The Black Stone and the Cloak

When the Prophet ﷺ was about thirty-five, a flood damaged the Ka'bah and Quraysh resolved to rebuild it, vowing to use only pure wealth in the task: no usury, no money taken wrongly. The clans divided the work among themselves, and the walls rose, until they reached the place of the Black Stone, the stone from Paradise that Ibrahim (as) had set in the corner.

Then the building stopped. Every clan claimed the honour of lifting the Stone into its place, and the dispute swelled until oaths were sworn and a pact of blood was prepared; the sources say one group dipped their hands in a bowl of blood, vowing to fight to the death. The Sacred House had nearly become the cause of the war it existed to forbid.

An elder proposed a way out: let the first man to enter from the gate judge between us. And the first to walk in was Muhammad ﷺ. When they saw him they cried out: it is al-Amin! We are content with him! It is Muhammad! The crisis had elected the one man the whole city already trusted.

He ﷺ asked for a cloak, spread it on the ground, and placed the Stone in its centre with his own hands. Then he said: let the chief of every clan grasp an edge. Together they lifted it, every clan sharing the honour, and when it reached the corner he ﷺ set the Stone into the wall himself. No blood, no victor, no humiliated party: an answer so simple and so just that fourteen centuries later it is still taught as the model of conflict resolution.

Five years later, in a cave above that same city, the man who had carried the Stone would be given something far heavier to set in place.