 the gathering of archaeological evidences and the thorough rereading of the existing historical studies on the Kaaba. So the book gathered all these different materials and it would be already sufficient to produce a good book just by doing this work of gathering all these different resources and materials. However, now I'm addressing you Simon, you take this research at another more profound level by giving us a more sensitive and enlightening critical interpretation of the material. You make sense out of this material in the sense that your book is also a genuine hermeneutics of the Kaaba, you interpret, you read and you have insights and you have your own view and interpretation of this material and that's why this book is so interesting. However, there is another most important reason why this book is exceptional, which is that it finally feels an immense lacuna in the field of Islamic art studies. Indeed, since the fathers of this field declared that the Kaaba is not a work of architecture, work of art in any artistic sense and therefore it's not an object of interest for art historian, the Kaaba has been left unattended as an object of art historical studies per se. In other words, the Kaaba has been excluded from this field. Well, there are two, basically two facts that are telling of this state of affairs, this exclusion. First of all, astonishingly, the book is published as a standalone instead of being inserted in the University, the Edinburgh University Press, a prestigious series on Islamic art history. It's a standalone, so it's great because it gives, it enhances the exceptionality of this book, but I wish it was part of this series because it's the one of the main points of the book is to to re-give the Kaaba its status as an artistic object, as an object of art history interest. The second fact is that the Kiswa, the piece of clothes that cover the Kaaba, that rightly fall under the sign of textile art, the Kiswa has been and has been studied by art historian, but as an object separate from its support, the Kaaba. In his book, Simon tells us that we cannot separate the Kiswa from the Kaaba and that the situation in which on one side the Kiswa is studied by art historian and the Kaaba is studied within the field of religious studies. We have two special separate specialism give us an idea of how kind of a difficult situation we are dealing with here and Simon is correcting the situation of separation, which is absurd because we cannot separate the Kiswa from the Kaaba. Moreover, so in this book not only you correct this state of affair, that was something a little bit absurd we may say, but also with this book you bring the Kaaba back to life literally, back to life in itself in the scholarship for especially for non-muslim people who do not realize the importance of the Kaaba. You bring it to life because the Kaaba is not only a work of art, but it's it's a sort of living entity. What I mean is that you unravel the life that it has that the Kaaba has both for the Muslim cosmology itself, which is a living entity, it's something full of energy, active, but also the Kaaba is part of the faithful existence itself and it's in this sense it's also a living entity, something which is always there and that governs the life of the faithful and you show that very well in the book. So you do re-give the central place that it ought to have, the Kaaba ought to have, in the Muslim world, it has in the Muslim world, but from the scholarly viewpoint because of this exclusion, this absurd exclusion of the Kaaba from art historical interest. So another last final point that I want to to enhance to underscore is that also you show how the Kaaba is the pivot articulating all the metaphysical, intellectual and material planes of the Muslim culture at large. All this said, let us proceed and I will ask you a couple of questions that I would like you to answer to which I would like you to respond. So my first question is can you tell us a little bit about your journey, the journey that led you to study the Kaaba, Simon? Vannery, thank you very much. Wonderful introduction. Before I thank you in a more copious manner and to address your question, I would just like to also make a word of thanks to Katie, Katie O'Reilly Boyles who is the project officer for public and policy engagement and knowledge enterprise at SOAS who kindly suggested this event and has organised it and arranged it and kept us together and so a very large thank you to Katie. I have to say an even larger thanks must go to you Valerie for stepping in to do this interviewing role and I am immensely grateful that you've taken the time to read the book and to say such lovely things about it in that introduction. You know I'm a huge admirer of you, I just love your latest article that you've published on Aporia and I'm immensely touched that you would take time out of your important work, ongoing important work into ornament to help this event become something of use to the participants who are attending. Finally I'd also of course like to thank everyone who has signed up and come to this webinar, it's very, it's very nice of you to have done so. I don't have the list of the participants, I probably could see but maybe if I saw who the names were, perhaps I'd lose my confidence or get a little bit anxious so I'm not looking at those but maybe I'll see those later. Anyway I would like to say thank you to everyone for tuning in and now I'm going to return to Valerie's question which was about the journey that led me to study the Kaaba and that's quite, it's a good question to answer because it's quite straightforward. In 2010 I received a fellowship at the Kunsthistorische Institute in Florence to research a topic of Islamic sacred geography, namely the alleged relationship between the Kaaba in Mecca and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. When