We often think of the Kaaba’s cubic shape as its original design, but history and Hadith tell a different story. It was actually a "budget constraint" 1,400 years ago that gave us the shape we see today.
1. The 605 CE Rebuild
Five years before the first revelation, the Quraysh had to rebuild the Kaaba due to damage from flash floods and fire. They vowed that they would only use pure money. This meant no funds from:
Ironically, because they were so strict about the source of the funds, they actually ran out of money. To finish the project, they had to shorten the length of the building, turning it from a rectangle into the cube we see today.
2. The Prophet’s (PBUH) Dilemma
The Prophet (PBUH) knew the Kaaba was originally rectangular (the Ibrahimic foundation). While he wanted to restore it to its original shape, he famously refrained. Why? Political Stability.
He told Aisha (RA) that because the Meccans had only recently entered Islam, restructuring the Kaaba might have caused massive civil unrest. He chose the peace of the community over the architectural accuracy of the building.
3. The Ibn al-Zubayr Restoration (683 CE)
During the Second Fitna (civil war), the Kaaba was severely damaged by fire and catapults during the Umayyad siege of Mecca. Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, who then held Mecca, decided this was the opportunity to fulfill the Prophet's original wish. He:
4. The Final Reversion
After the Umayyads defeated Ibn al-Zubayr, the general Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf wanted to erase the legacy of his rival. He consulted the Caliph, and they decided to restore the Kaaba back to the cubic design of the Quraysh era, the shape the Prophet (PBUH) had lived with. That is the structure that has remained largely unchanged for over 1,300 years
The Legacy: The Hatim (Hijr Ismail)
If you look at the Kaaba today, there is a low semi circular wall (the Hatim) on one side. This isn't just a decorative fence those few stones symbolize the original boundary of the Kaaba. When you pray inside that semi circle, you are technically praying inside the Kaaba.
Note I didn’t link the source because the site sunnah.com isn’t working for me if anyone can put links in comment would be great.(Tried clearing cache, changing browser everything)
Sahih al-Bukhari: Hadith 1586, 1583 and Sahih Muslim1333 (c)
Sarajevo Safari is the name for an alleged war tourism phenomenon during the siege of Sarajevo (1992–1996) involving human hunting.
According to the reports, wealthy foreign men were enabled, for large monetary fees, to shoot at civilians in the besieged city with sniper rifles for entertainment purposes.
John Jordan, a former US Marine and firefighter, testified in The Hague in 2007 during the trial of General Dragomir Milošević, commander of the VRS's Sarajevo-Romanija Corps.
>Jordan stated under oath that on "several occasions" he had seen individuals he described as "tourist snipers."
He noted that they "did not appear to be locals" based on their "clothing, weaponry, and the way they were being escorted by local officers."
1. Background
Before 1911, Libya was the heart of the Senussi Order. This wasn’t just a religious group they were the backbone of the country. They built the schools, ran the courts, and managed the trade routes. They were proud Bedouins who answered to no one but Allah and the Caliph.
2. Italy’s "Fourth Shore" (Quarta Sponda)
In 1911, Italy decided they needed to be real Romans again. They looked at Libya and saw a "Fourth Shore" to dump their poor peasants on essentially a settler colonial project. They expected to be welcomed as liberators from the Turks. Instead, they walked into a 20 years of Libyan resistance.
3. The Butcher: Rodolfo Graziani
When the Italians realized they couldn't win on the battlefield, they sent General Rodolfo Graziani.
The Propaganda: He was called a "hero" of the state.
The Reality: He was a coward. In WWII, when faced with the British army, he had a nervous breakdown and hid in a bunker 60 feet underground. He was only "brave" when he was dropping poison gas on shepherds and children who couldn’t shoot back.
4. The Camps & The Fence
Graziani’s strategy wasn't war, it was extinction.
He built a 270km barbed wire fence along the Egyptian border to cage the population.
He forced 110,000 people into desert death traps like El Agheila. By the time they closed, 60,000 Libyans had been starved to death or killed by typhus.
Despite international bans, Italy rained Mustard Gas and Phosgene on tribes and poisoned their wells so they had nothing to come home to.
