The triviality of these rites is ill concealed by the legends of the sa'y of Hagar and of the tawaf being first performed by Adam in imitation of the circuit of the angels about the throne of God; the meaning of their ceremonies seems to have been almost a blank to the Arabs before Islam, whose religion had become a mere formal tradition.
We do not even know to what deity the worship expressed in the tawaf was properly addressed.
Though ignorant of the legal ritual and prayers, they performed the tawaf with enthusiasm, throwing themselves against the Ka`ba and clinging to its curtains as a child clings to its mother.
The ceremony of the tawaf and the worship of stone fetishes was common to Mecca with other ancient Arabian sanctuaries.'
Thus the space of ten spans between the black stone and the door, which is on the east side, between the black and Irak corners, and a man's height from the ground, is called the Multazam, and here prayer should be offered after the tawaf with outstretched arms and breast pressed against the house.