The Black Stone is broken into a number of fragments, with varying accounts putting the number at between seven and fifteen, held together by a silver frame. There are differing accounts of how the damage occurred. According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, the damage occurred during a siege in 638. The editors of Time-Life Books state that the damage occurred during a siege launched by a general of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (646-705). Other sources, including the 2007 Britannica, state that the damage occurred as the result of a theft in 930 CE, when Qarmatian warriors sacked Mecca and carried the Black Stone away to their base in Ahsa, in medieval Bahrain. According to the historian Al-Juwayni, the Stone was returned twenty-two years later, in 951, under somewhat mysterious circumstances; wrapped in a sack, it was thrown into the Friday Mosque of Kufa accompanied by a note saying “By command we took it, and by command we have brought it back.” Its abduction and removal caused further damage, breaking the stone into seven pieces.

The Black Stone has been described variously as basalt lava, an agate, a piece of natural glass or most popularly a stony meteorite. A significant clue to its nature is provided by an account of the Stone’s recovery in 951 AD after it had been stolen 21 years earlier; according to a chronicler, the Stone was identified by its ability to float in water. If this account is accurate, it would rule out the Black Stone being an agate, basalt lava or stony meteorite, though it would be compatible with it being glass or pumice.

It has been suggested that the Black Stone may be a glass fragment from the impact of a fragmented meteorite some 6,000 years ago at Wabar, a site in the Rub’ al Khali desert some 1,100 km east of Mecca. The craters at Wabar are notable for the presence of blocks of silica glass, fused by the heat of the impact and impregnated by beads of nickel-iron alloy from the meteorite (most of which was destroyed in the impact). Some of the glass blocks are made of shiny black glass with a white or yellow interior and gas-filled hollows, which allow them to float on water. Although scientists did not become aware of the Wabar craters until 1932, they were located near a caravan route from Oman and were very likely known to the inhabitants of the desert. The wider area was certainly well-known; in ancient Arabic poetry, Wabar or Ubar (also known as “Iram of the Pillars” was the site of a fabulous city that was destroyed by fire from the heavens because of the wickedness of its king. If the estimated age of the crater is accurate, it would have been well within the period of human habitation in Arabia and the impact itself may have been witnessed. However, a recent (2004) scientific analysis of the Wabar site suggests that the impact event happened much more recently than first thought and might have occurred only within the last 200–300 years.

Jordan [trans-Jordan meaning the east side of the Jordan River] was created in 1922 as a kingdom to serve British imperialist colonial interests according to the British Mandate of the League of Nations Resolution of 1920; and after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill took 77 percent of Palestine, the historic homeland of the Jewish people, and created a colonialist kingdom where today over 90% of the population identify themselves as Palestinian Arabs. If Jordan were to allow democratic elections, the world would be forced to recognize it as both the de jure and de facto Palestinian Arab state.

Judea and Samaria were illegally occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan for 19 years following its British-led invasion into the nascent Jewish state until being won back by Israel during the Six Day War of 1967.

Jordan is already the Arab Palestinian state and that the only factor allowing the international community to continue ignoring this reality is the lack of democratic elections in the Hashemite kingdom. The Western powers and Arab countries today are attempting to extort these lands now to be used for the creation of a new Arab state to be run by the Arab Fatah-led PA.

Hashemite King Abdullah of Jordan [trans-Jordan] assumes that the creation of another Palestinian Arab state in portions of Israel will ease pressure on his kingdom. However, analysts have pointed out that the Jordanian monarch has an interest in the speedy establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria as he fears a repeat of “Black September” led by Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah and other factions with the same goal to succeed this time around.

The “Black September” group’s name derives from the Black September conflict which began on 16 September 1970, when King Hussein of Jordan declared military rule in response to a fedayeen coup d’état to seize his kingdom; resulting in the deaths or expulsion of the PLO to Lebanon and thousands of Arab Palestinians from Jordan in July 1971. The BSO began as a small cell of Fatah men determined to take revenge upon King Hussein and the Jordanian army. Recruits from the PFLP, as-Sa’iqa, and other groups also joined.

In his book Stateless, Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), Yasser Arafat’s chief of security and a founding member of Fatah, wrote that: “Black September was an auxiliary unit of the resistance movement, at a time when the latter was unable to fully realize its military and political potential. Abu Iyad’s claim was contradicted by Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, also known as Abu Daoud, a BSO operative and former senior PLO member, who, according to a 1972 article in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustur, told Jordanian police: “There is no such organization as Black September. Fatah announces its own operations under this name so that Fatah will not appear as the direct executor of the operation.”

