The Mizab al-Rahmah: History, Meaning and Ziyarah Guide to the Kaaba’s Spout of Mercy

Above the north-west corner of the Kaaba, where the wall meets the low crescent enclosure known as the Hijr Isma’il, a small gilded channel projects out over the open sky. It is not much to look at from the ground: a rectangular gold-clad trough a little over two and a half metres long, fixed into the roof wall and tilted to throw its water clear of the building. Millions of pilgrims circling the Kaaba every year pass directly beneath its line of fall without a second glance, because for all but a handful of days in any given year it is dry. This is the Mizab al-Rahmah — literally “the spout of mercy” — the drain that carries rainwater and washing-water off the flat roof of the Kaaba into the Hijr. It is the smallest named architectural feature of the Kaaba, and one of the most continuously documented, because in fourteen centuries of Islamic history it has been damaged, replaced, gilded, re-gilded and renewed more often than almost any other part of the building it serves.

This guide sets out what is actually known about the mizab: its function as a piece of hydraulic engineering, the dated sequence of rulers who rebuilt it, the floods that forced those rebuildings, and the devotional practice that has grown up beneath it — practice that ranges from a plainly worded statement of a companion’s disciple to modern claims with no basis at all. It is a short subject. The article is written to the length the sources support, covered in full rather than padded, and where a section of the standard guide format has nothing on record for this specific object, that is stated plainly rather than filled with invented material. Readers who want the fuller history of the Kaaba itself, the Hijr Isma’il, or the Black Stone should look to this guide’s companion articles on those subjects; what follows stays close to the spout itself.

Historical Background: What the Mizab Is and Why It Exists

The Kaaba’s roof is flat, made of layered teak beams under a stone and marble surface, and it is not perfectly level. It has a slight fall — a few centimetres across its width — down toward the north-west corner, the corner nearest the semi-circular wall called the Hijr Isma’il. Rainwater striking the roof, or water used to wash the roof (the Kaaba’s interior and exterior are periodically cleaned, historically with a mixture that included Zamzam water and rosewater), runs to that low corner under gravity. Left to itself it would simply sheet down the outside of the wall, staining the stone, undermining the base, and pooling against the building. The mizab exists to solve that single, unglamorous engineering problem: it is a spout, or gutter, built into the roof wall at the north-west corner, projecting outward far enough to throw the water clear of the wall and let it fall into the open ground of the Hijr rather than down the face of the Kaaba itself.

This is confirmed in the architectural description given in the Wikipedia entry on the Mizab al-Rahma, which notes that “the roof of the Ka’ba is flat, but slopes gently down to the north-west corner. From this corner, the mizab juts out, conducting rainwater from the roof.” Saudipedia’s description of the Hijr Isma’il makes the same point from the other direction: the Hijr is “the only side of the Kaaba where the Shadherwaan is at a lower level,” the Shadherwaan being the sloped marble apron built up against the Kaaba’s walls elsewhere as a flood defence — lowered here specifically so the mizab’s outflow has somewhere to go.

Function, in other words, comes before any devotional reading of the object. Before it was ever called a spout of mercy, it was a drain. The Quraysh who first fitted it were solving a construction problem created by their own decision to roof the building, and every ruler after them who touched it — Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottoman, Saudi — was maintaining or replacing a piece of hydraulic infrastructure that keeps a fourteen-century-old stone structure from being eroded and flooded by the rain that does, occasionally and sometimes catastrophically, fall on Makkah. The devotional and material history that follows sits on top of that plain fact; it does not replace it.

Before the Roof, No Spout

Multiple sources agree that the pre-Islamic Kaaba, before the Quraysh rebuilding that took place when the Prophet ﷺ was about thirty-five years old, had no roof at all, and consequently no need for a rain spout. Accounts drawing on Ibn Ishaq’s account, preserved in Ibn Hisham’s Sira and cited in Ibn Kathir’s commentary on the rebuilding, describe the Kaaba before this point as an open-topped enclosure whose treasures — including votive offerings said to have been kept in a well inside it — had been stolen, prompting the Quraysh to raise the walls and put a roof over the building for the first time. See the account preserved at Ibn Kathir’s commentary reproducing Ibn Ishaq’s report of the Quraysh rebuilding. A roof, once built, sheds water somewhere; the mizab is the answer the Quraysh built into that roof, and it is the first version of the object this article is about.

The Story Behind the Mizab: A History of Damage and Renewal

There is no single dramatic narrative attached to the mizab the way there is to, say, the Black Stone or the Hijr. Its story is cumulative rather than singular: it is the story of a small piece of the Kaaba’s fabric being worn out, burned, blown down or washed away, and rebuilt, again and again, almost always for the same reason — water. Because the mizab is where water leaves the building, it is also the part of the building most directly exposed to water damage, and the historical record of its replacements is really a record of Makkah’s flood history read backward through one small fixture.

The clearest consolidated list of replacements appears in the Arabic-language Wikipedia article on Mizab al-Kaaba and its English counterpart, the Wikipedia article on Mizab al-Rahma, both of which draw on the classical Meccan historians. Their sequence, cross-checked against other sources below, is treated in full in the Historical Development section of this guide. What matters here is the shape of the story: a wooden spout from the Quraysh; a further wooden spout from Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr when he rebuilt the Kaaba on Ibrahim’s foundations; another from al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf when the Umayyads reversed Ibn al-Zubayr’s changes; a long medieval sequence of merchant and caliphal patrons; the gilding attributed to the Umayyad caliph al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik; a run of sixteenth-century Ottoman replacements; the Ottoman gold spout of Sultan Ahmed I after the structural crisis of 1611–1612; the great flood of 1630 that brought down the walls beneath it entirely; the still-standing Ottoman gold spout of Sultan Abdulmejid I, made in Constantinople and installed in 1859; and the Saudi renewal under King Fahd in 1996, which kept the Ottoman spout’s dimensions while replacing its worn materials. Each of these episodes is dated, in AH and CE, in the Historical Development section below.

The Prophet ﷺ and the Mizab

The Quraysh rebuilding that first gave the Kaaba a roof — and therefore a mizab — took place when the Prophet ﷺ was about thirty-five years old, some five years before his prophethood began. He was present for it and took a direct, well-attested part in it: it was on this occasion that the clans of Quraysh nearly came to blows over which of them should have the honour of setting the Black Stone back into its place, a dispute the Prophet ﷺ settled by having the Stone placed on a cloth and letting a representative of every clan lift a corner of the cloth together, then setting the Stone into the wall with his own hands. This episode is preserved in Ibn Ishaq’s account as transmitted in Ibn Hisham’s Sira and discussed by Ibn Kathir; see Ibn Kathir’s account of the Quraysh rebuilding of the Kaaba. That rebuilding is the occasion on which the first mizab was fitted. Beyond his presence at this rebuilding, no authenticated hadith in the major collections describes the Prophet ﷺ singling out the mizab itself for a specific statement, ruling or act of devotion. The devotional material that later grew up around the spot beneath it — discussed in full below — is attributed to a Follower of the Companions, not to the Prophet ﷺ himself, and this article states that distinction clearly rather than blur it.

