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The Black Stone () is a rock set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the ancient building in the center of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by Muslims as an relic which, according to tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve.
The stone was venerated at the Kaaba in pre-Islamic Arabia. According to tradition, it was set intact into the Kaaba's wall by Muhammad in 605, five years before his first revelation. Since then, it has been broken into fragments and is now encased in a silver frame on the side of the Kaaba. Its physical appearance is that of a fragmented, dark rock, polished smooth by the hands of . It has often been described as a meteorite, but it has never been analysed with modern techniques, so its scientific origins remain the subject of speculation.
Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba as a part of the tawaf ritual during the Hajj and many try to stop to kiss the Black Stone, emulating the kiss that Islamic tradition records that it received from Muhammad. While the Black Stone is revered, theologians emphasize that it has no divine significance and that its importance is historical in nature.
The Black Stone is attached to the east corner of the Kaaba, known as al-Rukn al-Aswad (the 'Corner of the Black Stone').Maulana Muhammad Ali (2011). 9781934271186, Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam Lahore USA. . ISBN 9781934271186 The choice of the east corner may have had ritual significance; it faces the rain-bringing east wind ( al-qabul) and the direction from which Canopus rises.
The silver frame around the Black Stone and the black kiswah or cloth enveloping the Kaaba were for centuries maintained by the in their role as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The frames wore out over time due to the constant handling by pilgrims and were periodically replaced. Worn-out frames were brought back to Istanbul, where they are still kept as part of the sacred relics in the Topkapı Palace.
Visiting the Kaaba in 1853, Richard Francis Burton noted that:
Ritter von Laurin, the Austrian consul-general in Egypt, was able to inspect a fragment of the Stone removed by the Ottoman ruler Muhammad Ali in 1817 and reported that it had a pitch-black exterior and a silver-grey, fine-grained interior in which tiny cubes of a bottle-green material were embedded. There are reportedly a few white or yellow spots on the face of the Stone, and it is officially described as being white with the exception of the face.
A "red stone" was associated with the deity of the city of Ghaiman, and there was a "white stone" in the Kaaba of al-Abalat (near Tabala, south of Mecca). Worship at that time period was often associated with stone reverence, mountains, special rock formations, or distinctive trees. 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 as a link between heaven and earth. Aziz Al-Azmeh claims that the divine name ar-Rahman (one of the names of God in Islam and cognate to one of the Jewish names of God Ha'Rachaman, both meaning "the Merciful One" or "the Gracious One") was used for astral gods in Mecca and might have been associated with the Black Stone. Muhammad is said to have called the stone "the right hand of al-Rahman".Al-Azmeh, p. 219
They decided to wait for the next man to come through the gate and ask him to make the decision. That person was 35-year-old Muhammad, five years before his prophethood. He asked the elders of the clans to bring him a cloth and place the Black Stone at its center. Each of the clan leaders held the corners of the cloth and carried the Black Stone to the right spot. Then, Muhammad set the stone in place, satisfying the honour of all of the clans. After his Conquest of Mecca in 630, Muhammad is said to have ridden round the Kaaba seven times on his camel, touching the Black Stone with his stick in a gesture of reverence.
According to the historian al-Juwayni, the Stone was returned twenty-three years later, in 952. The Qarmatians held the Black Stone for ransom and attempted to force the Abbasids to pay a huge sum for its return. It was wrapped in a sack and thrown into the Great Mosque of Kufa, accompanied by a note saying "By command we took it, and by command we have brought it back." Its abduction and removal caused further damage, breaking the stone into seven pieces. Its abductor, Abu Tahir, is said to have met a terrible fate; according to Qutb al-Din, "the filthy Abu Tahir was afflicted with a gangrenous sore, his flesh was eaten away by worms, and he died a most terrible death." To protect the shattered stone, the custodians of the Kaaba commissioned a pair of Meccan goldsmiths to build a silver frame to surround it, and it has been enclosed in a similar frame ever since.
In the 11th century, a man allegedly sent by the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah attempted to smash the Black Stone but was killed on the spot, having caused only slight damage. In 1674, according to Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, someone allegedly smeared the Black Stone with excrement so that "every one who kissed it retired with a sullied beard". According to the Archaism Sunni belief, by the accusation of one boy, the Persians of an unknown faith was suspected of sacrilege, where Sunnis of Mecca "have turned the circumstance to their own advantage" by assaulting, beating random Persians and forbidding them from Hajj until the ban was overturned by the order of Muhammad Ali. The explorer Richard Francis Burton pointed out on the alleged "excrement action" that "it is scarcely necessary to say that a Shi'a, as well as a Sunni, would look upon such an action with lively horror", and that the real culprit was "some Jew or Christian, who risked his life to gratify a furious bigotry".As quoted in Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Meccah by Richard Francis Burton, Volume III: "In A.D. 1674 some wretch smeared the Black Stone with impurity, and every one who kissed it retired with a sullied beard. The Persians, says Burckhardt, were suspected of this sacrilege, and now their ill-fame has spread far; at Alexandria they were described to me as a people who defile the Kaaba. It is scarcely necessary to say that a Shi'a, as well as a Sunni, would look upon such an action with lively horror. The people of Meccah, however, like the Madani, have turned the circumstance to their own advantage, and make an occasional "avanie". Thus, nine or ten years ago, on the testimony of a boy who swore that he saw the inside of the Kaaba defiled by a Persian, they rose up, cruelly beat the schismatics, and carried them off to their peculiar quarter the Shamiyah, forbidding their ingress to the Kaaba. Indeed, till Mohammed Ali's time, the Persians rarely ventured upon a pilgrimage, and even now that man is happy who gets over it without a beating. The defilement of the Black Stone was probably the work of some Jew or Greek, who risked his life to gratify a furious bigotry." Note: Burton pointed out to the suspect as a "Jew or Greek". The "Greek" here is to be understood as a Christian, and not a Greek national per se.
