The houses of ancient Mecca pressed close upon the Ka'ba, the noblest families, who traced their descent from Kosai, the reputed founder of the city, having their dwellings immediately round the sanctuary. To the north of the Ka'ba was the Dar el-Nadwa, or place of assembly of the Koreish. The multiplication of pilgrims after Islam soon made it necessary to clear away the nearest dwellings and enlarge the place of prayer around the Ancient House. Omar, Othman and Ibn Jubair had all a share in this work, but the great founder of the mosque in its present form, with its spacious area and deep colonnades, was the caliph Mahdi, who spent enormous sums in bringing costly pillars from Egypt and Syria. The work was still incomplete at his death in A.D. 785, and was finished in less sumptuous style by his successor. Subsequent repairs and additions, extending down to Turkish times, have left little of Mahdi's work untouched, though a few of the pillars probably date from his days. There are more than five hundred pillars in all, of very various style and workmanship, and the enclosure--250 paces in length and 200 in breadth, according to Burckhardt's measurement--is entered by nineteen archways irregularly disposed. After the Ka'ba the principal points of interest in the mosque are the well Zamzam and the Maqam Ibrahim. The former is a deep shaft enclosed in a massive vaulted building paved with marble, and, according to Mahommedan tradition, is the source (corresponding to the Beer-lahai-roi of Gen. xvi. 14) from which Hagar drew water for her son Ishmael. The legend tells that the well was long covered up and rediscovered by 'Abd al-Mot[t.]alib, the grandfather of the Prophet. Sacred wells are familiar features of Semitic sanctuaries, and Islam, retaining the well, made a quasi-biblical story for it, and endowed its tepid waters with miraculous curative virtues. They are eagerly drunk by the pilgrims, or when poured over the body are held to give a miraculous refreshment after the fatigues of religious exercise; and the manufacture of bottles or jars for carrying the water to distant countries is quite a trade. Ibn Jubair mentions a curious superstition of the Meccans, who believed that the water rose in the shaft at the full moon of the month Shaban. On this occasion a great crowd, especially of young people, thronged round the well with shouts of religious enthusiasm, while the servants of the well dashed buckets of water over their heads. The Maqam of Abraham is also connected with a relic of heathenism, the ancient holy stone which once stood on the Ma'jan, and is said to bear the prints of the patriarch's feet. The whole legend of this stone, which is full of miraculous incidents, seems to have arisen from a misconception, the Maqam Ibrahim in the Koran meaning the sanctuary itself; but the stone, which is a block about 3 spans in height and 2 in breadth, and in shape "like a potter's furnace" (Ibn Jubair), is certainly very ancient. No