Black Stone of the Kaaba

The Black Stone (al-Hajar al-Aswad) is a dark, venerated stone set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the cube-shaped building at the heart of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca toward which Muslims turn in prayer. Now in several fragments held within a silver frame, it stands about waist height at the corner where pilgrims begin the tawaf, the sevenfold circling of the Kaaba during the hajj and the umrah. Following the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, pilgrims try to kiss the stone, touch it, or, in the crowds, raise a hand toward it in salutation.

Islamic tradition regards the stone as belonging to the sanctuary from its founding by Abraham and Ishmael. Its identity as the honoured stone of the Kaaba has been continuous and is not disputed, which is why it is classed here as attested. A separate and much narrower question, what the stone is made of, and where it originally came from, has intrigued geologists, but because the object cannot be removed or sampled, that question remains open. The stone's religious meaning is independent of its mineralogy.

The stone was venerated in Mecca before Islam and is bound up with the traditions of the Kaaba's founding by Abraham and Ishmael. A famous account preserved in the early biographies tells how, around 605 CE, the Quraysh rebuilt the Kaaba and fell into dispute over which clan should have the honour of returning the Black Stone to its place; the young Muhammad, asked to arbitrate, laid the stone on a cloak whose corners the clan leaders raised together, and then set it in the wall himself, satisfying all parties.

In 930 CE the Qarmatians, a radical sect, attacked Mecca during the pilgrimage, massacred pilgrims and carried the Black Stone away to their stronghold in Bahrayn (eastern Arabia). It was held for around two decades before being returned, and by then it had been broken; ever since, its pieces have been secured within a band of silver. Successive rulers, Abbasid, Ottoman and, today, the Saudi state through the General Authority for the Care and Management of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque, have maintained the setting and, periodically, renewed the silver casing.

The Black Stone remains a fixed point of the pilgrimage. To reach and kiss it is prized but not required, and Islamic teaching, expressed in a well-known statement attributed to the Caliph Umar, holds that the stone is honoured in obedience to the Prophet's example and can neither harm nor benefit of itself, a caution against treating the veneration as worship of the stone.

The Black Stone presents an unusual case, because there are really two questions and only one of them is contested. The stone's identity, that this is the stone venerated in the corner of the Kaaba, in continuous honour since before Islam, is not in dispute at all; that is the sense in which the object is "attested." What has been debated, and only by outside observers, is its physical origin.

Since Paul Partsch proposed in 1857 that the stone was a meteorite, the idea has been widely repeated, appealing to the notion of a stone fallen from heaven. Geologists have pushed back. In 1974 Robert Dietz and John McHone argued, on the basis of reported diffusion banding, that the stone is far more likely an agate; others have suggested a basalt or an impact glass. No conclusion is possible, because the stone's religious status means it cannot be detached, drilled or exported for laboratory analysis, and no controlled sample exists. Descriptions rest on visual inspection from close quarters and on old reports.

The respectful and accurate position is therefore to record the tradition, a venerated stone linked to Abraham and set by the Prophet, as the object's uncontested identity, while noting that its mineral composition is genuinely unresolved and that the "meteorite" label often attached to it in popular writing is unproven. The two matters should not be confused.