Tawaf

Tawaf is the rite of circling the Kaaba, the cubic shrine at the centre of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca that Muslims face in prayer from everywhere on earth. The pilgrim walks seven times around the House in a counter-clockwise direction, keeping it on the left, beginning and ending at the corner set with the Black Stone, which the pilgrim salutes, touches or points toward at the start of each circuit. It is a central act of both the greater pilgrimage, the hajj, and the lesser pilgrimage, the umrah, and it may also be performed as a devotion in its own right by anyone present at the mosque.

The Qur'an ties the rite to the primordial dedication of the House, instructing that it be purified for those who circle it, and the tradition traces its establishment to Abraham and his son Ishmael, who are said to have raised the Kaaba's foundations. The circling enacts a visible unity: pilgrims of every nation and rank move as one body around a single point, the wealthy and the poor in the same two seamless white garments of ihram.

The manuals distinguish several tawaf by their place in the pilgrimage, the arrival circling on reaching Mecca, the essential circling that is a pillar of the hajj performed after standing at Arafat, and the farewell circling with which the pilgrim takes leave of the House. Ritual purity is required, and men performing the arrival tawaf traditionally bare the right shoulder and quicken their pace in the first circuits in a gesture recalling the early Muslims' show of vigour. The circling is commonly followed by prayer at the Station of Abraham and by drinking from the well of Zamzam.

Tawaf is frequently paired with the sai, the walking between the hills of Safa and Marwa, the two rites together forming the core of the umrah. Interpreters have long read the endless circling as an image of a life oriented wholly around God, the pilgrim's small orbit set against the vast one, though the tradition holds the rite to be obeyed as commanded whether or not its wisdom is grasped.