I started that research project I was surprised to find that little had been written about the Kaaba in Islamic art history and so I decided that I should just address the lacuna by concentrating on the Kaaba alone, that is to say I dropped the relationship part. This was just as well I've since come to find because in my belief the Kaaba's relation to the Dome of the Rock is more alleged than factual, more putative than actual so in some ways it's been a benefit that I dropped the second part of what was originally the origin of this project which was to study the relation between the Kaaba and the Dome of the Rock. Anyway that's how it began in 2010 with that research fellowship at the Kunsthistorische Institute in Florence. Very good, very good. Yes so you make actually you make a very important point in your book by defining the Kaaba as a work of art or architecture and to do so you redefine the notion of art itself. This is to make crucial a crucial aspect of your book as we are currently witnessing the endeavor to decolonize art history. This decolonizing enterprise in particular targets this notion of art invented as we know by western art history but this enterprise is more or less constantly conducted. For example I recently came across the work of some scholars who deny that art even exists in the context of Islam because art is a western concept which doesn't apply to the Islamic context where art making is a sort of natural gesture or something natural not something that is regulated something that comes from within spontaneously we might say so art is not really a proper concept that would apply to the to Islam so there is a first issue is that this this interpretation loses sight of the fact that the concept of art and aesthetics comes from the Greek philosophical heritage and the Greek philosophical heritage and this heritage is common to Islam and and to the west so art does exist in Islam the concept of art is something that applies to the aesthetic materialities that are produced in Islam and thankfully but we have to define how we we the the point is that indeed we have to define and to redefine all over again what we what do we understand through this concept of art especially to distinguish between we have to distinguish between material culture culture and artistic culture these are two different things and we need to investigate these these different categories thankfully you tackle this issue very rigorously and plausibly by doing the most sensible thing to do when you question a category which is to provide your own understanding to provide your own definition of this concept of art can you then explain to us what you mean by art when you posit that the Kaaba is indeed a work of architecture a work of art yes thank you very important intervention thank you so much um okay well without trying to make light of and ride roughshod over the important decolonizing debates about the term art including the recent one spearheaded by Ariela Ayesha Aizolay in her book Potential History on Learning Imperialism person I still believe the term can be used so long as a definition as you say is given um is my belief merely self-interest self-preservation as an art historian not wanting to um spike the hand that feeds me um cut off the hand that feeds me I don't think so I think it's more a question of remaining alive to the very thing that first drove me into art history namely the ability of art to astonish and stop one dead in one's tracks well from photographs alone the Kaaba still manages to do that to me it's utterly extraordinary and it is so to millions of Muslims too many of whom have left accounts of their very bodily aesthetic response to the building but to answer your question about my understanding of the term art in the book I say that a work of art is a working of art in that by translating the world art enters into how we perceive the world I could have added another less lofty definition that I find helpful for pre-modern periods namely art is the transformation of a material substrate into something almost immaterial spiritual the Kaaba with its elaborately embroidered kiswah or robe fits both definitions finally as to why I posit the Kaaba as a work of architecture that's much easier um I don't draw the elitist distinction that is embedded deeply I think in art historical discourse across the board not just Islamic art historical discourse between a building and architecture um I should add that twice I've been asked in public lectures by senior figures if the Kaaba counts as architecture I found at the time the question to be odd the second time I found it less odd because I had had it already addressed to me but I do as I said I found the question very odd and I finally answered to be absolutely self-evident yes of course because the Kaaba houses and holds in that sense it's um it achieves the function of architecture to house and hold it's true that some of this housing is done in reverse from the outside in that the Kaaba houses the Islamic world that is said to have unfolded from it but it also houses in more ordinary ways too and in this way fulfills its function as architecture um so I hope that's addressed I thought your question um thank you for for allowing me to it does yeah yeah and and this is this is a great conversation for all of us as art historian or people trying to study art we need to investigate these notions but not in my opinion considering again and that's a very very important point considering that Islam and the West share this Greek philosophical heritage that produce the notion of art aesthetics we cannot deny that this is part of the common heritage of Islam and the West to have an artistic production that has to be distinguished what we from what we call more broad more broadly uh material culture so you you started to