Hadith References

No report in the six major hadith collections — Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abi Dawud, Jami’ at-Tirmidhi, Sunan an-Nasa’i or Sunan Ibn Majah — names the mizab or describes the Prophet ﷺ making a specific statement about it. This is stated plainly because a great deal of popular material about the spout implies prophetic authority it does not have. The reports that do exist come from later sources of a different kind, and this guide grades them accordingly rather than repeating them as if they were hadith.

The most commonly cited report reads, in one popular rendering: “No one supplicates beneath the mizab except that his supplication is answered.” This is frequently presented online as a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ. It is not. The ninth-century Meccan historian al-Azraqi records it in his Akhbar Makkah with two chains, and in both chains the saying is attributed not to the Prophet ﷺ but to Ata ibn Abi Rabah, a senior Follower (Tabi’i) of Makkah and student of Ibn Abbas, who is reported to have said: “Whoever stands beneath the spout of the Kaaba and supplicates, his prayer is answered, and he leaves free of sin as the day his mother bore him.” The specialist hadith-answering service Hadith Answers, in an analysis by Mawlana Suhail Motala, traces both of al-Azraqi’s chains and states directly: “I have not come across this as a Hadith of Nabi (peace be upon him) in any primary Hadith source… Imam Azraqi has recorded the following narration, with two chains, as the statement of the famous Tabi’i, Ata ibn Abi Rabah, and not as a Hadith of Nabi.” The correct classification for this report is therefore not Sahih, Hasan, Da’if or Mawdu’ in the technical sense applied to prophetic hadith at all — it is an Athar, a saying of a Follower, sometimes cited loosely by later jurists as though it were prophetic, which it is not. Some later collections, including material gathered in al-Tabari’s manual of rites as noted in the same Hadith Answers analysis, do report a version phrased as a Prophetic saying — “there is no one who supplicates beneath the spout but that he is answered” — but even there the compiler describes it as something “some of our shaykhs mentioned in a manual,” which is not a chain of transmission and carries no authenticating value.

A second report, concerning the third Caliph, appears in al-Hasan al-Basri’s writing and is repeated in later devotional literature: that Uthman ibn Affan (may Allah be pleased with him) once told his companions he had been “standing at the gate of Paradise,” meaning that he had been standing in prayer beneath the mizab. This is a historical anecdote about a Companion’s personal devotional practice, not a hadith, and no formal chain or grading for it has been located in the sources consulted for this guide; it should be read as scholarly opinion and historical anecdote, not as an authenticated statement of religious law or reward.

A third report attributed to Abdullah ibn Abbas — “pray in the place where the righteous have prayed, and drink from the drink of the righteous,” explained as meaning the spot beneath the mizab and Zamzam water respectively — circulates in the same devotional literature, again without a formal isnad graded by hadith specialists in the sources available here. It is reported, for instance, in the summary at Hajj and Umrah Planner’s article on the Meezab al-Rahma, which draws on al-Azraqi’s history; this guide repeats it with the same caution — attributed to a Companion, transmitted by later historians, not independently verified here against a graded hadith chain.

A note on authenticity: none of the three reports above are hadith of the Prophet ﷺ in the technical sense, and readers should not treat them as such. The strongest of the three, on Ata ibn Abi Rabah’s authority, is at minimum a documented saying of a highly regarded early Meccan jurist recorded by a careful ninth-century historian, which gives it some weight as scholarly opinion on the merit of prayer at that spot — but it is not binding religious text, and standing beneath the mizab has never been treated by the major schools of fiqh as an obligatory or specifically prescribed rite of Hajj or Umrah.

Qur’anic Connections

The Qur’an does not mention the mizab. No verse names it, describes it, or attaches a ruling to it; this is a case, common in this guide’s coverage of smaller architectural features, where the connection to scripture is thematic rather than textual. Two themes are close enough to be worth setting out honestly, without overstating them.

The Kaaba itself is named directly.

﴿ إِنَّ أَوَّلَ بَيْتٍ وُضِعَ لِلنَّاسِ لَلَّذِي بِبَكَّةَ مُبَارَكًا وَهُدًى لِّلْعَالَمِينَ ﴾

“Surely the first House of worship established for humanity is the one at Bakkah — a blessed sanctuary and a guide for all people” (Surah Ali ‘Imran, 3:96). This verse is the foundation for every discussion of the Kaaba’s sanctity, including its physical fabric — walls, door, covering, and roof fittings such as the mizab — but it says nothing about the spout specifically, and this guide does not stretch it to do so.

Rain itself is repeatedly described in the Qur’an as an expression of divine mercy, which is the likely root of the name “spout of mercy” rather than any verse addressed to the object.

﴿ اللَّهُ الَّذِي يُرْسِلُ الرِّيَاحَ فَتُثِيرُ سَحَابًا فَيَبْسُطُهُ فِي السَّمَاءِ كَيْفَ يَشَاءُ وَيَجْعَلُهُ كِسَفًا فَتَرَى الْوَدْقَ يَخْرُجُ مِنْ خِلَالِهِ فَإِذَا أَصَابَ بِهِ مَن يَشَاءُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ إِذَا هُمْ يَسْتَبْشِرُونَ ﴾

“It is Allah who sends the winds, which then stir up clouds, which He spreads out in the sky as He wills and breaks into fragments, and you see the rain emerge from within them. Then when He causes it to fall upon whom He wills of His servants, immediately they rejoice” (Surah ar-Rum, 30:48). There is no recorded asbab al-nuzul — no reported occasion of revelation — connecting this or any comparable verse to the Kaaba’s spout specifically. Classical tafsir on rain-mercy verses such as this one treats them as general statements about God’s providence in nature, not as commentary on any built structure. The name “mercy” attached to this particular piece of the Kaaba’s architecture is best understood as a later linguistic and devotional association — rain as mercy, therefore the channel that delivers it onto sacred ground named for that mercy — rather than a scripturally mandated title.

Historical Development: The Successive Spouts, Dated

This is the section that carries the weight of the article, because the mizab’s history is unusually well recorded for such a small object — better recorded, in relative terms, than almost any other single fitting on the Kaaba apart from the door and the covering. The sequence below draws primarily on the ninth-century historian al-Azraqi, the fourteenth-century traveller Ibn Battuta, the Ottoman court chronicles cited in modern academic study, and the consolidated modern lists at Wikipedia’s Mizab al-Rahma entry and its Arabic-language counterpart, checked where possible against Saudipedia and specialist Hajj-history sites. Dates below are given in AH where a source provides them, with the CE equivalent; where sources give slightly different CE conversions for the same AH year, or disagree on a date outright, that disagreement is noted rather than silently resolved.

Before the Prophetic Mission: The Quraysh Spout

The first mizab was fitted by the Quraysh when they rebuilt the Kaaba and gave it a roof for the first time, an event traditionally dated to around 605 CE, when the Prophet ﷺ was about thirty-five years old — some accounts round this to “five years before the mission.” Before this rebuilding the Kaaba had no roof and therefore no drainage problem to solve. This spout was wood, in keeping with the alternating stone-and-wood construction the Quraysh used for the walls themselves. No physical trace of it survives, and no source claims otherwise.