Writing in Dawn in Madinah: A Pilgrim's Passage, Muzaffar Iqbal described his experience of venerating the Black Stone during a pilgrimage to Mecca:
The Black Stone and the Kaaba's opposite corner, , are both often perfumed by the mosque's custodians. This can cause problems for pilgrims in the state of ('consecration'), who are forbidden from using scented products and will require a (donation) as a penance if they touch either.
According to a prophetic tradition, "Touching them both (the Black Stone and ) is an expiation for sins." Adam's altar and the stone were said to have been lost during the Great Flood and forgotten. Abraham was said to have later found the Black Stone at the original site of Adam's altar when the angel Gabriel revealed it to him.Cyril Glassé, New Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 245. Rowman Altamira, 2001. Abraham ordered his son Ishmael, who in Muslim belief is an ancestor of Muhammad, to build a new temple, the Kaaba, into which the stone was to be embedded.
Another tradition says that the Black Stone was originally an angel that had been placed by God in the Garden of Eden to guard Adam. The angel was absent when Adam ate the forbidden fruit and was punished by being turned into the Black Stone. God granted it the power of speech and placed it at the top of Abu Qubays, a mountain in the historic region of Khorasan, before moving the mountain to Mecca. When Abraham took the Black Stone from Abu Qubays to build the Kaaba, the mountain asked him to intercede with God so that it would not be returned to Khorasan but would stay in Mecca. (1993). 9789004099012, E.J. Brill. ISBN 9789004099012
Another tradition holds that it was brought down to Earth by "an angel from seven heavens".
According to some scholars, the Black Stone was the same stone that Islamic tradition describes as greeting Muhammad before his prophethood. This led to a debate about whether the Black Stone's greeting comprised actual speech or merely a sound, and following that, whether the stone was a living creature or an inanimate object. Regardless of the case, the stone was regarded as a symbol of prophethood.
A hadith records that, when the second Rashid caliph, Umar (580–644), came to kiss the stone, he said in front of all assembled: "No doubt, I know that you are a stone and can neither harm anyone nor benefit anyone. Had I not seen Allah's Messenger Muhammad kissing you, I would not have kissed you." In the hadith collection Kanz al-Ummal, it is recorded that Ali responded to Umar, saying, "This stone (Hajar Aswad) can indeed benefit and harm.... Allah says in Quran that he created human beings from the progeny of Adam and made them witness over themselves and asked them, 'Am I not your creator?' Upon this, all of them confirmed it. Thus Allah wrote this confirmation. And this stone has a pair of eyes, ears and a tongue and it opened its mouth upon the order of Allah, who put that confirmation in it and ordered to witness it to all those worshippers who come for Hajj."
Muhammad Labib al-Batanuni, writing in 1911, commented on the practice that the pre-Islamic practice of venerating stones (including the Black Stone) arose not because such stones are "sacred for their own sake, but because of their relation to something holy and respected". The Indian Islamic scholar Muhammad Hamidullah summed up the meaning of the Black Stone:
In recent years, several literalist views of the Black Stone have emerged. A small minority accepts as literally true a hadith, usually taken as allegorical, which asserts that "the Stone will appear on the Day of Judgement () with eyes to see and a tongue to speak, and give evidence in favour of all who kissed it in true devotion, but speak out against whoever indulged in gossip or profane conversations during his circumambulation of the Kaaba".
A significant clue to its nature is provided by an account of the stone's recovery in 951 CE, after it had been stolen 21 years earlier. According to a chronicler, the stone was identified by its ability to float in water, which would rule out the Black Stone being an agate, a basalt, or a stony meteorite, though it would be compatible with it being glass or pumice. (2025). 9780868404905, UNSW Press. ISBN 9780868404905
Elsebeth Thomsen of the University of Copenhagen proposed a different hypothesis in 1980. She suggested that the Black Stone may be a glass fragment, or impactite, from the impact of a fragmented meteorite that fell 6000 years ago at Wabar craters, a site in the Rub' al Khali desert east of Mecca. A 2004 scientific analysis of the Wabar site suggests that the impact event occurred much more recently than previously thought and may have happened within the last 200–300 years.
The meteoritic hypothesis is viewed by geologists as doubtful. The Natural History Museum, London suggests that it may be a pseudometeorite; in other words, a terrestrial rock mistakenly attributed to a meteoritic origin. (2025). 9780521663038, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521663038
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