Inmates at the Sid Ahmed el Maghrun concentration camp
5. Omar Mukhtar
The soul of the resistance was a 73 year old Quran teacher. For two decades, Omar Mukhtar used guerrilla tactics to humiliate Italian tanks.
When he was finally captured in 1931, they gave him a 3 hour fake trial and hanged him in front of 20,000 starving prisoners. They thought killing the man would kill the cause, they only succeeded in making him an eternal legend.
Omar Mukhtar publicly hanged in front of this people without a fair trial.
6. The Rape of the Green Mountain: Mabruchismo
Historians like Ali Abdullatif Ahmida have exposed the horror the "Good Italian" myth hides.
>The degenerate practice known as Mabruchismo (from the Arabic mabrouka, meaning "blessed," used mockingly by the Italians).
Italian officers routinely seized young Libyan girls as forced concubines.
Reports describe soldiers entering mosques to rape women and children, then disemboweling them and pinning their bodies to walls with bayonets as "warnings."
7. How does present day Italy responds ?
In 2008, Italy signed a treaty apologising for the blood but it was mostly a deal for oil and gas.
The real slap in the face? In 2012, a national monument was built to honor The Butcher Graziani in his hometown of Affile. Italy still calls him a "General." History knows him as a war criminal who hid in a hole after starving an entire nation.
While the world watched the genocide in Bosnia through the lens of neutrality or internal conflict the reality on the ground was a death sentence for the Bosnians. Under a UN arms embargo, they were facing the 4th largest army in Europe with little more than hunting rifles.
We often hear about the Dayton Accords, but we don’t talk enough about how the Islamic world from Islamabad to Istanbul broke the law to save the people. This wasn't just charity or just a show but it was a massive, high stakes military and financial operation.
1. Pakistan
If there is one weapon that changed the war, it was the Baktar Shikan (the Pakistani variant of the HJ-8 "Red Arrow" missile).
General Javed Nasir, DG of the ISI, ignored the UN and US pressure. He personally oversaw the airlifting of these anti tank guided missiles (ATGMs).
In the Battle of Stup (Sarajevo), Bosnian soldiers who had never seen a tank actually stop, used these Pakistani missiles to decimate Serbian armoured columns. The Serbs called them "Red Arrows", the Bosnians called them "Green Arrows" out of respect for where they came from.
Pakistan didn't just send gears, they sent retired Special Service Group (SSG) commandos to train the ARBiH in guerrilla tactics.
You can see weapons in action here.
2. Iran
Iran’s contribution was the most illegal and the most vital for day to day survival.
Between 1994 and 1995, Iran flew over 14,000 tons of weapons into Croatia.
>To get these weapons through, the Bosnians had to pay a "tax" to the Croatians one third of every shipment stayed in Croatia. It was a brutal deal, but it was the only way.
These flights were suicidal. Bosnian and Iranian pilots flew cargo planes into dark, unlit runways in Croatia, often evading NATO's "No-Fly Zone" patrols.
3. Saudi Arabia
The Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia (SHC), led by then Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, was the financial backbone of the resistance.
Documented figures put Saudi aid at roughly $600 million.
While they sent tons of food, they also bankrolled the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA). This was a shadow bank based in Vienna that the Bosnian government used to buy weapons on the black market from former Soviet states.
They didn’t wait for the war to end, they were rebuilding schools and hospitals while the shells were still falling.
4. Turkey
Turkey used its NATO membership to be Bosnia's voice when everyone else was silent.
In February 1994, Turkish PM Tansu Çiller and Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto walked through the streets of besieged Sarajevo. It was a massive middle finger to the international community’s passivity.
Left Turkish PM Tansu Çiller and Right Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto
Turkey was the "safe house." They trained thousands of Bosnian soldiers on Turkish soil and provided the intelligence that allowed, the rest of the countries providing support to Bosnia to stay ahead of UN inspectors.
5. UAE and Kuwait
The UAE set up the most advanced field hospitals in the region. There are stories of UAE doctors staying in bunkers during the shelling to perform surgeries on children hit by snipers.