The Umayyad Period: Ibn al-Zubayr and al-Hajjaj

Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, who held Makkah during the Second Fitna, demolished the Quraysh-Umayyad structure — badly damaged by fire during the Umayyad siege of 683 CE (3 Rabi’ al-Awwal, 64 AH) — and rebuilt the Kaaba on what he understood to be Ibrahim’s original foundations, incorporating the Hijr into the building and adding a second door. Sources differ slightly on the exact span of this rebuilding: some, including the Wikipedia Mizab al-Rahma article, simply date “the mizab of Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr” to 684 CE, while a detailed narrative account states the demolition began on 15 Jumada al-Thani, 65 AH, and the rebuilding was completed on 17 Rajab, 65 AH (see the construction account at Ka’bah Info’s chapter on the construction of the Holy Ka’bah by Ibn al-Zubayr), which corresponds to roughly February–March 685 CE, a year later than the 684 date given elsewhere. This guide leaves that year of difference open rather than picking a side: what is agreed is that Ibn al-Zubayr’s Kaaba, complete with its own mizab, stood for under a decade. In either case, a new spout was fitted as part of this rebuilding, positioned, as the Quraysh spout had been, toward the Hijr.

Ibn al-Zubayr’s Kaaba did not last. Once the Umayyad general al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi retook Makkah for the caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, the Umayyads demolished Ibn al-Zubayr’s additions and rebuilt the Kaaba on the earlier, smaller footprint — removing the Hijr from the interior and sealing the second door — restoring the shape the Kaaba has kept ever since. Sources place this rebuilding in 692–693 CE (73 AH), and a new mizab was fitted at that time as well; the Arabic Wikipedia list gives 73 AH/692 CE explicitly for “the mizab of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, who rebuilt the Kaaba.” This is the last time the Kaaba’s basic floor plan changed; every later intervention, including every later mizab, worked within the building al-Hajjaj left behind.

The First Gilding: Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik

Multiple sources attribute the first known gilding of the mizab to the Umayyad caliph al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik, whose reign ran from 705 to 715 CE (86–96 AH). Al-Azraqi’s ninth-century description, cited in several modern summaries including Hajj and Umrah Planner’s history of the Meezab al-Rahma, gives the spout’s dimensions in the units of the day — “four cubits in length and eight fingers in height” — and states that its gold sheeting is attributed to al-Walid. A separate object-history note from a Makkah museum exhibition, reported by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation’s catalogue entry on the Mizab, gives a slightly different date for the start of gilded plaques on the spout — “since AH 91/709–10 CE, the tradition has been for the spout to have gold or gilded plaques” — which falls within al-Walid’s reign and is broadly consistent with the al-Azraqi attribution, even though the two sources do not name exactly the same year. Some later popular accounts instead credit an earlier Umayyad governor, Khalid ibn Abdullah al-Qasri (governor of Iraq, 724–728 CE), with the first gold gutter, as reported by Mehr News Agency’s summary of the mizab’s history, which also notes that “some historians believe that it had been made of silver plated with gold” rather than solid gold. This is one of several points in the mizab’s history where popular sources disagree on both the date and the donor of the first gilding; this guide reports both attributions rather than resolving them.

The Medieval Period: Merchants, Caliphs and a Traveller’s Testimony

Between the eighth and fourteenth centuries the mizab was replaced or refurbished several more times, generally by wealthy patrons or reigning caliphs rather than through any standing maintenance schedule. The consolidated lists give: a spout paid for by the estate of the merchant Abu al-Qasim Ramisht, installed by his agent after his death in 537 AH (1142 CE); a spout attributed to the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtafi in 541 AH (1146 CE); and one attributed to the Abbasid caliph al-Nasir, dated in most lists to 677 AH but converted inconsistently — the Arabic Wikipedia list gives “622 AH/1279 CE” while the English list gives “1279 AD” without a matching AH year, an inconsistency this guide notes rather than silently corrects, since 622 AH does not in fact correspond to 1279 CE by the standard conversion (622 AH falls in the early 1220s CE). Whichever exact year is correct, the pattern is clear: through the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, the mizab was treated as a prestige object, worth a wealthy individual’s or a caliph’s personal endowment.

The most vivid eyewitness description from this period comes from the Andalusian traveller Ibn Jubayr, who visited Makkah in 1183–1185 CE and left a precise physical description of the spout as well as an account of a rain event beneath it. He wrote that “the Mizab is on the top of the wall which overlooks the Hijr. It is of gilded copper and projects four cubits over the Hijr, its breadth being a span,” adding that the ground beneath it, like the Yemeni Corner, is considered a place “where, by the favour of God Most High, prayers are answered” — a description reproduced in the Wikipedia Mizab al-Rahma article‘s account of Ibn Jubayr’s testimony. A little over a century later, in 726 AH (1326 CE), Ibn Battuta gave a similar description, noting the spout was gold, extended two cubits over the Hijr, and stood above the traditionally identified grave of Isma’il, marked by a slab of green marble — detail reproduced from Ibn Battuta’s Rihla in Hajj and Umrah Planner’s history page. Both travellers describe a spout of gilded metal, not the specific object that stands today; their value is in confirming that the tradition of a gilded spout over the Hijr, marking a place of supplication, was already well established by the twelfth and fourteenth centuries CE.

The Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Replacements

Ottoman rule over the Hijaz, beginning in 1517, brought a wave of new patronage to the Haram, including further replacements of the mizab. Sources place a spout attributed to Suleiman the Magnificent at 958–959 AH (1551 CE), and a further spout “brought from Egypt” at 961–962 AH (1554 CE) — both figures appearing in the consolidated lists at Wikipedia and Hajj and Umrah Planner. Popular accounts diverge sharply on what happened next: one version, repeated on several Hajj-guide sites including Saudi Expatriates’ history of the Meezab and Meezab Group’s account, states that Suleiman the Magnificent (“Salman Qanuni” in some transliterations) covered the spout with a silver mask in 1554, and that his son, Sultan Selim II (“Salem Sani”), had it gold-plated the following year. This sequence is not confirmed in the more academically sourced timelines used elsewhere in this article, and this guide flags it as a popular tradition rather than a fully corroborated one. What is consistent across sources is that, by the second half of the sixteenth century, the mizab was routinely being renewed in precious metal by the Ottoman sultans as an act of patronage toward the Haram, alongside their renewal of the Kaaba’s door, key and covering.

Crisis and Repair: Sultan Ahmed I, 1020–1021 AH / 1611–1612 CE

By 1611 the Kaaba’s fabric — untouched at the structural level since al-Hajjaj’s rebuilding nine centuries earlier — was in a dangerous state. A Turkish academic study of the episode, drawing on the Ottoman-era chronicles of al-Asadi and al-Sinjari, states that in 1020 AH (1611 CE) floodwater again entered the Kaaba, and inspection found the building “very damaged,” with officials in Makkah warning that the roof and walls could collapse if not reinforced. This alarmed the Ottoman administration; a commission of scholars and officials in Istanbul was convened, and a fatwa was sought for demolishing and rebuilding the Kaaba outright. The scholars declined to authorise full demolition — the study notes a standing principle that the Kaaba should not become “the toy of the rulers,” rebuilt at every ruler’s whim — and the decision instead was to reinforce the existing structure without tearing it down. See the Düzce University academic study of the Kaaba’s rebuilding under Sultan Murad IV, which sets out this earlier 1611–1612 episode as background.

