109Book Reviews

The Kaʿba Orientations: 
Readings in Islam’s Ancient House

Simon O’Meara 
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. 264 pages.

Every day, Muslims orient themselves to the Kaʿba for ritual prayer, just as 
they avoid doing so when defecating or urinating. Every year, they flock 
to Mecca to perform “pilgrimage of the House” (ḥajj al-bayt), a Qurʾan-
ic command for all who are able (Q. 3:97). Even in death, Muslims face 
the House of God; those presiding over the burial will be sure to turn the 
deceased towards the Kaʿba in their final place of rest. Despite the Kaʿba’s 
central role in Islamic culture, it has remained relatively obscure in scholar-
ship on Islamic art and architecture. In this inspiring study, Simon O’Meara 
seeks to understand how the Kaʿba works in the Islamic world, “and what 
that work enables for Islam and generates for the Islamic world” (1). 

The title may lead some readers to suppose O’Meara’s work to be a 
literary history, perhaps tracing descriptions of the Kaʿba over time. This is 
not the case; he adopts an approach that is both disciplinarily creative and 
evidentially extensive. Inspired by Erwin Panofsky’s iconological method 
(applied to Islamic Art by Ernst Grube and endorsed by the late Shahab 
Ahmed), O’Meara “moves to and fro between the Ancient House of Is-
lam and its representation in the myriad documents pertaining to Islam,” 
especially those dating to the early, medieval, and pre- and early modern 
periods (6). These “myriad documents” include the “pictorial and textual, 
Arabic and Persian, Sunni and Shiite, scriptural and theological, historical 
and geographical, legal and mystical, cartographic and cosmological, ar-
chaeological, poetic and biographical” (4). 

In chapter one (“The Kaʿba as Qibla”), O’Meara shows that the qibla was 
at the heart of a “deliberate play of analogies between kingship and divin-
ity,” reflecting its more customary meaning as a “direction or goal deemed 
sacred” (23-24). From the Umayyad caliph Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Mālik (r. 
96-9/715-17) to various Qajar shahs, rulers belonging to a myriad of dynas-
ties were likened to the qibla, thus reflecting their place in the divine order. 
In some cases, this honorific was also rendered architecturally, especially in 
the case of the Abbasids but also in the Mughal period of India. The ruler’s 
audience hall was oriented against the qibla so that only they faced Mecca, 
and their subjects in turn faced them. In this way rulers at once benefited 



110 The American Journal of Islam and Society 37:3-4

from, and vied with, the qibla’s symbolic register (38). Another materi-
al manifestation of the qibla is in the central or earliest quarters of some 
Islamic cities. Garrison towns dating chiefly to the first hundred years of 
Islamic urbanism, among them Kufa and Basra, were oriented towards the 
qibla at their genesis, a practice which continued in a more limited fashion 
in the medieval period.    

In chapter two (“The Kaʿba as Navel”), O’Meara argues that the Kaʿba 
has functions that are both generative and organizational. Geographical 
divisions of the world from as early as the third/ninth century display a 
centrifugal vector in which the world is ordered from, and umbilically tied 
to, the Kaʿba (46). Later qibla diagrams show “a Kaʿba-centred world in 
which the Kaʿba occupies the centre and the cities and localities occupy 
everywhere else” (46). In late medieval and pre-modern mappi mundi, the 
world is often represented as if uncoiling from the Kaʿba. This is signifi-
cant, argues O’Meara, because early Islamic traditions represent the Kaʿba 
as the site of the world’s generation. Moreover, early traditions hold that the 
corners of the Kaʿba gave their names to the regions of the world and that 
the Kaʿba’s sides named the four winds. The Kaʿba is also at the center of 
diagrams representing Islamic cosmological tradition, highlighting its role 
at the heart of the cosmic axis and its connection to the uppermost, celes-
tial Kaʿba, the “Frequented House” (al-Bayt al-Maʿmūr). Based on Kant’s 
proposition that only bifurcated, bilateral bodies can orient space, O’Meara 
maintains that that the Kaʿba has a world-orienting capacity precisely be-
cause it was conceptualized as this type of body (60).

O’Meara moves spatially closer to the Kaʿba in chapter three (“The 
Kaʿba as Substructure”) by investigating why, if the Kaʿba is the Muslims’ 
axis mundi, its many destructions have not occasioned apocalyptic fear and 
grief. He offers four explanations: firstly, none of the destructions of the 
Kaʿba have fit the signs of the apocalypse that are established in Prophetic 
hadiths. Secondly, the unearthly foundations of the Kaʿba are what count 
as the axis mundi and not what is built upon them. These foundations are 
the remains of the archetypal Kaʿba and have never been destroyed. Third-
ly, in Sufism the Kaʿba is divided into two earthly forms: “the base, stone 
Kaʿba of Mecca and the noble, corporeal Kaʿba of the heart” (79). As long 
the corporeal is preserved, the fate of the material is less consequential. 
Fourthly, because the Kaʿba is as much an intellectual phenomenon as a 
material object, “it is insignificant if the material Kaʿba falls into ruin, be-
cause the concept-facilitating Kaʿba lives on” (79). In particular, the Kaʿba 



 111Book Reviews

facilitates abstract thought by having primordially structured, bodily de-
rived concepts for that thought—for example, inside/outside, left/right, 
and front/rear. This latter explanation is perhaps the least convincing of 
the four, though O’Meara himself accepts it is conjectural in nature and 
almost solely reliant on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s philosophy of 
embodied cognition. 