Kuwait focused on soft infrastructure. While Sarajevo was being starved of power and water, Kuwaiti grants kept the city’s utilities running via underground tunnels and secret repairs.
Why this matters for us today:
The most incredible part of this history? Iran and Saudi Arabia were working toward the same goal. At a time when sectarianism is so high, the Bosnian War stands as a rare moment where the Ummah looked past borders and sects.
The West finally stepped in with NATO in 1995, but they only did so because the Islamic world had already leveled the playing field. Without the money from Riyadh, the missiles from Pakistan, and the iron from Tehran, Bosnia would be a footnote in a history book of "lost nations."
It is May 2026, and the Battle of Memory between Algiers and Paris has never been more heated. Just last month, the Algerian parliament officially passed a law criminalizing the 132 years of French colonial rule. Yet, across the Mediterranean, the response from the Elysee remains a cold, calculated "no repentance."
To the Western world, the Algerian War is often framed as a complicated decolonisation. But for the us, it was a 132 year struggle to prevent the total erasure of Islamic identity in North Africa. France didn’t just want the land, they wanted the soul of the people.
The Arrogance of "ni excuses ni repentance" (neither excuses nor repentance)
Even in 2026, the French state refuses a formal apology. President Macron famously said that a formal apology would break all ties. For years, the French wouldn't even use the word "War," calling it "operations for the maintenance of order."
They returned 24 skulls of our resistance leaders in 2020, but hundreds more our grandfathers and scholars are still sitting in cardboard boxes in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, treated as "war trophies" rather than human beings who deserve a Janazah. This isn't just "history", it’s a living desecration.
Paris Musée de l’Homme Counts 535 Skulls Of Algerian War Resisters
Why They Can't Face the Truth ?
If France apologised, they would have to admit to a level of brutality that rivals the worst crimes of the 20th century.
1. The Mosque of Martyrs (1832):
One of the first acts of the civilising mission was the theft of the Ketchaoua Mosque in Algiers. The Duke of Rovigo ordered it turned into a cathedral. When 4,000 Muslims barricaded themselves inside to protect the House of Allah, the French military didn't hesitate. They slaughtered every single person inside. They didn't just take the building, they piled the Mushafs (Qur'ans) in the street and burned them. For 130 years, an Altar stood where the Mihrab should have been.
Renamed as the Cathedral of St Philippe during colonial rule
2. The Enfumades of Dahra (1845):
Long before the world knew the horrors of gas chambers, the French were using smoke to commit genocide. In the caves of the Dahra mountains, General Pélissier trapped the entire Ouled Riah tribe over 1,000 men, women, and children. Instead of fighting them, he lit massive fires at the cave entrances to suffocate them. French soldiers later described finding mothers clutching their infants, both charred by the smoke. Pélissier was later promoted to Marshal of France.
3. The V E Day Betrayal (May 8, 1945):
While Europe was celebrating the defeat of Nazi tyranny, the French were starting a new massacre in Sétif and Guelma. Algerians, many of whom had just returned from fighting for France in WWII, marched for their own freedom.
The response?
French police shot a 14 year old boy, Saâl Bouzid, for holding an Algerian flag. This sparked a weeks long slaughter where French militias and the military killed up to 45,000 Algerians. They used lime kilns to burn the bodies and hide the evidence.
4. The Systematized Torture (1954–1962):
During the final Revolution, the French military turned torture into a science. They used the "Gégène" (electric shocks) and waterboarding as standard operating procedures. They called it "pacification."
In 2026, the skulls of our scholars still sit on shelves in Paris. They are denied the final right of every Muslim, a Janazah and a grave in the soil they died defending.
France calls this 'history.'
May Allah have mercy on the Million Martyrs. The land has returned to the Adhan, but the justice of the world is still silent.
Why did Dutch turn towards Ottomans ?
By the 1560s, the Netherlands was the ATM of the Spanish Empire rich, urbanised, and increasingly Protestant (Calvinist). King Philip II of Spain, a man so Catholic he famously said he’d rather lose all his states than rule over heretics, decided to bring the hammer down.
So how did the King responded ?
Spain responded with a level of brutality that shocked Europe. Philip sent the Duke of Alba, a man who viewed the Dutch as sub human rebels.
