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Superstitions: Gabriel

While Abraham and Ishmael were thus occupied, the angel Gabriel brought them a stone, about which traditional accounts are greatly at variance: by some it is said to have been one of the precious stones of paradise, which fell to the earth with Adam, and was afterwards lost in the slime of the Deluge, until retrieved by the angel Gabriel. "The more received tradition," observes Washington Irving, "is that it was originally the guardian angel appointed to watch over Adam in paradise, but changed into a stone, and ejected thence with him at his fall, as a punishment for not having been more vigilant." This stone Abraham and Ishmael received with proper reverence, and inserted it in one of the corner walls of the Kaaba. When first fixed in the wall, it was, we are told, a single jacinth of dazzling whiteness, but became gradually blackened by the kisses of sinful mortals. At the Resurrection it will recover its angelic form, and stand forth a testimony before God in favour of those who have performed the rites of pilgrimage to Mecca. The still-subsisting reverence for the Kaaba stone at Mecca probably originated in the same sentiment that, a few years ago, made the great meteoric stone that fell at Parnallee, in Madras, now in the British Museum, an object of adoration to many thousands of Hindoos. In the Koran we have many instances of the supernatural effect of precious stones. In the famous nocturnal journey of Mahomet with the Archangel Gabriel, we are informed that after leaving the fifth heaven, the golden abode of the avenging angel who presided over fire, they mounted to the sixth heaven composed of a transparent stone called Hasala, which may be rendered "carbuncle."