During the 1020 AH pilgrimage season, Sultan Ahmed I (reigned 1603–1617 CE) sent gold- and silver-clad iron bands, reportedly funded with some 80,000 gold and silver dinars, to reinforce the Kaaba’s walls, along with materials to repair the roof and reset displaced marble. As part of this same intervention, the existing silver spout was replaced with a new spout gilded in gold, with materials sent from Istanbul; the same academic study dates the completion of this repair to 1021 AH (1612 CE). A separate Turkish-language documentary source describes the same episode in near-identical terms: that in 1612 Sultan Ahmed I sent an iron reinforcing band, silver on the outside and gold-clad on top, to shore up the Kaaba’s damaged walls, and that “the silver gutter was replaced with a gold gutter” at the same time, with the older gutter brought back to Istanbul and the newly gold-clad mizab once again known by the name Mizab-i Rahmet, “spout of mercy” — this account appears in Nurtur’s German-language history of the Meezab. Sources differ on the finer detail of what exactly Ahmed I’s spout was decorated with: an English-language summary states he “ordered a gutter made of gold, gems and lapis lazuli” in 1604, a decade earlier than the structural crisis described above (see Mehr News Agency’s list of facts on the golden rainspout), while the academic source ties the gold spout specifically to the 1611–1612 structural repair. This guide reports both dates rather than silently choosing between them: what is well corroborated across sources, including a modern biography of the sultan at Ekrem Bugra Ekinci’s profile of Sultan Ahmed I, is that Ahmed I is credited with commissioning a gold rain spout for the Kaaba during his reign, alongside other gifts to the Haramayn including an iron cage around the Zamzam well and jewelled lamps sent to both Makkah and Madinah.

The Flood That Brought Down the Walls: 19 Sha’ban 1039 AH / April 1630 CE

Ahmed I’s reinforced Kaaba stood for less than two decades. On Wednesday, 19 Sha’ban 1039 AH — corresponding to April 1630 CE — a catastrophic flood struck Makkah. Rain that began in the early hours continued, by several accounts, into the following day; floodwater poured down from the hills surrounding the sanctuary and rose inside the Masjid al-Haram until it reached roughly half the height of the Kaaba’s walls. The Indonesian-language account drawing on Meccan chronicles states that the water covered “almost the entire city,” that around a thousand people are reported to have died, and that livestock drowned in large numbers — see PT Jana Madinah Wisata’s account of Makkah’s historic floods. By the evening of 20 Sha’ban, the Kaaba’s Syrian-side (northern) wall had collapsed, along with parts of the eastern and western walls and the internal staircase to the roof; some accounts add that part of the roofed portico gave way as well. The ruler of Makkah at the time, Mas’ud ibn Idris ibn Hasan, ordered the Kaaba’s valuables — including gold lamps set with pearls — moved to the house of the Kaaba’s keeper, Sheikh Jamaluddin Muhammad Abu al-Qasim al-Shaybi, for safekeeping. This sequence is corroborated across several independent accounts, including the Dawoodi Bohra community’s brief history of the Kaaba, which states plainly that “in H 1039/1630 CE, during the reign of the Ottoman King Murad IV, heavy rains resulted in the flooding of the grand masjid and damaged a wall of the Kaaba whilst weakening the other walls,” and a BBC Somali-language history of the Kaaba’s construction, which similarly dates the collapse to 19 Sha’ban 1039 AH and the resulting fatwa for demolition and rebuilding — see BBC News Somali’s history of the Kaaba’s construction.

Scholars in Makkah convened after the flood and issued a fatwa authorising demolition of the remaining unstable walls, since a building in that condition could not simply be patched. Sultan Murad IV, who had succeeded Ahmed I some years earlier, ordered the rebuilding; Egyptian engineers were commissioned, materials — wood, nails, rope, iron fittings — were procured from Cairo, and reconstruction began on 23 Jumada al-Akhirah 1040 AH, finishing on 2 Dhu al-Hijjah 1040 AH (1630–1631 CE), a project most sources describe as taking around six months. This is the rebuilding that fixed the Kaaba’s present form: unlike the Umayyad-era rebuilds, this one deliberately preserved the existing floor plan and, wherever possible, reused the original stones, and no further full reconstruction of the Kaaba’s walls has taken place since. See the detailed builder’s account at Ka’bah Info’s chapter on the construction of the Holy Ka’bah by Sultan Murad Khan, and the parallel account at Masrawy’s retrospective on the 1039 AH flood, published on a past anniversary of the event, which draws on the Meccan historian Muhammad Tahir al-Kurdi’s al-Tarikh al-Qawim. As with the building’s walls, the mizab itself was necessarily remade as part of this reconstruction; sources do not give a separately documented description of that specific 1630–1631 spout, distinct from the general statement that the roof and its fittings were rebuilt along with everything else. A modern encyclopedic summary states the current-style mizab tradition of a gold spout “was added when the Kaaba was rebuilt in 1627, after a flood in 1626 caused three of the four walls to collapse” — see the Wikipedia article on the Kaaba — giving a slightly earlier date range (1626–1627) than the 1039 AH/1630 CE date given by the sources above; this three-to-four-year discrepancy in Gregorian conversion and dating between sources is noted here rather than resolved, since both figures trace back to the same underlying event and the AH date of 1039–1040 is the more consistently repeated one across the Arabic-language sources consulted.

The Nineteenth Century: Sultan Abdulmejid I’s Spout, 1272–1276 AH / 1856–1859 CE

The mizab now on the Kaaba’s roof is the one commissioned by the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid I. Sources are close but not identical on the dating: the Arabic and English Wikipedia lists give 1272–1273 AH (1856 CE) for the sultan’s commission and 1276 AH (1859 CE) for its arrival and installation in Makkah, a sequence corroborated in detail by a Saudi museum catalogue entry, which states the spout was made in Istanbul in “AH 1273/1856–57 CE,” with calligraphy by Abdullah al-Zuhdi — the same calligrapher responsible for the mihrab inscriptions in the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah — and that it was “installed on the Ka’bah in AH 1276/1859–60 CE”; see the Diriyah Biennale Foundation’s catalogue entry on the historic Mizab, describing the earlier, now-retired spout that is preserved as a museum object. Some sources state the spout was carried to Makkah in the company of an Ottoman official named Haji Rida Pasha, dated to 1276 AH/1859 CE in the consolidated lists. This spout replaced one that the Diriyah Biennale catalogue states had been “put up almost 250 years earlier” — a description consistent with, though not an exact date-match for, the Ahmed I-era spout of 1611–1612 discussed above. The retired nineteenth-century spout itself survives and has been displayed as a museum artefact: Saudipedia’s entry on the Exhibition of the Two Holy Mosques Architecture lists among its holdings a “Mizab (rain gutter) of al-Kaaba, which is made of wood, covered with gold, and lined with lead on the inside, dating back to 1857” — a date within one to two years of the 1856–1859 range given elsewhere for Abdulmejid I’s spout.