uh to answer these these multiple questions complex questions quite quite nicely but I think we need to continue this conversation in our publication as art historian so um in the first three chapters chapters of the book you examine the three fundamental fundamental aspects of the sacred ontology of the Kaaba so first the Kaaba as Qibla the Kaaba as navel and the Kaaba as substructure this examination produces for the first time for the first time I must say in scholarship a complete picture of the Islamic cosmogony because of this depiction of the Kaaba that you give now I feel that we are close to the completion of this to to understand the picture to to see all the contours and details of this complex islamic cosmogony this cosmogony as you show very well is governed literally by the metaphysical and physical forces of the Kaaba this cosmogony this cosmology islamic cosmogony is built upon a complex actually a complex mizana beam of the ancient house and this ancient house exerts these forces in different ways because of these mizana beams so in um there are metaphysical forces invisible forces and they are the physical and felt forces all together so thanks to this amazingly detailed picture of the Kaaba we now better understand how Muslims see and live the world literally can you elaborate a little bit on this cosmogony cosmology centered on the Kaaba just to clarify a little bit concisely how this is working this mizana beam this living this cosmogony cosmography also full of energy very living and the producer of this energy is literally the Kaaba yes well there are there are two things there one is the cosmogony one is the cosmography of the Kaaba the cosmogony is is a singular event in the sense it's where the world is in the islamic tradition alleged to have begun the Kaaba is said in very very early islamic tradition to be the matrix from which the world unfolded it's the place where the world begins so it's the cosmogonic center the traditions alleging this are many and early and they predate the fewer traditions that alleged the world unfolded from the temple mount specifically the rock of the dome of the rock and i think that i can elaborate a little bit on what that cosmogony means it means that it makes it makes mecca inherently substitutable by imitating the rituals related to the Kaaba and often actually building Kaaba analogs substitutes for mecca can and do exist all across the islamic world mecca is the center of the islamic world and like all such centers it can be replicated so that cosmogonic event is vital i think for one of its it helps understand why we find Kaaba copies analogs substitutes across the islamic world from west to east regarding the cosmographies that have been that have that have been written about it well of course they vary that's they're not consistent across all times but the ones that i was most interested in were the ones where the Kaaba is dead center of the entire universe and they seems to be not just generating the world but also seems to be at least as it's represented at least as the Kaaba is pictured in images of these cosmographies seems to anchor the entire universe so the whole universe seems to be tied to and born from the universe now that as i say that's from cosmographic traditions that are written by individuals over time but these early traditions alleging that the world was born from the Kaaba that seems consistent at least in the early period that and they do seem much earlier than by at least 120 years by my reckoning than later traditions that also alleged that the Kaaba that the world was born from the dome of the rock those seem to me to be much fewer in number and later it strikes me that early on in the history of Islam the Kaaba was understood as being the place from which the world was born but but cosmographies concerning the Kaaba do vary and i do touch upon the ones that i find more interesting i can't i don't pretend to have addressed every single cosmography that involves the Kaaba i i address the issues of the cosmographies of cosmographies that place the Kaaba at the very center from which the world and the universe seems to spin out of i'm not saying that every single cosmography has replicates that schema but that is certainly a very very popular and very widespread schema that we find in the medieval period and onwards yes that's what i'm using this term is an abeam because we have a great very variation but still the center the nucleus is there and it's the Kaaba it's a solid and tangible and intangible both tangible and intangible nucleus of the whole thing that i would call a cosmogony and the cosmogony includes cosmology and cosmographies plural um so that's the very interesting thing that's how i'm using this term is an abeam to to to express this complexity now one of your findings that i found particularly enlightening and and at the same time very surprising this finding is that although over the course of history the Kaaba was attacked and reduced to ruins and rebuilt all over again um you observed and constantly argue that muslims didn't react in the same way jews reacted to the destruction of the temple muslim didn't mourn these destructions with the same intensity and despair in particular than than the jews so okay can you explain a little bit about this finding and how um how you compare for uh compare for us the two holy sites uh how how did you come up with this very interesting finding and i completely agree i think it's very your argument is very convincing well thank you for thank you for that uh confirmation of my argument and also of course for the question um when i'm talking about the um the temple i should be i know that the that it's not completely consistent there are some views a minority view within Judaism that consider the destruction of the temple not to be quite as disastrous as for