Holy Kaaba

After the placing of the  Black Stone in the Eastern corner of the Kaaba, Ibrahim received a revelation, in which God told the aged prophet that he should now go and proclaim the pilgrimage to mankind, so that men may come both from Arabia and from lands far away, on camel and on foot.(Holy Qur'an 22-27) Going by the dates attributed to the patriarchs, Ishmael is believed to have been born in roughly 2150 BCE, with Issac being born a hundred years later.Therefore, Islamic scholars have generally assumed that the Kaaba was constructed by Ibrahim around 2130 BCE. The Kaaba is, therefore, believed by Muslims to be more than a millennium older than Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, which is believed to have been finished in 1007 BCE.These dates remain consistent with the Muslim belief that the Kaaba is the first and thus oldest mosque in history.

Prophet Muhammad(PBUH) era

At the time of Prophet Muhammed(PBUH) (CE 570–632 A.D), his tribe, the Quraysh, was in charge of the Kaaba, which was at that time a shrine containing hundreds of idols representing Arabian Tribal Idols and other religious figures. Muhammad earned the enmity of his tribe by claiming the Kaaba to be dedicated to the worship of Allah alone and by having all the other idols evicted. The Quraysh persecuted and harassed him continuously,so he and his followers eventually migrated to Medina in 622.

Islamic histories also mention a reconstruction of the Kaaba around 600 A.D. A story found in Ibn Ishaq's SIrat Rasul Allah, one of the biographies of Muhammad (as reconstructed and translated by Guillaume), describes Muhammad settling a quarrel between Meccan clans as to which clan should set the Black Stone cornerstone in place. According to Ishaq's biography, Muhammad's solution was to have all the clan elders raise the cornerstone on a cloak, after which Muhammad set the stone into its final place with his own hands.Ibn Ishaq says that the timber for the reconstruction of the Kaaba came from a Greek ship that had been wrecked on the Red Sea coast at Shu'ayba and that the work was undertaken by a Coptic carpenter called Baqum.

After this migration, or Hijra , theMuslim Community became a political and military force, continuously repelling Meccan attacks. In 630 A.D, two years after signing the Treaty of Hudaibhiyya, the Meccan Quraysh attacked the Bedouin Khuza'a, thereby breaking the peace treaty. The Muslims emerged as victors in the battle that followed this incident and Muhammad entered Mecca with his followers; they proceeded to the Kaaba. He refused, however, to enter the Kaaba while there were idols in it and so sent Abu Sufyan Ibn Harb and Mughira Ibn Shu'aba to remove them.

Narrated Ibn Abbas: When Allah's Apostle arrived in Mecca, he refused to enter the Ka'ba while there were idols in it. So he ordered that they be taken out. The pictures of the (Prophets) Ibrahim and Ishmael, holding arrows of divination in their hands, were carried out. The Prophet said, "May Allah ruin them (i.e. the infidels) for they knew very well that they (i.e. Ibrahim and Ishmael) never drew lots by these (divination arrows). Then the Prophet entered the Ka'ba and said. "Allahu Akbar" in all its directions and came out and not offer any prayer therein.

—Sahih Al-Bukhari,  Book 59, Hadith 584

The Kaaba was re-dedicated as an Islamic house of worship and henceforth the annual pilgrimage was to be a Muslim rite, the Hajj, with visits to the Kaaba and other sacred sites around Mecca.

After Prophet Muhammad(PBUH)

The Kaaba has been repaired and reconstructed many times since Muhammad's day. The Umayyads, during the last days of Yazid Bin Muawiya destroyed the Kaaba in Muharram 64 (Hijri date, 683 A.D.) and before the next Hajj Abdullah Ibn Al Zubair , an early Muslim who ruled Mecca for many years between the death of ʿAli and the consolidation of Ummayad power, rebuilt it to include the hatīm. He did so on the basis of a tradition (found in several hadith collections) that the hatīm was a remnant of the foundations of the Abrahamic Kaaba, and that Prophet Muhammad himself had wished to rebuild so as to include it.This structure was destroyed (or partially destroyed) in 683 A.D., during the war between Abdullah Ibn Al Zubair and Umayyad forces commanded by Al Hajjaj Bin Yusuf. Al-Hajjaj used stone-throwing catapults against the Meccans.

The Ummayads under ʿAbdu I-Mlaik Ibn Marwan finally reunited all the former Islamic possessions and ended the long civil war. In 693 A.D he had the remnants of al-Zubayr's Kaaba razed, and rebuilt on the foundations set by the Quraysh.The Kaaba returned to the cube shape it had taken during Muhammad's time.During the Hajj of 930 A.D, the Quarmatians attacked Mecca, defiled the Zamzam Well with the bodies of pilgrims and stole the Black Stone, taking it to the oasis region of Eastern Arabia known as al-Aḥsāʾ, where it remained until the Abbasids ransomed it in 952 A.D. The basic shape and structure of the Kaaba have not changed since then.

After heavy rains and flooding in 1629, the walls of the Kaaba collapsed and the Masjid was damaged. The same year, during the reign of Murad IV, the Kaaba was rebuilt with granite stones from Mecca and the Masjid was renovated.

Cleaning

The building is opened twice a year for a ceremony known as "the cleaning of the Ka'ba." This ceremony takes place roughly thirty days before the start of the month of Ramadan and thirty days before the start of Hajj.

The keys to the Ka'aba are held by the Bani Shaiba(بني شيبة) tribe. Members of the tribe greet visitors to the inside of the Kaaba on the occasion of the cleaning ceremony. A small number of dignitaries and foreign diplomats are invited to participate in the ceremony.The governor of Mecca leads the honoured guests who ritually clean the structure, using simple brooms. Washing of the Ka'ba is done with a mixture of water from the Zamzam well and Persian rosewater.