Abdulmejid I’s spout is described as rectangular, open at the top, closed at the rear where it meets the roof, and open at the front where it discharges into the Hijr; its wooden body was of teak, clad in sheets of 24-carat gold measured at 99.9 percent purity in the Arabic Wikipedia’s technical description, with sharpened spikes set along its ridges specifically to stop pigeons perching on it and fouling the water below — a detail confirmed independently by the Diriyah Biennale catalogue, which notes “the pointed spikes were designed to prevent birds from sitting on the spout and fouling the water.” During the Saudi era, King Saud ibn Abdulaziz’s restoration of the Kaaba’s roof included partial repairs to this spout’s upper nails, again for the same bird-deterrence purpose, according to Hajj and Umrah Planner’s history.

The Saudi Renewal: King Fahd, 1416–1417 AH / 1995–1997 CE

The most recent replacement of the mizab took place as part of King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud’s comprehensive restoration of the Kaaba, one of the largest such projects undertaken during the Saudi era. Work began in Muharram 1416 AH (roughly May–June 1995) with a full inspection and rebuilding of the Kaaba’s outer wall, stone by numbered stone, and continued through the roof, the three interior pillars, the internal walls, the marble flooring, the Shadherwaan apron and the mizab itself. Saudipedia’s article on what the comprehensive restoration works of al-Kaaba al-Musharrafa included lists removing the roof and its supporting columns to check for hidden damage, numbering the interior stones before removal so each could be returned to its exact original position, and erecting a white wooden screen around the Kaaba so that only the Black Stone remained visible to worshippers during the work. A detailed record hosted at Haramain Archives’ account of the 1417/1996 Ka’bah restoration states the project ran from 29 May 1996 to 13 November 1996 and describes it as “the last building of the Ka’bah to date.”

Sources give the completion of this restoration inconsistently as either 1416 AH (1996 CE) or 1417 AH (1997 CE), and this guide reports both figures rather than picking one: the Arabic and English Wikipedia lists date “the mizab of the reign of King Fahd” to 1997, several Hajj-guide sites give 1417 AH/1997 CE explicitly, while Saudipedia’s own institutional account states plainly that “in 1996, King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud carried out a thorough and precise restoration of al-Kaaba al-Musharrafa” (see Saudipedia’s account of the Saudi expansion of the two Holy Mosques), and a Saudi architectural summary likewise states “the last Saudi renewal of the Mizab took place during the reign of King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 1996” (see Safasoft’s history of the Mizab). Since the work itself ran across the AH year 1416–1417, which straddles CE 1995–1997, both the 1996 and 1997 figures given by different sources are defensible depending on whether a source is dating the bulk of the construction work or its formal completion; readers researching the exact year should treat 1996–1997 (1416–1417 AH) as the honestly attested range rather than a single settled date.

King Fahd’s replacement spout retained the dimensions and general design of Abdulmejid I’s nineteenth-century spout rather than introducing a new form — Saudi and independent sources agree it was built “stronger with the same specifications as the old one.” It carries an inscription, on its left-hand side, reading “جدد هذا الميزاب خادم الحرمين الشريفين الملك فهد بن عبد العزيز آل سعود ملك المملكة العربية السعودية” — “This spout has been renewed by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, King of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” — recorded in translation by Hajj and Umrah Planner and independently by Life in Saudi Arabia’s article on seven facts about the Meezab-e-Rehmat, which transcribes the same Arabic wording. This is the spout that stands on the Kaaba’s roof today, and the one every visitor to the Haram in 2026 sees above the Hijr.

Architecture: Design, Materials and Dimensions

The mizab that stands today, in its King Fahd-era form, follows the design established under Sultan Abdulmejid I in the 1850s: a rectangular open channel set into the roof wall on the Kaaba’s north-west side, above the Hijr Isma’il. Sources give closely clustered but not perfectly identical figures for its dimensions. The Wikipedia Mizab al-Rahma article gives an overall length of 258 centimetres (8.46 feet), of which 58 centimetres (1.9 feet) is embedded in the Kaaba’s roof wall, a cavity width of 26 centimetres (10 inches) and a height of 23 centimetres (9.1 inches) on each side. The Arabic Wikipedia article gives the same 258-centimetre length and 58-centimetre embedded portion, but a slightly different width of 25 centimetres and height of 21 centimetres. A Saudi news feature on the spout gives 26-centimetre width but only 16-centimetre height (see the Al Arabiya feature on the story and specifications of the smallest piece of the Kaaba), while a Turkish source describes the earlier Ahmed I-era gutter at 2.75 metres long, 0.25 metres wide and 0.31 metres high — a different spout from a different century, and not directly comparable. These small variances across otherwise careful sources most likely reflect different measurement points (inside versus outside edges of the channel) rather than any real change in the object; this guide gives the range rather than asserting false precision.

Structurally, the body of the spout is teak — among the densest and most water-resistant timbers available to historic Meccan builders, and the same wood used throughout the Kaaba’s roof and internal supports — clad in sheets of gold, with the interior lined in thick silver beneath the gold cladding. A Saudi newspaper’s technical description states that “the mizab of the Kaaba is made of pure gold, lined from the inside with thick pure silver, meaning the gold surrounds the silver on its underside and sides, while the top of the mizab is open, uncovered; between the gold and the silver is thick wood on the underside and sides, and all of it is fastened with nails of pure gold” — see Al-Madina newspaper’s feature on the Mizab’s continuous upkeep. The gold cladding is 24-carat, and the dates of manufacture and renewal are inscribed on the spout’s sides and on its hanging front-piece — called, in Arabic, the “tongue” (lisan) or “veil” (burqu’) — in ornamental thuluth calligraphy. The open top allows water to fall freely from the sky into the channel; the closed rear seals against the roof; the open front lets the water pour out over the Hijr.

Two structural features exist purely as engineering solutions rather than for ornament. First, the roof’s gentle slope toward the north-west corner is itself part of the drainage design, not an accident of construction — without that fall, no spout at that location would function. Second, the sharpened metal spikes set along both ridges of the spout’s upper edge are a practical anti-roosting measure, intended to keep pigeons and other birds from perching on the Kaaba’s roofline directly above a sacred, heavily trafficked space and fouling the water that worshippers stand beneath; this detail is confirmed independently by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation’s museum catalogue entry on the historic Mizab and by the Arabic Wikipedia’s technical description of the current spout.

What was lost, in the strict sense, is every earlier spout itself: none of the Quraysh, Umayyad, Abbasid or early Ottoman spouts survive in place, because each was removed and replaced by its successor. At least one historic spout does survive as an object rather than as a memory — the gold-clad, lead-lined wooden mizab dated to 1857, on display in the Exhibition of the Two Holy Mosques Architecture in Makkah, discussed above, and the earlier Abdulmejid I-era spout preserved and catalogued by Saudi heritage authorities as described in the Diriyah Biennale Foundation’s entry. Beyond these two documented survivals, the fate of the other historic spouts — whether melted down for their gold, stored, lost, or destroyed — is not recorded in the sources consulted for this guide, and this article does not speculate about it.

