AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh 2 www.allatra.org

AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh
example, on the outer wall of the Kaaba’s Eastern corner, which holds the main relic, the
so-called called “Black stone” (Hajar al-Aswad) – an egg-shaped stone which is thirty
centimetres long. Scientists assume that this stone is of either volcanic or meteoric
origin. But this is not the point. According to the ancient Arabic legend, the angel Jibra'il
(Archangel Gabriel in Christianity; in Islam, as it is known, Jibra’il is the most revered
angel prophesying the will and revelations of Allah to prophets) handed to Adam, after
his repentance, as a sign of the Allah’s divine forgiveness, a white stone from paradise
as an altar for praying on Earth, which marked the beginning of Kaaba. This happened
after Adam and Hawwa (Eve) had been expelled from paradise and were separated, and
then many years later they met each other again near Mecca. According to the legend,
the stone initially was white but because of human sins it turned black.
Figure 90. Schematic illustration of the image fragment “Muhammad receives his
first revelation from angel Jibra'il”, which depicts angel Jibra’il.
(The illustration original is given in the book Jami al-tawarikh (literally “Compendium
of Chronicles”). Written by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani. The book was published in
Tabriz, Persia in 1370. It is now owned by the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland).
According to the belief of the Islamic religion, the Kaaba in Mecca is also considered
the “Home of God”, “part of the sky overturned to the earth”, the centre of the universe,
the side to which the prayer of each Muslim should be directed. The believers are made
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