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The Kaaba, [b] sometimes referred to as al-Ka'ba al-Musharrafa, [d] is a stone building at the center of Islam's most important mosque and holiest site, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] It is considered by Muslims to be the Baytullah (Arabic: بَيْت ٱللَّٰه , lit.
According to tradition, the Kaaba was a cube-like, originally roofless structure housing a black stone revered as a relic. [118] The sanctuary was dedicated to Hubal (Arabic: هبل), who, according to some sources, was worshiped as the greatest of the 360 idols the Kaaba contained, which probably represented the days of the year. [119]
A typical Kaaba building is shaped like a cube or block and functions as a place for the devotees of a particular god or goddess to worship in. [1] [2] The name "Kaaba" was used by ancient Arabians to describe and label these sites because of their resemblance to the Kaaba at Mecca and the purpose of doing pilgrimage to them.
The Black Stone was held in reverence well before Islam. It had long been associated with the Kaaba, which was built in the pre-Islamic period and was a site of pilgrimage of Nabataeans who visited the shrine once a year to perform their pilgrimage. The Kaaba held 360 idols of the Meccan gods.
Hubal is a god associated with divination. His cult image stood in the Kaaba, and his rituals were in the form of throwing divination arrows before the image, in cases of virginity, death and marriage. [19] He is worshipped by many tribes, including the Quraysh, who controlled access to the image.
The sedentary people of pre-Islamic Eastern Arabia were mainly Aramaic, Arabic and to some degree Persian speakers while Syriac functioned as a liturgical language. [7] [8] In pre-Islamic times, the population of Eastern Arabia consisted of Christianized Arabs (including Abd al-Qays), Aramean Christians, Persian-speaking Zoroastrians [9] and Jewish agriculturalists.
According to Al-Azraqi, Hubal was the primary deity housed in the Kaaba of Mecca before the time of Muhammad. Similarly, Al-Kalbi identifies Hubal as the main god of the Quraysh . Archaeologically, just one Nabataean inscription mentions 'Hubal', as an epithet for the god Dushara .
The tradition of covering the Kaaba predates the emergence of Islam, with various Yemeni textiles composing the draping. [3] According to Ibn Hisham, King Tubba Abu Karib As'ad of the Himyarite Kingdom, who would later become a revered figure in Islamic traditions, clothed Kaaba for the first time during the rule of the Jurhum tribe of Mecca in the early fifth century CE after learning about ...