[FN#1] “Bayt Ullah” (House of Allah) and “Ka’abah,” i.e. cube (house), “la maison carree,” are synonymous. [FN#2] Ali Bey gives 536 feet 9 inches by 356 feet: my measurement is 257 paces by 210. Most Moslem authors, reckoning by cubits, make the parallelogram 404 by 310. [FN#3] On each short side I counted 24 domes; on the long, 35. This would give a total of 118 along the cloisters. The Arabs reckon in all 152; viz., 24 on the East side, on the North 36, on the South 36, one on the Mosque corner, near the Zarurah minaret; 16 at the porch of the Bab al-Ziyadah; and 15 at the Bab Ibrahim. The shape of these domes is the usual “Media-Naranja,” and the superstition of the Meccans informs the pilgrim that they cannot be counted. Books reckon 1352 pinnacles or battlements on the temple wall. [FN#4] The “common stone of the Meccah mountains” is a fine grey granite, quarried principally from a hill near the Bab al-Shabayki, which furnished material for the Ka’abah. Eastern authors describe the pillars as consisting of three different substances, viz.: Rukham, white marble, not “alabaster,” its general sense; Suwan, or granite (syenite?); and Hajar Shumaysi,” a kind of yellow sandstone, so called from “Bir Shumays,” a place on the Jeddah road near Haddah, the half-way station. [FN#5] I counted in the temple 554 pillars. It is, however, difficult to be accurate, as the four colonnades and the porticos about the two great gates are irregular; topographical observations, moreover, must here be made under difficulties. Ali Bey numbers them roughly at “plus de 500 colonnes et pilastres.” [FN#6] The author afterwards informs us, that “the temple has been so often ruined and repaired, that no traces of remote antiquity are to be found about it.” He mentions some modern and unimportant inscriptions upon the walls and over the gates. Knowing that many of the pillars were sent in ships from Syria and Egypt by the Caliph Al-Mahdi, a traveller would have expected better things. [FN#7] The reason being, that “those shafts formed of the Meccan stone are mostly in three pieces; but the marble shafts are in one piece.” [FN#8] To this may be added, that the façades of the cloisters are twenty-four along the short walls, and thirty-six along the others; they have stone ornaments, not inaptly compared to the French “fleur de lis.” The capital and bases of the outer pillars are grander and more regular than the inner; they support pointed arches, and the Arab secures his beloved variety by placing at every fourth arch a square pilaster. Of these there are on the long sides ten, on the short seven. [FN#9] I counted eight, not including the broad pavement which leads from the Bab al-Ziyadah to the Ka’abah, or the four cross branches which connect the main lines. These “Firash al-Hajar,” as they are called, also serve to partition off the area. One space for instance is called “Haswat al-Harim,” or the “Women’s sanded place,” because appropriated to female devotees.