Circling the House

Tawaf is the rite of circling the Kaaba, the cubic shrine at the centre of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca that Muslims face in prayer from everywhere on earth. The pilgrim walks seven times around the House in a counter-clockwise direction, keeping it on the left, beginning and ending at the corner set with the Black Stone, which the pilgrim salutes, touches or points toward at the start of each circuit. It is a central act of both the greater pilgrimage, the hajj, and the lesser pilgrimage, the umrah, and it may also be performed as a devotion in its own right by anyone present at the mosque.

The Qur'an ties the rite to the primordial dedication of the House, instructing that it be purified for those who circle it, and the tradition traces its establishment to Abraham and his son Ishmael, who are said to have raised the Kaaba's foundations. The circling enacts a visible unity: pilgrims of every nation and rank move as one body around a single point, the wealthy and the poor in the same two seamless white garments of ihram.