Kiswa
At the Kiswa ( Arabic كسوة, DMG Kiswa ; also Kiswah ) is a large black brocade cloth that covers the Kaaba (the largest shrine of Islam ) in Mecca in Saudi Arabia .
Magnificent ornaments and Koran suras embroidered from gold and silver wire decorate the kiswa at around two thirds of its height.
With an average humidity of 90 percent in Mecca, the embroidery fades very quickly; the gold becomes dull and dark, the silver oxidizes. Therefore, not only the decorations, but the entire kiswa must be replaced every year.
Making the Kiswa
In the state-owned Kiswa factory ( Arabic مصنع كسوة الكعبة المشرفة, DMG Maṣnaʿ Kiswat al-Kaʿba al-mušarrafa ) in Mecca, more than 100 men work all year round to make the cloth with the embroidery. Every year they process around 400 kilograms of gold and silver wires that are less than a third of a millimeter thick and made of 999 gold and silver. In recent years, modern methods such as computer drawings have been used to complete the kiswa and the respective replacement cloth. The kiswa was made in Egypt until 1962. In the course of the conflicts between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, this tradition was replaced.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Saudi factory that stitches the Kaaba's gold-laced cover . In: The National . ( thenational.ae [accessed October 6, 2018]).
- ↑ Reinhard Schulze: Islamic Internationalism in the 20th Century: Studies on the History of the Islamic World League . Brill, Leiden 1990, ISBN 90-04-08286-7 , pp. 176 f .