The Black Silk Robe Replaced Yearly on the Kaaba

Every year on the 9th of Dhu al-Hijjah — the day pilgrims stand on the plain of Arafat — a new kiswah is hoisted over the Kaaba, the cubic shrine at the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The black silk cloth is embroidered in gold and silver thread with verses of the Qur'an, and it weighs about 670 kilograms.

For centuries the kiswah was woven in Egypt and brought to Mecca on the mahmal, a ceremonial caravan that left Cairo annually. The Egyptian workshop, near the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, supplied the cloth from the 13th century until 1927. After tensions during the 1926 hajj — the Egyptian pilgrim band was fired upon by Ikhwan forces of the new Saudi state — Ibn Saud established a Saudi factory, the Kiswah Factory of the Holy Kaaba, in Mecca itself.

The Saudi factory employs around 240 craftsmen. The fabric is jacquard-woven from raw silk dyed black, then over-embroidered by hand with gold-coated silver thread. A single kiswah takes about a year to make and reportedly costs around 22 million Saudi riyals.

The old kiswah is cut down once the new one is in place. Pieces have historically been given as diplomatic gifts to heads of state and Muslim institutions; smaller fragments are distributed to dignitaries and embassies. Parts of older kiswahs sit in museum collections from the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul to the Victoria and Albert in London — the same cloth that wrapped the holiest object in Islam, now under glass.