Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—except for its additional vertical height, which he ordered him to leave unchanged. It has remained in this form to the present day.

This is a matter open to independent legal judgment (1). Ibn al-Zubayr and those among the early generations who agreed with him deemed it right to restore the Kaaba to the form described by the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—when he said to Aisha:

“Were it not that your people had only recently emerged from the Age of Ignorance, I would have demolished the Kaaba and rebuilt it upon the foundations of Abraham. When Quraysh built the Kaaba, they did not build it to its full dimensions, and I would have made a rear entrance for it.”

Al-Bukhārī said, “That is, a door.”

Aisha also said: I heard the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—say:

“Were it not that your people had only recently emerged from the Age of Ignorance—or he said, from unbelief—I would have spent the Kaaba’s treasury in the cause of Allah, placed its door at ground level, and incorporated part of the Hijr into it.”

In one version in Muslim’s Sahih:

“I would have made two doors for it: an eastern door and a western door, and I would have added (2) six cubits of the Hijr to it.” (3)

And Muslim [narrated] [in his Sahih] from Atā ibn Abī Rabāh (4), who said (5): “When