Clothing the Kaʿba, Clothing Power: The Kiswah as Devotional Soft Power from the Ottoman Empire to the Present

Abstract

The kiswah—the textile covering of the Kaʿba in Mecca—is commonly approached as a devotional object, a masterpiece of Islamic textile production, or a symbol of custodianship over Islam’s holiest sanctuary. This article argues that it should also be understood as an instrument of devotional soft power: a form of attraction and persuasion generated when materially exceptional and portable sacred culture acquires representational force. Through a qualitative historical-comparative analysis, the article traces the political work performed by the kiswah from the Ottoman administration of Egyptian production and Hajj logistics to the centralized Saudi regime of manufacture, display, replacement, and diplomatic gifting. It examines four linked mechanisms: the fiscal institutionalization of the textile through waqf and state finance; the visual and processional staging of authority through the mahmal; the material splendor and representational capacity of the textile itself; and the selective circulation of removed fragments through diplomatic and heritage networks. The comparison demonstrates both continuity and transformation. In both periods, control over the kiswah enabled rulers to materialize claims to service and guardianship of the Holy Places. Yet the Ottoman-Egyptian system projected authority through mobile, multi-centered imperial circuits, whereas the contemporary Saudi system concentrates production and official circulation within a national bureaucratic institution. The article concludes that devotional soft power explains how sacred objects can generate political attraction through the convergence of rarity, beauty, technical virtuosity, extraordinary material value, portability, and sacred representation, without reducing devotional practice to instrumental state strategy.