MECCA (MAKKAH) ONCE A MARKET PLACE NOW A SACRED PLACE WHERE MUSLIMS GATHER TO BOW BEFORE THE KABAH WHICH HOUSES THE BLACK STONE (A METEORITE). ARABS WERE IDOLATERS BEFORE MUHAMMAD OF MANY GODS. MUHAMMAD REDUCED IT TO JUST ONE, THE BLACK STONE. ARABS ARE STILL IDOLATORS BOWING TO A BLACK STONE. History and tradition of the Black Stone 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.[8] The Black Stone was revered well before the preaching of Islam by Muhammad. By the time of Muhammad, it was already associated with the Kaaba, a pre-Islamic shrine that was revered as a sacred sanctuary and a site of pilgrimage. In her book, Islam: A Short History, Karen Armstrong asserts that the Kaaba was dedicated to Hubal, a Nabatean deity, and contained 360 idols which either represented the days of the year, or were effigies of the Arabian pantheon. According to Ibn Ishaq, an early biographer of Muhammad, the Kaaba was itself addressed as a female deity, three generations before the advent of Islam.[9] 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 Quran,[10] although bowing to or kissing such sacred objects is repeatedly described in the Tenach as idolatrous[11] and was the subject of prophetic rebuke.[12] Some writers remark on the apparent similarity of the Black Stone and its frame to the external female genitalia,[13][14] and ascribe this to its earlier association with fertility rites.[15][16] A red stone was associated with the deity of the south Arabian city of Ghaiman, and there was a white stone in the Kaaba of al-Abalat (near the city of Tabala, south of Mecca). Worship at that time period was often associated with stone reverence, mountains, special rock formations, or distinctive trees.[17] The Kaaba marked the location where the sacred world intersected with the profane, and the embedded Black Stone was a further symbol of this as an object that linked heaven and earth.[18] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Stone
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 00:32:58 +0000
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