At the site of the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, where countless Muslims worship every year, a pilgrimage is carried out in Mecca like this around a mysterious black house, which is also known as the "Kaaba".
So what exactly is in this "Kaaba"? Why do Muslims make such pilgrimages to it?
Mecca, the full name is Mecca. Mukarama means land of honor, mecca of honor. Historically, the most important function of Mecca in the early days was to serve as a commercial center. As early as the seventh century, when various tribes and merchants near Saudi Arabia gathered in Mecca to trade, countless livestock, grain and grass, gold circulated here, and countless caravans gained wealth here, and it was precisely because of this prosperous commercial activity that the city of Mecca had a certain status in ancient times.
In 570 A.D., Muhammad was born, and in 610 A.D., he received the Apocalypse and began to spread the faith to those around him.
The city of Mecca, as the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, has since been firmly bound to Islam and has become the first holy city of Islam.
And in the Muslim faith, according to the requirements of the Qur'an, every devout Muslim believer must abide by the five creeds.
They are prayer, confession, fasting, zakat, and hajj. The hajj here requires these Muslims to come to Mecca at least once in their lifetime, to make a personal pilgrimage here.
Muslim believers who have completed the above five major believers will be honored by other believers as Haji, which means hajj. It is also true that more than 1.9 billion Muslims in the world today have traveled to Mecca to fulfill the five functions of the Qur'an.
At the heart of the pilgrimage is the Kaaba, the building we saw at the beginning of the book, which is a building that revolves around many Muslims.
According to legend, the mysterious kaaba existed in the city of Mecca long before the founding of the Islamic school. He is said to have been founded by Abraham, or what Christianity calls Abraham. But the Kaaba building, as one of the earliest religious facilities, actually served for a considerable time as a sacred place for Arab polytheism, with more than 360 idols enshrined inside.
What is in the holy land of Islam, the house where 1.9 billion people worship?
After Muhammad was born, the Kaaba was repeatedly destroyed by fire in 600 AD, and the various tribes in Mecca at that time were long at war over who would repair the Kaaba and who would place the meteorites in the sky.
Until the appearance of Muhammad, he not only mediated the dispute between the tribes and made them jointly repair the kaaba, but also placed the black stone, that is, the meteorite, in the kaaba on a cloak, which was jointly held up by the tribal leaders and placed the black stone at the same time.
After Muhammad founded Islam, after a long struggle, Muhammad led the Islamic believers in Mecca to defeat the Arab polytheism at that time, and he led his followers to remove the polytheistic murals in the Kaaba at that time, and also smashed the polytheistic idols enshrined by the Arabs in the Kaaba at that time, and completely transformed the place into a sacred place of Islam, which is why all Muslim believers must face Mecca when praying.
Today, in the city of Mecca, there is a black cube of 9× 12×15 meters standing on the ground, which is today's Kaaba. The Kaaba is also considered by Muslim believers to be the house of the Allah, and it is the dwelling place of the gods in the mortal world.
The house itself is made of stone and is covered with a black dust cover made of silk. It is worth mentioning that all the golden parts of the Kaaba that we can see, including the decoration and the Qur'anic scriptures, are hand-embroidered from gold silk, and the golden Qur'an on the dust cover of the Kaaba alone requires at least five hundred kilograms of gold silk thread, as the holiest place of Islam, the interior of the Kaaba is only visited by the most influential Islamic leaders in the world invited by the King of Saudi Arabia during the annual Hajj season.
According to related introductions, the interior of the Kaaba is relatively empty, only the ceiling position is suspended with many lamps, and there is a small table on the right side. Moreover, the Kaaba has a lock made of pure gold, and after the Saudi king opens it, he will lead the Islamic leaders to clean the interior of the Kaaba and complete the pilgrimage. And because Islam does not allow for idolatry, there are no idols or portraits in the interior of the Kaaba, but more of a religious significance.
Today, the existence of the Islamic holy land Kaaba, in addition to its extremely strong religious significance, has contributed to saudi arabia's economic construction?
In fact, the gold cover and room clothes used for dust prevention on the outside of the Kaaba will be replaced once a year. As a sacred product, the curtain of the Heavenly Gate has two major treatments according to tradition.
The first is to take the golden curtain as a gift and give it to the good country as a whole.
The second is to break down the golden curtain and send it to Muslim temples and institutions around the world after being framed.
In addition, today, with the rapid development of transportation, the distance between the world is no longer an issue. Muslims around the world fly to Mecca during the Hajj season every year to fulfill the Five Merits, and in 2019 alone, Mecca received more than 10 million pilgrims during the Hajj season.
Such a huge flow of traffic has also brought a large number of jobs to Mecca. For example, according to the temple management standards, the kaaba needs to clean all facilities four times a day, and each time it needs more than 1800 staff members to work together, not only to clean the ground with electric vehicles, floor washers and other equipment, but also to clean and tidy up the garbage cans inside and outside the temple.
In addition to these, they will also screen out a part of the pious and careful staff to clean the doors, lampstands, frescoes, etc. of the entire pilgrimage site, and do not allow the holy places to suffer from the slightest pollution, even the carpets that kneel during the prayer, after cleaning, also need to spray rose perfume to avoid odors.
For the Saudi government, the Hajj season is not only of great religious value, but also has a lot of potential in terms of economy. Because the existence of holy places has become the backbone of Saudi Arabia's tourism industry, tens of millions of Muslims will come from all over the world every Hajj season, and their accommodation, food, sightseeing and other behaviors will make Saudi Arabia earn tens of billions of dollars in the annual Hajj season. All in all, the existence of the Hajj season has not only led to the local economic development of Mecca, but also contributed considerable strength to the spread and development of Muslim teachings.