In chapter four (“The Kaʿba as Beloved”), O’Meara argues that a pil-
grim’s performance of ṭawāf represents a temporary fusion with the Kaʿ-
ba, and that subsequently cleaving to the Multazam (the area between 
the Kaʿba’s Black Stone and door) or entering the Ḥijr (the space within 
the semi-circular wall to the north-west of the Kaʿba) upon completion 
of ṭawāf are supererogatory acts which express this unification by placing 
pilgrims at once inside and outside of the Kaʿba. In this analysis of the 
experiential dimensions ṭawāf, O’Meara relies perhaps too greatly on Ibn 
ʿArabī’s account of his first visit to Mecca in 598/1202. However, he does 
cite, albeit briefly, other Sufi luminaries in order to show that Ibn ʿArabī’s 
experience was not an entirely isolated one. Chapter five (“The House as 
Holder”) moves beyond the exterior into the interior, arguing that the Kaʿ-
ba’s emptiness of cultic content and near emptiness of material content can 
be interpreted as a void that is constitutive of the Kaʿba’s mystery. On this 
basis, argues O’Meara, the ultimate work of the Kaʿba is “signifying the 
place where no thing is, place-holding the symbolic order of Islam” (129).       

Based on descriptions and depictions of the Kaʿba by travellers, pil-
grims and miniaturists, O’Meara argues in chapter six (“The House as 
Dwelling”) that the way in which the Kiswa is hung signals when a divine 
presence is imagined to dwell within the Kaʿba. He observes that in Per-
sian miniatures, a tucked-up Kiswa meant that the Kaʿba was “imagined to 
be divinely animated from within: an active participant in the illustrated 
events and a House full of celestial life” (157). O’Meara disagrees that the 
Kiswa may in fact be tucked up because they depict the Kaʿba as it was 
during Hajj season, or because the illustrated events took place during the 
Hajj. Even if O’Meara is correct, there may be a third reason for depicting 
a raised Kiswa: it emphasizes the Kaʿba’s role as a site of forgiveness in and 
of itself. Perhaps this is why it is always the Kaʿba’s door which is shown 
uncovered, with pilgrims gathered around it with their hands raised in sup-
plication.     

O’Meara’s argument that the Kiswa animates the Kaʿba in more real 
terms during Hajj season is more persuasive. He explains that when the 



112 The American Journal of Islam and Society 37:3-4

old Kiswa is gathered up half-way, it is perceived to be in the consecrated 
state of iḥrām, along with the pilgrims around it. The old Kiswa is replaced 
by the new on or very close to the third day of the Hajj, when pilgrims 
too come out of iḥrām. However, the Kiswa remains shortened, even if it 
is more elaborately hung, until the end of pilgrimage season, when it is 
finally let all the way down. In the intervening period, the Kaʿba was open 
for public entry, as symbolised by its new, raised Kiswa. O’Meara also ar-
gues that the Kiswa robes, not veils, the Kaʿba, since it traces and reveals 
its form, becoming like skin to the Kaʿba’s body. It is thus honoring the 
Kaʿba, not hiding it. Nevertheless, it must be noted that pilgrims (including 
Ibn ʿArabī) often referred to the Kiswa as a veil. Perhaps the raised Kiswa 
in the days of Hajj suggested to pilgrims that the Kaʿba had lifted its veil, 
much like women were mandated to lift their veils in these days as per the 
rules of iḥrām. Similarly, the raised Kiswa post-Hajj might have suggested 
to pilgrims that the Kaʿba’s veil had been lifted in order to allow entry into 
the structure.

Even if O’Meara’s monograph is the first exclusively dedicated to the 
subject of the Kaʿba, his work brings together a wealth of individual articles 
and chapters dedicated to various aspects of the building and drawing from 
different historical and cultural settings in the Islamic world. Especially in 
his earlier chapters (1 to 2), O’Meara combines his own readings of early 
Islamic tradition with an impressive treatment of this secondary literature. 
In later chapters (3 to 6), O’Meara pursues more novel lines of enquiry, 
often through a creative disciplinary and evidentiary mode. While doing 
so, he continues to critique and develop theories found in existing litera-
ture. Considering the original nature of O’Meara’s study, a more extensive 
concluding chapter may have been useful as means of bringing together his 
findings. Future contributions might consider examining representations 
of the Kaʿba in myriad documents from a greater range of historical and 
cultural settings in the Islamic world. O’Meara’s pioneering study has paved 
the path not only for these future studies, but also for all studies of Islamic 
art and architecture that are grounded in Islamic culture and tradition. 

Yahya Nurgat
PhD candidate in History

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

doi: 10.35632/ajis.v37i3-4.1425