslims celebrate him as the only one ever born inside the shrine, while Sunni scholars more often give that distinction to Hakim ibn Hizam.

Before the qibla was changed to the Kaaba, toward which city did the early Muslims pray?

Jerusalem was the qibla after the move to Medina in 622; about 16 months later a Quranic revelation turned the faithful toward the Kaaba instead.

Medina's Mosque of the Two Qiblas long had two of which feature, each marking a different direction of prayer?

Mihrabs: a mihrab is the wall niche that shows worshippers which way to face, and this mosque kept one for each direction until modern rebuilding left only the niche pointing to Mecca.

Which 628 truce with the Quraysh, named for the place it was made, opened the Kaaba to Muslim pilgrims the following year?

Hudaybiyyah: turned back outside Mecca with some 1,400 pilgrims, Muhammad accepted a ten-year truce and put off his visit by a year; within two years the city was his.

The Kaaba burned in 683 while Mecca was under siege by the army of which caliphate?

The Umayyads were trying to crush Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, who ruled Mecca as a rival caliph; he rebuilt the gutted shrine on a larger plan, which the victors later undid.

Which general bombarded the Kaaba with stones during the siege of Mecca in 692?

Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf took the city, Ibn al-Zubayr died in the fighting, and the caliph Abd al-Malik had the enlarged Kaaba pulled down and rebuilt on its earlier, smaller plan.

Which Shia sect sacked Mecca in 930 and carried off the Black Stone, holding it for some two decades?

The Qarmatians, a radical Ismaili sect, attacked during the Hajj itself, threw the bodies of slain pilgrims into the mosque's sacred well and held the stone for ransom.

What brought down walls of the Kaaba around 1630, forcing it to be rebuilt?

Flash flooding after heavy rain collapsed the walls, and Sultan Murad IV had them rebuilt; the mosque around the Kaaba, damaged along with it, was renovated at the same time.

The golden rain spout on the Kaaba's roof is called what?

The Mizab ar-Rahmah, 'spout of mercy', has been needed only since the Quraysh first gave the Kaaba a roof around 600 CE; before that the shrine stood open to the sky.

How is the Kaaba's door, set some two metres above the ground, reached when the shrine is opened?

A staircase on wheels, kept elsewhere in the mosque, is rolled up to the door on the few days a year the shrine is opened, chiefly for its ceremonial washing.

Why did the Quraysh raise the Kaaba's door some two metres above the ground?

To control who could enter: the Prophet told his wife Aisha that the Quraysh raised the door so they could admit only those they approved of, and that he would have lowered it had they not been so new to Islam.

The Kaaba's walls are built of which stone, quarried from the hills around Mecca?

Granite: the grey blocks rest on a marble base, yet almost none of the masonry is ever seen, because the black cloth covers the building nearly all year.

Besides the Black Stone corner, the Kaaba's three corners are named for which regions?

Yemen, Syria and Iraq: each corner is named for the land it roughly faces, because it is the Kaaba's corners, not its walls, that point to the compass points.

Every Muslim who is able is expected to make the Hajj to the Kaaba how often?

Once in a lifetime, and only for those with the health and means to travel; a Muslim who completes it may add the title Hajji to their name.

At its ceremonial washing, the Kaaba's inner walls are wiped with cloths dipped in which water?

Zamzam water, drawn from the sacred well a few steps from the Kaaba and scented with rose and oud, is used; the governor of Mecca's province leads the washing.

Which tribe has held the keys to the Kaaba since before Islam, an honour confirmed by Muhammad?

The Bani Shaybah kept the key before Islam; after taking Mecca, Muhammad had it handed back to its keeper, Uthman ibn Talha, and his clan has unlocked the Kaaba ever since.

The Islamic "Year of the Elephant", around 570 CE, is named for whose failed march on the Kaaba with war elephants?

Abraha's lead elephant, Mahmud, is said to have stopped at the edge of Mecca and refused to go on, and the Quran's Surah al-Fil tells of flocks of birds pelting his army with stones.

The Christian ruler whose war elephants marched on Mecca around 570 governed Yemen on behalf of which kingdom?

Aksum, in today's Ethiopia, had invaded Yemen in the 520s; one of its commanders then seized power there for himself and is said to have built a great church at Sanaa.

Islamic tradition says a spring burst forth beside the Kaaba's site to save the infant Ismail and his mother, named what?

Hajar is said to have run back and forth seven times in search of water before the spring appeared, and pilgrims retrace her steps to this day.

Which relic of Ibrahim's near-sacrifice of his son was said to hang inside the pre-Islamic Kaaba?

The ram's horns, from the animal offered in the boy's place, are said to have hung inside for generations and to have crumbled away by the time the Kaaba was rebuilt in the 680s.

Muhammad's Hajj of 632, on which he set the rites pilgrims still follow at the Kaaba, is known by what name?

The Farewell Pilgrimage: he died within months, and the way he performed each rite that year became the pattern for every Hajj since.

What is the name of the two plain white wraps a male pilgrim wears to the Kaaba?

Ihram: the word names both the two seamless white wraps and the sacred state they mark, and the plain dress is meant to make prince and pauper look alike before God.

Which American's 1964 Hajj to the Kaaba transformed his views on race?

Malcolm X described pilgrims 'of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans' performing the rites as equals; the sight made him rethink his ideas about race, and he gave up his separatist views.

In 1916, whose troops shelled Mecca and set the Kaaba's covering on fire?

The Ottomans, shelling the city from the heights rather than surrender to Sharif Hussein's rebels, hit the shrine; the Arab Revolt then held up the burned cloth as proof of the empire's impiety.

The militants who seized Mecca's Grand Mosque in 1979 proclaimed one of their leaders to be what?

The Mahdi, the redeemer expected before the end of time: Juhayman al-Otaybi's followers held the mosque for two weeks until Saudi troops, advised by French commandos, forced their way in.

The giant clock tower that looms over the Kaaba is part of which hotel complex?

Abraj Al Bait rose on the site of Ajyad Fortress, an 18th-century Ottoman citadel that Saudi Arabia demolished in 2002 despite protests from Turkey.

The Quran calls the Kaaba al-Bayt al-Atiq, meaning what?

The Ancient House: the Quran also calls it the first house of worship set up for mankind, and says Ibrahim and Ismail raised its foundations.

Unlike the Hajj, which pilgrimage to the Kaaba can be made at any time of year?

Umrah, often called the lesser pilgrimage, can be finished in a few hours, with none of the days at Mina and Arafat that the Hajj requires.