Thomas Carlyle the British famous philosopher in his series of lectures given in May of 1840 under the title Heroes and Heroes Worship, mentioned profoundly the Kaabah in these words;
“Diodorus Siculus mentions this Kaabah in a way not to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honored temple in his time; that is, some half-century before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some man might see it fall out of Heaven! It stands now beside the Well Zamzam; the Kaabah is built over both. A Well is in all places a beautiful affecting object, gushing out like life from the hard earth;—still more so in those hot dry countries, where it is the first condition of being. The Well Zamzam has its name from the bubbling sound of the waters, Zamzam; they think it is the Well which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness: the aerolite and it have been sacred now, and had a Kaabah over them, for thousands of years. A curious object, that Kaabah! There it stands at this hour, in the black cloth-covering the Sultan sends it yearly; “twenty-seven cubits high;” with the circuit, with the double circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows of lamps and quaint ornaments: the lamps will be lighted again this night,—to glitter again under the stars. An authentic fragment of the oldest Past. It is the Kiblah (direction of prayer) of all Muslims: from Delhi, all onwards to Morocco, the eyes of innumerable praying men are turned towards it, five times, this day and all days: one of the most notable centers in the Habitation of Men. It had been from the sacredness attached to this Kaabah Stone and Hagar’s Well, from the pilgrimages of all tribes of Arabs thither, that Mecca took its rise as a town”.
