As quoted in Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Meccah by Richard Francis Burton, Volume III: "In A.D. 1674 some wretch smeared the Black Stone with impurity, and every one who kissed it retired with a sullied beard. The Persians, says Burckhardt, were suspected of this sacrilege, and now their ill-fame has spread far; at Alexandria they were described to me as a people who defile the Kaaba. It is scarcely necessary to say that a Shi'a, as well as a Sunni, would look upon such an action with lively horror. The people of Meccah, however, like the Madani, have turned the circumstance to their own advantage, and make an occasional "avanie". Thus, nine or ten years ago, on the testimony of a boy who swore that he saw the inside of the Kaaba defiled by a Persian, they rose up, cruelly beat the schismatics, and carried them off to their peculiar quarter the Shamiyah, forbidding their ingress to the Kaaba. Indeed, till Mohammed Ali's time, the Persians rarely ventured upon a pilgrimage, and even now that man is happy who gets over it without a beating. The defilement of the Black Stone was probably the work of some Jew or Greek, who risked his life to gratify a furious bigotry." Note: Burton pointed out to the suspect as a "Jew or Greek". The "Greek" here is to be understood as a Christian, and not a Greek national per se.