Archaeological Findings

No dedicated archaeological excavation of the mizab, or of the ground beneath it in the Hijr, has been published in the sources available for this guide. The Hijr Isma’il beneath the spout has never been excavated in the modern archaeological sense — it remains an active, continuously used part of the Masjid al-Haram, and Saudi authorities have not opened it to excavation. What documentation exists is architectural and historical rather than archaeological: the retired nineteenth-century spout preserved and displayed in Makkah’s Exhibition of the Two Holy Mosques Architecture, and the earlier spout catalogued by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, function as museum objects with recorded provenance, not as excavated finds. Readers should not expect, and this guide does not claim, any stratified dig or find report specific to this feature. That is the honest state of the record.

Stories of the Companions

No companion-specific narrative attached uniquely to the mizab, comparable to the well-documented episodes connected to the Black Stone or the door of the Kaaba, is recorded in the sources consulted for this guide. The one companion anecdote that does circulate — Uthman ibn Affan’s remark about having been “standing at the gate of Paradise” while praying beneath the spout — is addressed above, in the Hadith References section, where its status as an unverified anecdote rather than a graded report is stated plainly. Beyond that single anecdote, this guide has found nothing further on record connecting named companions individually to this specific architectural feature, as distinct from their general presence at the Kaaba and in the Hijr during the Prophet’s ﷺ lifetime and after.

Stories of Great Islamic Scholars

The scholar whose name is most closely tied to the mizab is not one of the four founding imams of the schools of law, but the ninth-century Meccan historian al-Azraqi (Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Abdullah al-Azraqi, d. c. 250–251 AH / 864–865 CE), whose Kitab Akhbar Makkah (“Book of Reports about Makkah”) is the earliest surviving detailed history of the city and its sanctuary, and the primary source for the spout’s early dimensions, its gilding under al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik, and the report attributed to Ata ibn Abi Rabah about supplication beneath it. Background on al-Azraqi and his book is available from the Wikipedia entry on al-Azraqi and the dedicated Wikipedia entry on Akhbar Makkah. Without al-Azraqi’s record, most of what is known about the mizab before the Ottoman period would be unrecoverable; this article’s material-history section rests heavily, directly or through later historians who cite him, on his work.

Ata ibn Abi Rabah himself (d. 114–115 AH / 732–733 CE), a student of Ibn Abbas and one of the most respected jurists of Makkah in the generation after the Companions, is the authority behind the strongest devotional statement connected to the spot beneath the mizab, discussed fully above. He is not credited in the sources with any specific ruling about the mizab as a physical object — his statement concerns the merit of prayer at that location, not the spout’s construction or maintenance.

No specific ruling, treatise or recorded opinion from Imam Malik, Abu Hanifah, al-Shafi’i, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Kathir, al-Nawawi, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani or al-Fasi addressing the mizab by name has been located in the sources consulted for this guide. Ibn Kathir’s relevance to this article’s material is indirect: his commentary on the Quraysh rebuilding of the Kaaba, cited above, provides the narrative context for the mizab’s installation, but he does not appear to have written specifically about the spout as a distinct subject. This is stated here plainly, in keeping with the standard of this guide, rather than inferring an opinion these scholars did not record.

Spiritual Reflection

Stand in the Mataf and look up toward the north-west corner of the Kaaba, and you are looking at a piece of guttering. That is not a reduction of the subject; it is the beginning of it. The mizab asks you to hold two facts in your mind at once without letting either one cancel the other: it is a functional drain, built and rebuilt by ordinary human calculation about slope, wood and metal, and it has been called, for at least eight centuries of recorded history, “the spout of mercy.” Perhaps that is exactly the lesson the object offers. Mercy in the Qur’anic sense is not usually described as spectacular. It is rain — ordinary, needed, sent down “when He causes it to fall upon whom He wills of His servants” (Surah ar-Rum, 30:48) — and it is carried off a roof by a channel built for exactly that unglamorous purpose. You do not need the rain to fall on you to understand what the builders and namers of this object were pointing at.

You might ask yourself, standing there on a dry Makkan afternoon under a cloudless sky, what you are actually seeking when you hope to see rain fall from that spout. Is it the water itself, or is it a shortcut to a feeling of nearness that the du’a you are already making, dry-eyed and unremarkable, could just as easily carry? Ata ibn Abi Rabah’s words, whatever their formal grading, describe someone who supplicates beneath the mizab and is heard — not someone who is wetted by it. The rain, when it comes, is a mercy in the plainest sense: needed water in a desert city that averages barely more than a hundred millimetres of rainfall a year. Its rarity is itself worth sitting with. You are asking Allah for things in a place where even the ordinary blessing of rain is treated as remarkable enough to be recorded by travellers eight centuries ago. What does it mean to call something ordinary, in a place like this, a mercy at all — and what does that tell you about the mercies in your own life you have stopped noticing because they are, by comparison to a desert, unremarkable?

Practical Visitor Guide: Seeing the Mizab in 2026

You will not, in the overwhelming majority of visits, see rain fall from the mizab. That needs to be said plainly and first, because a great deal of pilgrim expectation around this object is set by photographs and videos of rare rain events that circulate disproportionately on social media relative to how often they actually happen. Makkah’s climate is hot desert; Wikipedia’s climate summary for Mecca, drawing on long-run meteorological averages, gives annual rainfall of around 112 millimetres across roughly 22 rainy days a year, concentrated mostly between November and January, with long stretches — June through September in particular — that are reliably dry. Multiple independent climate summaries converge on the same picture: rain is real but genuinely rare, arrives mostly in short, sometimes intense winter bursts, and is essentially absent for most of the Hajj season and the hot summer months. If your Umrah trip in 2026 does not coincide with a winter storm, you should not plan your visit around seeing water fall from the spout, and you should not feel your trip was lacking if it does not happen.

What you can reliably see, at any time of year, is the spout itself. It sits above the north-west corner of the Kaaba, over the low crescent wall of the Hijr Isma’il, between what tradition calls the Iraqi and Syrian corners. From ground level in the Mataf directly in front of the Hijr, the viewing angle is steep and the spout can be partly foreshortened by the Kaaba’s own kiswa-draped bulk; a clearer view is generally available from a little further back in the Mataf, from the north side facing the Hijr, or from the elevated walkways and upper floors of the Mataf expansion, from which the roofline and the spout’s gold cladding catch the light more clearly, especially in the early morning or late afternoon sun. Binoculars or a zoom lens help considerably given the distance and the crowd density near the Hijr itself.

Do not crowd into the Hijr chasing a chance of rain. The Hijr is a small, densely used space at the best of times, valued for its own reasons as a place many hold to be part of the Kaaba’s original footprint; treating it as a place to gather and wait for rainwater, especially if a shower begins during your visit, creates avoidable crowding and risk of injury in an area that is already difficult to move through safely during peak Tawaf hours. If rain does begin while you are in the Mataf, follow the instructions of Haram security and crowd-management staff rather than pressing toward the Hijr. There is no obligation, recommendation, or established sunnah practice that requires standing under the spout during rainfall; the reports discussed above describe a merit some have attached to supplication at that spot, not a duty to physically place yourself beneath falling water at personal risk or at the cost of crowding fellow worshippers performing Tawaf.

