from Simak, from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbas, from his father, who said: “My nephew and I were carrying stones on our necks, with our waist-wrappers underneath the stones. Whenever people came near, we would fasten the garments around ourselves. While he was walking in front of me, he suddenly fell flat on his face. I hurried over, threw down my stone, and found him staring up at the sky. I asked, ‘What is the matter with you?’ He stood up, picked up his waist-wrapper, and said, ‘I have been forbidden to walk about naked.’ I kept this incident to myself for fear people would say he had gone mad.” Qays ibn al-Rabiʿ related a similar report from Simak.

Hammad ibn Salamah narrated from Dawud ibn Abi Hind, from Simak ibn Harb, from Khalid ibn ʿArʿarah, from ʿAli (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: “When they quarreled over the Black Stone, agreeing that the first person to enter through this gate would place it in position, the first to enter was the Prophet ﷺ, so they exclaimed, ‘The Trustworthy One has come!’ ”

Muslim al-Zinji related from Ibn Abi Nujayh, from his father, who said: “Some men of Quraysh gathered and spoke about the construction of the Kaʿbah. They said, ‘It was built of dry, unmortared stones; its door was at ground level; it had no roof; the kiswah (cloth covering) merely hung down the walls and was tied from the top on the inside. Inside the Kaʿbah, to the right of the entrance, there was a pit in which gifts to the Kaʿbah had been placed since the time of Jurhum. A group from Jurhum once raided that pit and stole its contents, whereupon Allah sent that serpent, which guarded the Kaʿbah and what was in it for five hundred years, until Quraysh rebuilt it. The two horns of the ram were hanging inside along with various ornaments.’ He went on: ‘It would take thirty men to move one of its stones; when they tried, the walls would tremble because the stones were interlocked. Al-Walid ibn al-Mughira inserted a crowbar between two stones; a piece splintered off. A man picked it up, but it sprang from his hand…’ ”