Two The Kaʿba as Navel Get access Arrow
Simon O'Meara
https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748699308.003.0003
Pages 40–62
Published: August 2020
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Abstract
This chapter concerns the Kaʿba as the Islamic world’s omphalos: its axis and generative matrix. It seeks to understand how the Kaʿba is said to orient the world and what it is about the Kaʿba that makes this orientation empirically conceivable. Divided into two parts, the first part reveals that the Islamic world is said to be oriented to the Kaʿba because it is generated from the Kaʿba. The second part shows that the Kaʿba has this world-orienting capacity because it is construed as having the attributes of a bifurcated, bilateral body.
https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/38530/chapter-abstract/333618895?redirectedFrom=fulltext