[p.165] Omar Ibn Khatab first built a mosque round the Kaaba. In the year of the Hedjra 17, having purchased from the Koreysh the small houses which enclosed it, and carried a wall round the area, Othman Ibn Affan, in A.H. 27, enlarged the square; and in A.H. 63, when the heretic and rebel Yezyd was besieged at Mekka by Abdallah Ibn Zebeyr, the nephew of Aysha, the Kaaba was destroyed by fire, some say accidentally, while others affirm it to have been done by the slinging machines directed against it by Yezyd from the top of Djebel Kobeys, where he had taken post. After his expulsion, Ibn Zebeyr enlarged the enclosure of the wall by purchasing some more houses of the Mekkawys, and by including their site, after having levelled them, within the wall. He also rebuilt the Kaaba upon an enlarged scale, raising it from eighteen pikes (its height under the Koreysh) to twenty-seven pikes, or nearly equal to what it was in the time of the Beni Kossay. He opened two doors into it, level with the surface of the area, and constructed a double roof, supported by three instead of six pillars, the former number. This new building was twenty-five pikes in length, twenty in breadth on one side, and twenty- one on the other. In the interior, the dry well, called Byr Ahsef, still remained, wherein the treasures were deposited, particularly the golden vessels that had been presented to the Kaaba. It was at this period that the structure took the name of Kaaba, which is said to be derived from kaab, a die or cube, the form which the building now assumed. Its former title was the House of God, (Beitullah) or the Old House, a name still often applied to it. Twenty years after the last-mentioned date, El Hadjadj Ibn Yousef el Thakafy, then governor of Mekka, disliking the enlarged size of the Kaaba, reduced it to the proportions it had in the time of the Koreysh, cutting off six pikes from its length; he also restored the wall called Hedjer, which Ibn Zebeyr had included within the building. The size then given to the edifice is the same as that of the present structure, it having been scrupulously adhered to in all the repairs or re-erections which subsequently took place. Towards the end of the first century of the Hedjra, Wolyd Ibn Abd el Melek was the first who reared columns in the mosque. He [p.166] caused their capitals to be covered with thin plates of gold, and incurred a great expense for decorations: it is related that all the golden ornaments which he gave to the building were sent from Toledo in Spain, and carried upon mules through Africa and Arabia. Abou Djafar el Mansour, one of the Abassides, in A.H. 139, enlarged the north and south sides of the mosque, and made it twice as large as it had been before, so that it now occupied a space of forty-seven pikes and a half in length. He also paved the ground adjoining the well of Zemzem with marble.