the most part it is considered to be in Judaism so i've put that up as a you know there are competing views but the majority view is that the destructions of the temple were disastrous and were the cause of of great lament hence the Jeremiah's lamentations um and uh it's not without interest that um in the Old Testament one of the comments that are given in uh Jeremiah is that the the fire reached right down from in the temple from top right down to its foundations and destroyed everything now i say that's important because i i give four reasons as to why the um why muslims don't have a kind of equivalent to lamentations in Islamic history there isn't equivalent to Jeremiah's lamentations and that's simply because uh the the Kaaba is there there are two primary reasons for this and i'll share there are four but two are two are quite conceptual which i won't go into now but i will give two that are more um empirical and relate directly to uh hadiths and the first is that the prophet uh provides very precise details about what is to happen to the Kaaba come the apocalypse uh those hadiths those details have served to to reassure people witnessing the attacks on the Kaaba which as you say have been many over the history that the world is not about to end and so they don't you don't get that kind of lamentation quality because people watching these attacks or hearing about them uh can compare the details of those attacks with the hadith details provided in these um eschatological apocalyptic hadiths and can say this is not the end of the world so that's one reason like the other reason also related to hadiths and traditions um is that uh the substructure of the Kaaba its foundations matter as much if not more as the superstructure and those foundations have never been reduced to ruins and now in lamentations where say we hear that the the the fire reached down so it destroyed even the root destroyed even the foundations well you don't get that in uh in in the islamic traditions it's uh that's not what uh we're told of the foundations remain and it's those foundations that uh can be rebuilt upon in terms of the superstructure and it's those foundations that uh provide continuity uh to a world that is anchored upon the Kaaba if the Kaaba is born of if if the world is born of the Kaaba you might suppose that when the world ends when the Kaaba is destroyed I mean the world would be rocked and shifted out of true and I think the answer that the reason why that doesn't happen is that these foundations are not what is destroyed just the superstructure what lies on top of the of the earth not what lies below it yeah yes and to continue with this your your description of this superstructure a supernatural at the same time very natural very tangible superstructure there is another aspect that distinguishes the Jewish temple in Jerusalem from the Kaaba which is that the Kaaba is kind of living body literally a structure a superstructure but also a living body something animated somehow this reasoning of yours allows you to assert convincingly that the Kaaba is the unique product of the local Arabian tradition so because of this uniqueness of the Kaaba as a body as something that is filled with energy that is also um not controlled by by mankind it's something which is full of divine energy um it's a unique local product from the Arabian peninsula from all its ancient traditions and then Islam is bringing its its its final definition to this particular location to this particular nucleus here in Mecca in Arabia so the Kaaba is a body constitutively and it's also experienced as a body with the holy inner life this body is covered by a piece of clothes that does not conceal but reveals on the contrary reveals the Kaaba's anatomy so to speak like the skin as you say and and the metaphor is perfectly very enlightening like the skin covers and reveals the human body furthermore it is a body because it performs all sort of things especially for Sufis but not exclusively the Kaaba rotates flies it raises supernatural beings and is animated by an irradiating lively forces inhabited by this void inside in its inside this void is not a placid nothingness it's it's a void that is a concentration of energy but it's a void and in this case and and all Muslim and even non-Muslims imagine the Kaaba but we see the outside we see the Kiswa with these we see this body where we sense that there is something extraordinary inside that we cannot see that we cannot we cannot sense in terms of form but we sense this in terms of essence and substance together but it's void it's unfathomable it's it doesn't have we cannot define it so could you offer more details about this about the Kaaba as as a sort of animated body and how people Muslims mystics and non-mystics experience the Kaaba as a living body and this includes for example you you mentioned and it's it's very well known you mentioned that even modern scholars like Abdullah Hammoudi whom I I knew gave us an account of his visit to Mecca and his experience at the Kaaba and he felt this sort of supernatural effects something exceptional something that human being senses but cannot grasp rationally completely it's beyond beyond what we can grasp with thought it's a true total experience can you give us a little bit of explanation about this the Kaaba as a living body full of energy and with this void inside well I love what you've just summarized regarding these bodily aspects of the Kaaba I think you've done a wonderful job of putting forward a summary of of of what I've said and you've kind of extended them in exactly the right way without embellishment there's no embellishment there so I'm very very grateful for that summary I but regarding specifically your request that I explain the difference between the two types of experience mystical and non-mystical I'm not sure that I'm able