Alba established the Council of Troubles, which was so efficient at executing people that the Dutch renamed it the Council of Blood.
Thousands were beheaded or burned, including the highest ranking nobles in the land. The rebellion looked doomed until a group of pirate rebels known as the Sea Beggars (Watergeuzen) took to the sea, realising they needed an ally that Spain actually feared.
The rest of Catholic Europe was absolutely scandalized. They viewed this as a betrayal of Christendom.
Catholic polemicists coined the term "Calvinoturcismus" (Calvino-Turkism).
The Spanish and French often mocked the Dutch as "Protestant Turks" or "Circumcised Calvinists,"claiming that the two religions were essentially the same because they both "hated the Mother Church."
Enemy of my enemy is my friend - Ottomans
When the Dutch envoys reached the Sublime Porte in Constantinople, they found a surprisingly warm welcome. The Ottomans were currently the only superpower capable of standing toe to toe with Spain.
Sultan Murad III saw the Dutch as a perfect fifth column. By supporting them, he forced Spain to fight a two front war. Every ducat Philip spent fighting rebels in the North was a ducat he couldn't spend on galleys in the Mediterranean.
The Sultan’s court actually found Protestantism fascinating.
The 1574 Letter from Murad III: This is the big one. The Sultan addressed the "Lutherans in Flanders," explicitly telling them that since they "abolished the idols and statues and bells," they were closer to Islam than the Catholics. They saw the Dutch rejection of icons, saints, and the Pope as a move toward true monotheism.
The 1612 Capitulations: This was the formal treaty that gave the Dutch "most favored nation" status in Ottoman ports, effectively handing them the keys to the Mediterranean trade.
This led to the famous Dutch battle cry and medal: "Liever Turks dan Paaps" (Rather Turkish than Papist). It wasn't just a joke, it was a statement that Ottoman religious tolerance (the Milletsystem) was far superior to Spanish tyranny.
What good did this partnership achieved ?
This wasn't just a moral support alliance, it changed the map of the world.
Ottoman naval pressure in the 1570s (around the time of the Battle of Lepanto) forced Spain to declare bankruptcy. This is what led to consolidation of dutchmen power and earn there freedom from spanish rule.
With Ottoman trade privileges, the Dutch became the middlemen of Europe. The wealth that built Amsterdam was, in large part, fueled by this Protestant Crescent trade route.
Because of this alliance, the Dutch Republic became a haven. It’s no coincidence that Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition found safety in both the Ottoman Empire and Amsterdam the two ends of the alliance.
Between the 14th and 16th centuries, Timbuktu served as a primary center of Islamic learning within the Mali and Songhai Empires. The city developed a sophisticated educational tradition that integrated both religious and rational sciences.
Sankoré Madrasa (University of sankore)
The University of Sankore was the intellectual heart of the region. At its peak, the city’s madrasah system hosted an estimated 25,000 students, creating a massive knowledge based economy. It operated on a decentralized model where students studied under specific sheikhs to earn an ijazah (teaching license), a tradition that emphasized on personal mentorship and rigorous peer review.
Curriculum and Sciences
While the foundation of the curriculum was the Quran, hadith, and fiqh (jurisprudence), the scholarship extended into diverse fields:
Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti (1556–1627)
The era’s most prominent scholar, Ahmad Baba, authored over 40 books and treatises and owned a private library of over 1,600 volumes.
In 1594, following the Saadi (Moroccan) invasion, he was arrested for refusing to recognise the Sultan’s authority and was deported in chains to Marrakesh. During his years of forced exile, his reputation grew so great that Moroccan jurists and students sought him out as a leading intellectual authority. He was finally allowed to return to Timbuktu in 1608, where he continued his work until his death.
The Manuscript Tradition
Today, an estimated 300,000 to 700,000 manuscripts remain in Mali. These documents are written in Arabic and Ajami (local languages like Songhai or Fulani in Arabic script) and cover topics ranging from conflict resolution and human rights to scientific observations. They provide definitive evidence of a sophisticated, written West African intellectual tradition that was fully integrated into the global Islamic scholarly network.
