This chapter concerns the Kaʿba when its superstructure lies in ruins and only its substucture remains. Beginning with an account of destructions the Kaʿba has suffered throughout its history, the chapter explores what those ruinations tell us about the Kaʿba. Motivated by the knowledge that they have not occasioned the kind of apocalyptic anxiety that might be expected after the collapse of the world's alleged axis, the chapter asks how that could be. Four reasons are adduced in answer, two for each of the chapter‘s two parts. One reason speaks of the role of the Kaʿba at the apocalypse; another speaks of the fact that what ultimately matters about the Kaʿba are its allegedly unnatural, awesome foundations; a third speaks of the Kaʿba‘s incorporation in Sufism as the human heart; and the fourth speaks of the role of the Kaʿba in structuring foundational concepts of Islamic thought.

Part One: Destructions of the Kaʿba

For the Kaʿba, there is no equivalent of the Old Testament's Book of Lamentations, even though the Kaʿba, like the Temple, has seen wrath and fury rain down upon it at the hands of warring forces. That it has done so on a number of occasions, detailed below, makes the absence of poetically charged commentary even more remarkable, especially as lamentation (rithāʾ) over fallen towns and cities occupies an important position in Islamic literature. Lamentation is, for example, movingly employed to recount the destruction of al-Andalus at the hands of the Christians during the reconquista. Regarding the Kaʿba, however, following its first alleged martial destruction in 64/684 during the siege led by al-Ḥusayn b. Numayr (d. 67/686), and its second alleged martial destruction in 72/692 during the siege led by al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf (d. 95/714), at the most its ruins are compared to ‘the bosoms of [mourning] women’ (juyūb al-nisāʾ).

It is not that these two sieges have no significance in the early Islamic sources; to the contrary, many pages and verses are dedicated to what occasioned them and arose from them.