to explain more about that difference I mean the response of the Kaaba by Abdullah Hammoudi as you say an anthropologist at Princeton clearly verges on the mystical even though he certainly doesn't present himself as a mystic likewise the response of the British explorer slash spy Richard Burton in the 19th century also verges on the mystical was he a mystic not that we know and I think these and other and many many other similar experiential responses to the Kaaba above all of course by Muslims who have left off the many many responses to the Kaaba especially in the modern and contemporary periods I think these and many other similar experience experiential responses to the Kaaba return us to the early question of the applicability of the term art to non-european material culture so often one reads in historical and contemporary narratives how beholding the Kaaba stopped this or that person dead in their tracks doesn't such an experience make a mockery of the academic categories mystical and non-mystical that person I would argue is in a state of awe should we intervene and call it religious or I don't think so their senses are riveted full stop as the poet the German poets wrote irreligiously I would add he wrote he said it irreligiously every angel is terrifying and there's something that you know I'm not sure that I think I think when we when you're before the Kaaba at least according to these accounts that I've read the distinction mystical and non-mystical just doesn't seem to hold true people are in a state of awe terror in some ways and that is certainly a term that's used by a the word terrifying which I've used which I borrow from real cause is a word that's found in the under Lucien traveler Ibn Jubeir who talks about heart being terrified at the site of the Kaaba and again Ibn Jubeir is not known as a mystic so I think there's I think we do need to do away with or be much more alive to the fact that mystical and non-mystical especially in Islam where distinctions between Sufi and non-Sufli are always banded around as if they were kind of categorical differences needs to be looked at very carefully because it doesn't seem to hold for the Kaaba in terms of people's responses to it yes yes I completely agree with you again it's like these dualities be the secular versus the religious and the profane versus the sacred all these dualities that we are familiar with and that we conceptualize as clear-cut divisions or divides this doesn't work in this context and all these categories are very fluid and very movable because of time I have a last question to ask you it concerns your extremely compelling comparative analysis between the one-point linear perspective in western culture and this extraordinary void inside the Kaaba both being a mathematical zero point that functions as a cultural placeholder and matrix this zero point defines and anchors the entire culture of the west and Islam respectively so for the west is one point linear perspective and and and for Islam it's this extraordinary void in the Kaaba these zero points I found this very interesting and this very true as well can you just we will maybe conclude on on this elaboration about the zero point mathematical zero point of the Kaaba well again thank you you've gone you've course Valerie being Valerie you've gone right to the heart of the matter and I think this is very for me it's in some ways the most important point of the book but it's also the hardest point of the book it's also the hardest insight to try and substantiate the matter is complex in part because of the risk of cultural reductionism has to be weighed and it has to be navigated have I have I managed the process of weighing and navigating the risk of cultural reductionism well I'm very flattered and very pleased from your summary of my argument that I seem to have done so you seem to have understood exactly what I'm arguing for and yet you're not also saying that this is a very reductive view no doubt others will have different opinions but I'm very flattered very glad to hear yours can I say more about it well not in terms of empirical historical data now I can't the problem is that the argument I make derives from what you rightly call an insight as such the argument represents one of the very few places in the book where I assert something about the Kaaba that cannot be substantiated by historical archaeological textual data the closest I get to providing such empirical data is in a footnote about the transmission of zero from india to the fertile crescent in the seventh century and islam's rapid embrace of zero commencing in the second half of the eighth century in that same footnote I add that the first reference in the fertile crescent to the hindu numerical system although with no mention of zero comes in 662 of the common era in a letter by the archbishop of kina sreen you know that's as as empirical as I'm able to go and you will notice that I've I move into the I move into analogy when I'm making my argument I draw it into the conversation issues of calligraphic of the calligraphic nookta the point from which all letters are set in in islamic letterism to derive so islamic letterism has often used to be called islamic letter mysticism but increasingly that term is outdated subsequent to publishing my book I should say I've become more alive to this recent writing on islamic letterism but I'm too late for me to change my terminology I call it islamic letter mysticism in keeping with amary schimmel but there's some very very interesting very very recent work on islamic letterism being produced right now and this issue of the nookta the the point the zero point of calligraphy and I make analogies with that to the kaba but again this is analogical reasoning I don't have more empirical uh historical archaeological data to substantiate this argument that is