A few practical notes for 2026: access to the Mataf’s upper levels, and the exact vantage points available, can change with ongoing Haram capacity management and any seasonal construction; check current guidance from the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah or your tour operator before your trip rather than relying on older trip reports. Photography of the Kaaba and its features is generally permitted for personal use in the Mataf, though large tripods, professional equipment and drone photography are restricted; ask your group leader about the current rules if in doubt. Visiting with children is straightforward at this specific spot — there is nothing to touch, queue for, or specifically enter — though the general crowding of the Mataf area near the Hijr applies regardless of what a family is there to see. The most common visitor mistake connected to the mizab is not about the spout at all: it is spending Tawaf circuits scanning the roofline for a rain event that statistically will not occur on your trip, rather than attending to the acts of worship you came to perform.

Common Misconceptions

Several claims circulate about the mizab that deserve direct, unemotional correction, because they are repeated confidently and often without any source at all.

Collecting rainwater from the mizab. No established Islamic practice instructs pilgrims to collect, bottle, or otherwise take away rainwater that has fallen from the spout, and Saudi authorities do not facilitate or endorse this. Some pilgrims who happen to be present during a rare rain event have historically wrung wet clothing into containers or onto themselves and others nearby — a practice Ibn Jubayr himself described in the twelfth century, when he wrote that some pilgrims “drenched their clothes in the blessed water and, going out to the women, wrung them into the hands of some of them,” recorded in the Wikipedia Mizab al-Rahma article‘s reproduction of his account. That such a practice is old does not make it prescribed; it is best understood as a long-standing folk devotional custom attached to a rare and emotionally charged moment, not as a ritual obligation or a recommended sunnah act, and no authentic hadith instructs pilgrims to seek out or preserve this water in the way some modern claims imply.

Claims about the mizab’s gold content. Popular articles frequently state precise weights or values for the gold in the mizab — figures that, when checked, are inconsistent from source to source and rarely traceable to an official Saudi disclosure. What is reliably documented is that the current spout is clad in 24-carat gold sheeting over a teak core lined internally with silver, per the technical descriptions cited earlier in this guide’s Architecture section; specific weight-in-kilograms figures for the mizab itself, as distinct from the well-documented 280-kilogram gold door installed under King Khalid in 1979 (see Saudipedia’s account of the Saudi expansion of the Two Holy Mosques), have not been located in a source this guide considers authoritative enough to repeat as fact. Readers should treat specific gold-weight figures for the mizab circulating online with caution unless traced to an official Saudi statement.

Confusing the mizab with the Kaaba’s roof access door. The mizab is a drainage spout on the exterior roofline; it is not, and has never been, an entrance. The Kaaba’s roof is reached from inside the building, through an internal staircase behind a door on the interior’s eastern wall, known as the Bab al-Tawbah (“Door of Repentance”), which leads to a hatch opening onto the roof — a completely separate feature from the mizab, used only by the Kaaba’s appointed caretakers for maintenance and for annual cleaning, never by the general public. This internal access route is described in the Wikipedia article on the Kaaba, which also notes a separate exterior door, the Bab al-Rahmah (“Door of Mercy”) — a name that, because it shares the word “Rahmah” with the Mizab al-Rahmah, is sometimes confused with the spout in casual conversation despite being an entirely different feature on a different wall.

Beyond these specific points, a broader caution applies to this site as it does to most historically and devotionally significant locations around Makkah and Madinah that are not among the small number of places with a clear basis in the sunnah for intentional visitation. Scholars including Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Uthaymeen, and the Standing Committee for Islamic Research and Fatwas hold that only a short, specific list of places around the two holy cities — chiefly al-Masjid al-Haram, al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the grave of the Prophet ﷺ and his two companions, Jannat al-Baqi, the martyrs of Uhud, and Masjid Quba — carry a basis in the sunnah for being sought out with the specific intention of devotional visitation and reward; see the ruling summarised at IslamQA’s answer on visiting places and mosques connected to the Prophet ﷺ. On this view, features such as the mizab are historically and architecturally significant, and understanding them helps a pilgrim appreciate the Kaaba more fully, but seeking them out with the specific intention of gaining religious reward from the visit itself is a different matter from simply observing and reflecting on them as part of one’s time in the Haram. The Standing Committee has in particular cautioned against practices that treat physical objects, stones or fixtures as themselves possessing power to bless — touching, rubbing, or attaching special expectation to contact with a specific spot beyond what is textually established. Other scholars, particularly within some Sufi and broader traditionalist currents, take a more expansive view of tabarruk (seeking blessing through proximity to sacred places and objects) and would not object to a pilgrim hoping to witness or stand near the mizab during rain as an expression of hope in God’s mercy, provided no specific power is attributed to the water or the metal itself. This guide presents both positions and their proponents without adjudicating between them; the choice of how to regard such practice is the reader’s own.

Lesser-Known Facts

The mizab is sometimes called Mizab al-Kaaba (“spout of the Kaaba”) as well as Mizab al-Rahmah (“spout of mercy”); both names are attested in classical and modern sources, per the Wikipedia Mizab al-Rahma article, and the two are used interchangeably rather than marking any real distinction between different objects.
The lip of the mizab carries a hanging appendage historically called its “beard” (in some translations) or “tongue” (lisan) and “veil” (burqu’) in Arabic descriptions — a small moving piece of gold at the front of the spout that helps direct the water’s fall and that also carries part of the spout’s inscribed dedication text, as noted in the Al-Madina newspaper feature on the Mizab’s upkeep.
The traditionally identified graves of Isma’il and his mother Hajar are marked by green marble slabs inside the Hijr, directly beneath the line of the mizab’s fall — a juxtaposition both Ibn Jubayr in the twelfth century and Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth specifically recorded, according to the accounts reproduced in Wikipedia’s Mizab al-Rahma article and Hajj and Umrah Planner’s history page.
The sharp spikes along the spout’s ridge exist for an entirely practical, unglamorous reason — to stop pigeons from perching on the holiest roofline in Islam and fouling the water that falls from it — a detail confirmed by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation’s museum catalogue entry.
At least two retired historic mizabs survive as preserved objects rather than as melted-down metal: one displayed in Makkah’s Exhibition of the Two Holy Mosques Architecture, and Sultan Abdulmejid I’s mid-nineteenth-century spout, catalogued with its calligrapher’s name recorded — Abdullah al-Zuhdi, who also carved the mihrab inscriptions in the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah — per the Diriyah Biennale Foundation’s entry.
The strongest devotional statement attached to the ground beneath the mizab is not a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ at all, but the recorded opinion of Ata ibn Abi Rabah, a Follower and student of Ibn Abbas — a distinction obscured by a great deal of popular material that presents his words as prophetic.

