through the Gate of Banū Shaybah. He called for a cloth, spread it out, placed the Stone at its center, and ordered every clan to grasp one edge of the cloth. They lifted it together, whereupon the Messenger of Allah ﷺ took the Stone in his own hands and set it in place.

Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān (1) reports: Aṣbagh ibn Faraj related to us, Ibn Wahb related from Yūnus, from Ibn Shihāb, who said:

When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ reached adolescence, a woman perfumed the Kaʿbah (2). A spark from her brazier leapt onto the Kaʿbah’s covering and set it ablaze, so the building was torn down. When they had rebuilt it and reached the spot of the Corner, the clans of Quraysh disputed over which of them should lift it.

They said, “Let us make the first person who appears our arbiter.” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ emerged—a youth wearing a striped sash—and they accepted his judgment. He ordered that the Corner be placed upon a cloth; then he brought forward the chief of every clan and gave each one a corner of the cloth. They raised it together, and he climbed up and positioned the Stone himself. With every passing year he grew only in esteem, until they called him “the Trustworthy” even before revelation came to him. Thereafter they would not slaughter a camel without seeking him out so that he might invoke blessings upon it.

This version is sound and comes from al-Zuhrī’s sīra, though it is unusual in its wording, “when he reached puberty.” The widely accepted report is that the incident occurred when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was thirty-five years old, as explicitly stated by Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasar (may Allah have mercy on him).

Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah said: “The rebuilding of the Kaʿbah took place fifteen years before the Prophet’s mission,” and the same has been reported by Mujāhid, ʿUrwah, Muḥammad ibn Jubayr ibn Muṭʿim, and others. Allah knows best.

Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah also said: “There were fifteen years between the War of al-Fijār and the rebuilding of the Kaʿbah.”

I say: The War of al-Fijār and the Pact of al-Fuḍūl occurred in the same year, when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was twenty years old (3), and this supports what Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq stated—Allah knows best.

Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah (4) further said: “What impelled Quraysh to rebuild the Kaʿbah was that floods would come down upon it from above the embankment they had erected, undermining the structure, and they feared that water would enter it.

“There was also a man named Maliḥ who had stolen the Kaʿbah’s perfume. Quraysh therefore wanted to reinforce its walls and raise its door so that only those they permitted could enter. They gathered funds and workmen, then set out early to demolish it, full of fear and caution lest Allah prevent them from what they intended. The first man to climb up and remove part of it was al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah. When the people saw what al-Walīd had done they followed his lead and dismantled it, finding the result pleasing. But when they sought to begin rebuilding and brought their craftsmen, not one of them was able to advance a single step; they claimed that they saw…"