built upon an insight but it is for those of you who are listening thinking my god you can't sign on you cannot be talking about the kaba if you've got these kind of uh more obviously idiosyncratic interpretations let me reassure those people concerned about that that this is one of the few places where I go out on a limb and make it very clear I own the interpretation I say it's my interpretation and I don't present it as being one that can be attributed to somewhere within islamic tradition um so thank you for asking that question it seems to me to be a very exciting thing at least I find it very exciting to think about the kaba in those ways but I understand that it won't be everyone's cup of tea um and uh we'll leave it there Valerie thank you so much for these great questions oh well thank you so much for your for your enlightening and very stimulating responses and I want to thank you and to thank very much Katie for organizing this conversation I think it's great that we uh expose all this work that you've done to the public so to to to invite them to read this fantastic book that it was absolutely necessary we had to now this lacuna in the field of art history is filled and we can we can continue to um rethink we can rethink what we do in with this perspective this new cosmographic cosmogonic perspective that the kaba is always there governing everything and diffusing its energies everywhere we have to think about islamic art in this way as part of a production of this world centered on the kaba and I do appreciate the fact that you have hermeneutics propositions that we can ponder they are not um statements of truth there are propositions that we can ponder and this is part of the scholarship and this is something that is dearly missing very often in the scholarship I must say we need to dare to propose hermeneutic interpretations to to to offer them for further criticism in the constructive way so I'm very glad about and thank you again Simon and Katie for this conversation I enjoyed presenting and asking you questions now it's I think the time for the q and a um so Katie you think I should the straight away um read some questions I mean yes so we've got some we've got thank you so much Valerie and Simon and we've got some people who've posted in the q and a box so Valerie I'll I'll leave it we've got about 15 minutes left so I'll leave it up to you we may not get through all of them but I'll leave it up to you can are you able to see the q and a box okay yes yes I am I am okay fantastic I don't want I don't want to do what people do is to choose uh among questions but I want I you know I live in London so I will I will follow the queue I think okay I think it's the most fair I mean I don't like this idea you know oh I'm picking this one and not this one so I will start with you know the first um good afternoon I'm a master's student in protection under historical artistic heritage the legacy of Andalus my question is is there any historical studies related related to uh oh I have a problem with the the phone sorry yeah it's so small is is there any historical studies related to uh Kaaba the Kaaba as architectural object and architectural uh object of Andalus like the studies of the relationship between the Kaaba and the dome of the rock uh so I think is there something uh are there sources did you find something in in the literature I guess in the primary sources of Andalus that uh relate that are related to the Kaaba I mean I I'm thinking about Ibn al-Arabi of course but between the Kaaba as an architectural object and the architecture of Andalus yes yes I know um and I should say that that doesn't mean that such uh studies or such data doesn't exist I don't pretend to have written the last word on the Kaaba by no means um so one could cast one's net further afield I like to think that I've covered it quite far afield in terms of especially Arabic speaking Arabic writing world to some extent the Persian speaking world but there are areas of the world which I really don't address you know South Asia is just not is only sort of marginally in the book Al Andalus one would expect to have I would have covered being you know Arabic speaking at this point but um uh I can't answer to the answer I think is no I nothing comes to mind um you're more than welcome to write to me but my address is at source and I need to proceed yep okay because there are there are so many questions and I want to quite right quite as many as possible so if we consider the Kaaba as a work of art how does that transform the act of prayer that puts the Kaaba at the nexus does prayer become performance if so does that undercut what prayer might be perhaps herein lies the tension in art and religion um it's a nice question I post I don't know that there is a tension between art and religion and I think one what's so interesting about uh a relatively new development of religious studies is to think about material religion and look at just how religion is uh absolutely anchored in material stuff art we would we would call it so I don't know that that tension exists maybe it exists today um but I don't know that in the past that it holds true I don't think that prayer becomes uh if you think you walk of art in terms of something like you might go and see it's at the the tape modern that's not my usage of it my usage of it is simply that it enters into how we perceive the world that's my definition um it's something that forms so much about I think how Muslims see the world it enters into how Muslims perceive the world I go into that in in more detail in the book I haven't I've deliberately kept away from talking about that today because I realized that if one opens up that subject without having all the data to hand it can sound like this guy is uh uh appropriating our culture and making what it making of it what he wants that's