Timeline

c. 605 CE (five years before the Prophetic mission): The Quraysh roof the Kaaba for the first time and fit the first mizab, made of wood.
3 Rabi’ al-Awwal, 64 AH (31 October 683 CE): The Kaaba burns during the Umayyad siege of Makkah against Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr.
64–65 AH (684–685 CE), date disputed between sources: Ibn al-Zubayr rebuilds the Kaaba on what he holds to be Ibrahim’s original foundations and fits a new mizab.
73 AH (692–693 CE): Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, on behalf of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik, demolishes Ibn al-Zubayr’s Kaaba and rebuilds it on the earlier, smaller footprint, fitting a new mizab; this is the floor plan the Kaaba retains today.
c. 86–96 AH (705–715 CE): The caliph al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik is credited with the first gilding of the mizab, per al-Azraqi’s account; a separate source dates the start of gilded plaques to 91 AH (709–710 CE), and another tradition credits the governor Khalid ibn Abdullah al-Qasri in the 720s CE instead — sources disagree on both date and donor.
537 AH (1142 CE): A mizab funded by the estate of the merchant Abu al-Qasim Ramisht is installed after his death.
541 AH (1146 CE): The Abbasid caliph al-Muqtafi’s mizab is installed.
1183–1185 CE: The traveller Ibn Jubayr describes the mizab in detail, including an eyewitness account of pilgrims gathering beneath it during a rare rainstorm on 19 Jumada al-Ula (9 September) 1183.
c. 677–622 AH (dates and conversion inconsistent across sources), c. 1279 CE: A mizab attributed to the Abbasid caliph al-Nasir.
726 AH (1326 CE): Ibn Battuta describes the mizab and the traditionally identified graves of Isma’il and Hajar beneath it.
958–959 AH (1551 CE): A mizab attributed to Suleiman the Magnificent.
961–962 AH (1554 CE): A mizab brought from Egypt.
1020–1021 AH (1611–1612 CE): Following flood damage and structural danger to the Kaaba’s walls, Sultan Ahmed I funds reinforcement of the building and a new gold-clad mizab, replacing an older silver one; some sources instead date his gold-and-gem spout to 1604 CE.
19–20 Sha’ban 1039 AH (April 1630 CE): A catastrophic flood breaches the Masjid al-Haram, rising to roughly half the height of the Kaaba’s walls; the northern wall and parts of the eastern and western walls collapse, along with the internal roof staircase.
23 Jumada al-Akhirah – 2 Dhu al-Hijjah 1040 AH (1630–1631 CE): Sultan Murad IV orders the Kaaba rebuilt using Egyptian engineers; this reconstruction fixes the Kaaba’s present form and necessarily includes a new mizab.
1272–1273 AH (1856 CE): Sultan Abdulmejid I commissions a new gold-clad mizab in Constantinople, with calligraphy by Abdullah al-Zuhdi.
1276 AH (1859 CE): Abdulmejid I’s mizab is transported to Makkah and installed, reportedly in the company of Haji Rida Pasha.
1416–1417 AH (1995–1997 CE), completion date given inconsistently across sources: King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud carries out a comprehensive restoration of the Kaaba, including a replacement mizab built to the same dimensions and specifications as Abdulmejid I’s spout; this is the mizab that stands today.

Key Lessons

Historical

The mizab’s history shows that even the smallest fixture on the Kaaba has been treated, across fourteen centuries and every major dynasty to hold authority over the Hijaz, as worth the personal attention of rulers, wealthy patrons and careful historians. It also shows how thin the surviving record can be even for a well-documented object: sources disagree on exact years, on which ruler funded which spout, and even on how many centuries separate one gilding from the next. Reading history honestly means reporting that thinness rather than smoothing over it.

Spiritual

The name “spout of mercy” attached to a piece of drainage engineering is itself a small lesson in how Islamic tradition finds meaning in the ordinary and the necessary, not only in the miraculous. Mercy, in the Qur’anic vocabulary this object borrows its name from, is most often rain — plain, needed, and, in this city, rare enough to be treasured when it comes.

Personal

Wanting to witness something remarkable during Umrah is natural. The honest fact that you are very unlikely to see rain fall from the mizab on any given visit is worth sitting with rather than resenting: it is a chance to examine whether your devotion depends on a spectacle or can be sustained by the ordinary acts of Tawaf, du’a and reflection that are available to you regardless of the weather.

Practical

See the spout for what it is — a drain solving a real engineering problem for a real building — before layering devotional meaning on top of it. Look for it from the north side of the Mataf or its upper levels for the clearest view, do not crowd the Hijr chasing a rain event, and treat viral photographs and videos of rainfall at the Kaaba as the rare events they are, not as a realistic expectation for your own trip.

Authentic Sources

Primary Islamic Sources

The foundational account of the Quraysh rebuilding of the Kaaba and the Prophet’s ﷺ role in placing the Black Stone comes down through Ibn Ishaq’s Sira, preserved in Ibn Hisham’s redaction and cited at length in Ibn Kathir’s commentary; see the reproduction at Ibn Kathir’s account of the story of the Quraysh rebuilding the House. A note of caution applies here as it does throughout this guide: Ibn Ishaq’s material, and the broader early historical tradition represented by figures such as al-Waqidi and al-Tabari, was compiled generations after the events it describes and mixes material of varying historical reliability; modern scholarship treats these works as invaluable narrative sources for the shape of early Islamic history while urging caution about specific details, dialogue and numbers, especially where a report has only one chain of transmission. This article treats such material as historical narrative rather than as hadith requiring the same isnad-based grading.

The essential primary source for the mizab’s material history specifically is the ninth-century historian al-Azraqi’s Kitab Akhbar Makkah, discussed above; a public-domain English-language introduction to the work and its author is available via the Wikipedia entry on Akhbar Makkah, and a digitised early edition can be consulted through Nabataea.net’s hosted copy of Akhbar Mecca.

Classical Scholars

Al-Azraqi (d. c. 250–251 AH / 864–865 CE) is the indispensable classical authority for this subject; see the biographical overview at the Wikipedia entry on al-Azraqi. Ata ibn Abi Rabah (d. 114–115 AH / 732–733 CE), the Follower whose statement on supplication beneath the mizab is discussed in the Hadith References section above, is the authority behind the most-repeated devotional claim connected to this site. The traveller Ibn Jubayr (d. 614 AH / 1217 CE) and the traveller Ibn Battuta (d. 770s AH / 1360s–70s CE) both left eyewitness physical descriptions of the mizab in their respective centuries, discussed above and reproduced in the modern sources cited throughout this article. Ibn Kathir (d. 774 AH / 1373 CE) is cited above for his account of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic rebuilding of the Kaaba, though no dedicated treatment of the mizab by him has been located.

Modern Academic and Reference Sources

A note on method: this article draws heavily on secondary compilations — encyclopedic articles, Hajj-guide websites and heritage-institution catalogue entries — because they are what preserve and consolidate al-Azraqi’s ninth-century record and the Ottoman court chronicles for a general reader, and because the primary Arabic sources are not fully available in translation. Wherever these secondary sources gave conflicting dates, donors or measurements, this article has reported the conflict rather than silently selecting one figure, and has flagged popular claims — particularly around sixteenth-century Ottoman gildings and the precise gold weight of the current spout — that could not be traced to a source this guide considers authoritative. Readers who want to verify any specific date or attribution before repeating it elsewhere should follow the links above to the original discussion rather than relying on this summary alone.

The Mizab al-Rahmah (The Spout of Mercy)