Also Kaaba, Kaabeh. [Arab. kasbah square (or cubical) house.]
The sacred edifice at Mecca, which contains the venerated ‘black stone,’ and is the ‘Holy of Holies’ of Islam. (See quot. 1883, and a photographic view in the work cited.)
1734. Sale, Koran, 16. This is the Caaba, which is usually called, by way of eminence, the House.
1781. Gibbon, Decl. & F., IX. l. 212. The genuine antiquity of the CAABA ascends beyond the Christian æra.
1798. in Wellesley’s Desp., 82. The illustrious Kaaba is the object of veneration to the followers of truth.
1855. Milman, Lat. Chr. (1864), II. IV. i. 180. The temple of the Caaba was at once, as is usual among Oriental nations, the centre of the commerce and of the religion of Arabia.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, Character, viii. 135. They … measure with an English footrule every cell of the Inquisition, every Turkish caaba, every Holy of holies.
1883. Sunday at Home, 11/2. It [the Káabeh] is a plain, unornamented oblong of massive masonry, thirty-eight feet by thirty square, and forty feet high; covered with a heavy black cloth, of a fabric of mixed silk and cotton, which has a richly embroidered band worked in bullion, about two and a half feet deep, encircling it about ten feet from the top, with the Kalumna, the Moslem profession of faith wrought in gold letters; while the whole of the cover is damasked with the same characters.