not the case um so but when I use the word art which Valerie has carefully asked me to talk about I don't mean it in the way that you might understand it today at what we find if we go to the tape modern it's simply it is something that enters into how we perceive and see the world um and it doesn't affect uh there's no contradiction with prayer being involved there um but thank you for allowing me to clarify that very well um so do you consider Kaaba a typology rather than a singular object uh such as the alleged Kaaba of Najran or the small mosques of southern Arabia that Barbara Finster called the cubicle mosques that were modeled in the image of the Kaaba sorry I missed another question I will I will ask it after uh yes I certainly think about the fact that in the early very early period there were a number during the lifetime of the Prophet there were a number of Kaaba number of buildings known as the Kaaba the Kaaba of so and so the Kaaba of Najran as you say and as you say Barbara Finster talks about how in in Yemen cubicle there are cubicle mosques so I do discuss this but I don't go into the origin the alleged origin of the Kaaba that scholars have put forward my study is anchored entirely upon upon data from Islamic tradition Islamic history Islamic geographies which is why when I was talking about zero earlier I made a very I know I didn't apologize but I wanted to make it clear that the book is based upon empirical textual archaeological data rather than just me riffing off some a few ideas I've had this is not about this is not built upon what Western scholars have said about the origins of Islam and the and the and the origins of the Kaaba simply because we don't know them I do discuss this briefly in the introduction and then make my position quite clear that I'm in I'm investigating what Muslims have said and thought and felt about the Kaaba not its putative origins simply because we won't know the answer to that and we just go around around in circles and it's not the kind of argument I wanted to have others do that and it's and they should it's just not what I wanted to do and thank you for allowing me to clarify that active yes so what is the relationship of early mosque building typology and how and how did Kaaba and the enclosure influence Islamic the early formation of Islamic architecture and enclosures I don't know that there's I think when it comes to mosque typology you need to be looking at what took place in Medina at the prophets at the prophets mosque and it's really not to do with the Kaaba the Kaaba is it has an influence on on on the direction of mosques in the fact that mosques are oriented towards the Kaaba so in that sense it's got something to do with the fact that the Kaaba gives mosques a very specific and very definite orientation but in terms of its architectural influence you don't see it but you do that doesn't mean that the Kaaba hasn't been copied it's been copied I say endlessly I mean that's an exaggeration but it has been repeatedly copied and copied in ways that we may not think of as copies today copied in the sense that someone may just take the measurements of it and then replicate those measurements in a courtyard of their mosque but that's that is a rare occurrence I'm thinking particularly of the mosque in Sankore in Africa where where the dimensions of the mosque form the dimensions of the mosque's courtyard but other than that in terms of mosques I can't think of the influence of the Kaaba on mosque architecture I can think of plentiful examples of of Kaaba copies or Kaaba substitutes or things that people called Kaaba's but not on mosque building typology oh okay very good no you answer thoroughly thank you Simon I think but we need to want to try to cover all the questions so another question until the 20th century the Kaaba was full of holy relics and other stuff do you discuss these and why they were there that's huge hello Professor Kennedy um um well I'm just thinking right now you know because the question comes from you I think it must you must you know you obviously know what you're talking about I can't think what I like I'm kind of kind to think what relics you're talking about of the I can't think it's not that there weren't things like um hanging lamps or at least decorative lamps in the mosque in the Kaaba we know about that and they still hang today um we know that there's a box in there and that box can be dated also back to 19th century visitors but in terms of relics in there I I don't see that now I know that there is a very there's an article that is often cited by Avino Shalom who talks about the about the Kaaba as a kind of treasury it's a medieval treasury now you will see that in my book um or you know I not say but in my book I discuss this because it's I don't see the evidence for this we know that in the origins we know that when from from Islamic tradition very early we know that it is said that the prophet emptied the Kaaba of all of its cultic stuff when he conquered Mecca and that cultic stuff doesn't seem to return um and the issue of where the treasury goes just isn't clear and the treasury doesn't seem to even return to the Kaaba after the ninth century so this is a very you know there is ever there is I don't know where the evidence comes from that to argue that that can say that the Kaaba was this kind of treasure where where where cultic elements were placed that just doesn't seem to be mentioned in the travelers reports that uh that I know of from the 13th century that just nothing mentioned and if they do mention cultic elements it's cultic elements used to be here can at honor they were here and now they are no longer um but it may be that in the 19th century something was placed in there and you're referring to that but I don't know of any um and we'll be only too happy to be corrected of course and