The Black Stone of the Kaaba

Pilgrims circling the Kaaba during the Hajj pass one corner again and again. Set into the wall there, about a metre and a half above the ground and held in a silver frame, are the dark, polished fragments of a stone: the Black Stone (al-Ḥajar al-Aswad). Many pilgrims try to kiss or touch it as they pass, as the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have done. When the crowds make that impossible, as they usually do, pilgrims raise a hand towards it from a distance at the start of each circuit.

This entry describes the stone with the restraint its sacredness asks for. It is a living object of worship for over a billion people, and it has never been scientifically examined.

In Islamic tradition

• Origin. Hadith and tradition describe the stone as coming from Paradise, originally white and blackened by human sins, and as set in the Kaaba by Abraham and Ishmael. These are articles of faith, not historical claims.
• Muhammad and the stone. A well-known account places the Prophet at the rebuilding of the Kaaba around 605 CE, before his prophetic mission. The tribal clans quarrelled over who should have the honour of setting the stone back in place. Muhammad resolved it by placing the stone on a cloak and having a representative of each clan lift a corner, then set it in place with his own hands.
• Not an object of worship. Islamic teaching insists that the stone is not worshipped, and that the Kaaba and the stone are a focus, not a god. The caliph ʿUmar is reported (in Sahih al-Bukhari) to have said to it:

I know that you are a stone that can neither harm nor benefit. Had I not seen the Messenger of God kiss you, I would not have kissed you.

The documented history

• 930 CE. The Qarmatians, a radical Ismaili movement based in eastern Arabia, sacked Mecca during the pilgrimage season, killed pilgrims, and carried off the Black Stone to their capital.
• 952 CE. The stone was returned, apparently in fragments, after more than twenty years. It had been broken, and later damage broke it further.
• The fragments are held together in a silver casing, which has been renewed several times over the centuries.

What it is made of

No one outside the tradition knows, and no sample has ever been analysed. Proposals include:

• a stony meteorite, a popular idea because of the heavenly origin in tradition;
• an impactite, glass formed by a meteorite striking sand. Some point to the Wabar craters in the Arabian desert;
• basalt, agate or another terrestrial rock.

Reported physical descriptions, for example claims that a fragment floated in water when it was recovered, are themselves traditions and cannot be tested. The question is open and likely to remain so.

Symbology

The hand of God. A tradition describes the stone as God's "right hand on earth", so that touching it is like pledging allegiance. This is metaphor within the tradition. It gives the gesture of touching or saluting the stone the meaning of covenant.

Continuity with Abraham. Islam reads the Kaaba and its stone as restoring the monotheism of Abraham. The rites of the Hajj retrace events from the lives of Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael. The stone is part of a sacred geography that links Islam to the prophets before it (ch21).

Connections

Islam (ch21), Sufism (ch27), the sacred-stone traditions of the ancient Near East (ch58, the Canaanite massebot), and the Ark of the Covenant (V07) as another focus of divine presence.

From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/vault/black-stone.html