uh to pursue this in in other ways but um so I do discuss the content it makes an important part of my chapter that talks about the emptiness of the Kaaba I make a discussion of just how empty this building can be how we can talk about the building as being empty so I talk about what is said to have been in the Kaaba before the conquest of Mecca by the Prophet and what's after the conquest of Mecca by the Prophet and what is thrown out of the Kaaba and and I look into what is then returned to the Kaaba and it strikes me that from my readings nothing is returned um or very very little apart from these decorative lamps but um yeah if I may intervene because I know this is a just but yeah even if they're let's let's imagine there are a few objects um these are just minor compared to the the the the the the power of the void which is beyond the presence of these little stuff this stuff there it's it's a void because also the Muslim are not only very few people are allowed to enter so the there is a principle here is that there is nothing in there for the rest of the people to see there is nothing to see but there is an interior there is something which is inside and that the the the the pilgrims and the people who are experienced you or have experienced the Kaaba they sense they are taken by the power of this void inside of this inside that they cannot visit they they cannot they cannot enter so this is very important so the stuff is kind of different things I mean that there are little little things or it doesn't have the power of the void it's we cannot take there is no equivalence here that's what I mean um but you know this is part of the discussions of of the the readings the readings exactly I want to continue with a few questions as much as we can thank you professor Omer for this presentation of your truly wonderful long-awaited book selfishly I was hoping to hear your thoughts on the relation between the Kaaba itself and those of its representations many of which are reproduced in your book I am particularly interested in the awe towards the Kaaba and how this translates or not in relation to the Kaaba representations and our expectations from them oh thank you Khaled for your question Khaled I'm looking forward to I'm hoping you're still doing your dissertation on the Kaaba with Barry um anyways very nice thank you for your kind words I hope you're well Khaled um it's true that I don't I didn't discuss it today and I don't discuss the usage of these images in the book I don't know I don't use I don't discuss how they're used in pious performance um that is a topic as you well know that is being discussed by the likes of Christy Gruber and then people especially who are studying now Hibah Abid and others who are studying the Dula'il Akherat of Jazuli where these where the representations of the Kaaba are for example rubbed and there's evidence of possibly even kissing um so that the performative aspects of this of the material of the representations of the Kaaba is a topic that I don't deal with in the book and as you say haven't dealt with today but it is a topic that as you of course you know is being dealt with um by others and particularly in with regard to Jazuli's um Dula'il Akherat thank you for the question all right um did you know there used to be a red mound of soil where Gabriel asked Prophet Prophet Abraham to stop and build the house of God Kaaba I will tell you what the red mound of soil please allow me to speak okay no well we don't have time for these things uh yeah I'm sorry but the the audience cannot cannot speak we have too many questions um thank you I like Muhammad Muhammad why don't you write to me I'd be only too happy but um yeah please Muhammad Muhammad Jaffa um please write to me I'd only be too happy to to have a conversation it's but it's just not that we've just running out of time but Muhammad Jaffa if you're listening my email address is s020 at SOAS ACUK I'm only too happy to engage with you please write to me I think we it's happened on a mosque I don't know what you're saying Muhammad um no one's calling it a mosque um anyway oh yeah yeah no no all right okay well that's perhaps we've just finished um thank you so much for all of these questions this was very interesting and prolonged nicely the the the conversation itself and as uh just let me make a last point is that we as as it is written in the title of the book these are readings so there are there are evidences that Simon gathered that are really solid evidences but there is also this very important part which are readings and it's open and it opens a venue for future research so I hope you understand this and you were taken by this beautiful this beautiful enterprise of Simon I think this is a book that would for once deserves a prize you know that one deserves a prize I think that's my final word thank you so much Valerie yes thank you and uh Simon thank you so much um for coming and giving us your thoughts and I'm so sorry we weren't able to get through anyone's questions but yeah I'll I'll pop um Simon are you happy for me to put your email address in the chat I've just put it in I've just put it in just put it in amazing okay okay so if anyone has any follow a kind of polite follow-ups then please please feel free to get in touch with with Simon and I'm going to put the link um to his book as well in in the chat now but thank you so much for joining us on a Tuesday afternoon wherever in the world you've joined as well and Valerie thank you so much you did so much research into Simon's book and that was a fantastic set of questions thank you so much um so yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna turn off um I'm gonna keep the slide up but I'm gonna put some things in the in the chat now but thank you so much everyone take care bye bye thank you everyone thank you thank you very much