Other actions attributed to Black September include:

28 November 1971: the assassination of Jordan’s prime minister, Wasfi Tel, in retaliation for the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan in 1970-71;
December 1971: attempted assassination of Zeid al Rifai, Jordan’s ambassador to London and former chief of the Jordanian royal court;
6 February 1972: sabotage of a West German electrical installation and gas plants in Ravenstein and Ommen in the Netherlands and in Hamburg in West Germany;
8 May, 1972: hijacking of a Belgian aircraft, Sabena Flight 572, flying from Vienna to Lod.
September and October 1972: dozens of letter bombs were sent from Amsterdam to Israeli diplomatic posts around the world, killing Israeli Agricultural Counselor Ami Shachori in Britain.
1 March 1973: attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, killing Cleo Noel, United States Chief of Mission to Sudan, George Curtis Moore, the US Deputy Chief of Mission to Sudan, and Guy Eid, the Belgian chargé d’affaires to Sudan
2 March 1973 1973 New York bomb plot
5 August 1973: two Palestinian militants claiming affiliation with Black September open fire on a passenger lounge in an Athens airport, killing 5 and wounding 55. A Lufthansa Boeing 737 is hijacked in December to demand that the gunmen be freed from Greek custody.
19 September 1972 letter bomb attacks and assassination of Ami Shachori. Dr. Ami Shachori was the agricultural counselor in the Israeli Embassy to the United Kingdom in the London district of Kensington.  At the age of 44 he was assassinated in a letter bomb attack on September 19, 1972, perpetrated by Black September.Eight bombs were addressed to embassy staffers. Four were intercepted at a post office sorting room in Earls Court, but the other four letters made it to the embassy. Three of the letters were detected in the consulate post room but Ami Shachori opened his, believing it contained Dutch flower seeds he had ordered. The resulting blast tore a hole in the desk and fatally wounded Shachori in the stomach and chest. In Shachori’s memory an annual memorial lecture on agriculture in London was established.
The Hashemite Kingdom, which is itself an artificially created state, has a majority population that defines itself as ethnically Palestinian.

The Jewish people have had a long history in Africa, dating to the Biblical era. As the African diaspora grew, because of the movement of Africans and their descendants throughout the world, African Jews were part of that diaspora. In addition, Judaism has spread through the African diaspora, largely through conversion. While many adhere to traditional Jewish movements, there are a number of Jewish organizations unique to the African diaspora.

Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used. While there is much debate about the details, by most definitions, Jews include those who have a Jewish ethnic background and those without Jewish parents who have converted to Judaism.

Some Jewish groups in the African diaspora with no connection to mainstream Judaism consider themselves the true descendants of the Israelites of the Torah and do not consider Semitic Jews to be “true Jews”.

The American Jewish community includes African-American Jews and other Jews of African descent. Black Jews belong to each of the major American Jewish denominations — Orthodox, Conservative, Reform — and to the smaller movements as well. Like their white Jewish counterparts, there are also Black Jewish secularists and Black ethnic Jews who may rarely or never take part in religious practices.Estimates of the number of Black Jews in the United States range from 20,000 to 200,000.

Black Hebrews and Black Hebrew Israelites
The term “Black Jews” is sometimes used to describe Black Hebrews, groups of people mostly of Black African ancestry situated mainly in the United States who believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites. Black Hebrews adhere in varying degrees to the religious beliefs and practices of mainstream Judaism. They are generally not accepted as Jews by the greater Jewish community, and many Black Hebrews consider themselves — and not mainstream Jews — to be the only authentic Jews. Although cordial relationships exist between some of these groups and the mainstream Jewish community, they are generally not considered to be members of that community, since they have not formally converted nor do they have Jewish parents.

The total number of Jews of Black African descent in France is not known, but there are approximately 250 Black Jews in Paris. The emergence of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century led growing numbers of European Jews to make aliyah (immigrate) to the Land of Israel, the traditional homeland of the Jewish people. In the 20th century, the rise of Nazism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust accelerated the trend.

Jews from Arab states in North Africa
The creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent expulsion and emigration of Jews from the neighboring Arab states led to growing numbers of non-European Jews settling in Israel, among them Jews from North Africa, chiefly Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. For these African Jews, emigration to Israel was the end of the Jewish diaspora and the beginning of the African diaspora.

Many North African Jews emigrated to Europe, utilizing citizenship granted in the colonial period. Thus some Libyan Jews immigrated to Italy while some Algerian, Tunisian, and Moroccan Jews immigrated to France. Subsequent events, such as the Algerian War for Independence, the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the Six-Day War in 1967, led to the almost complete emigration of the Jews still remaining in Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco. Today the only viable Jewish communities in North Africa are in the island of Djerba and in Morocco

There are a number of Black African groups that practice Judaism, the most prominent of which are the Beta Israel of Ethiopia. However, the vast majority of Jews in Sub-Saharan Africa live in South Africa, and are of Ashkenazi (largely Lithuanian) origin. Small post-colonial communities exist elsewhere. Here is a list of some prominent Sub-Saharan African Jews, arranged by country of origin.

Moreover,with Israel coming under Greek, Persian and later Roman rule and dependency, renewed waves of Jewish refugees including traders and artisans began to set up more communities in Egypt, Cyrenaica, Nubia and the Punic Empire, notably in Carthage. From Carthage they began to scatter into various historically established, as well as newly emerging Jewish communities south of the Atlas mountains nearer to the modern day Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon and Congo. Several Jewish nomadic groups also moved across the Sahara from Nubia and the ancient kingdom of Kush towards west Africa.

Various East and West African ethinic nations lay verifiable claim to their Jewish ancestral heritage. The Falashas, the most famous of those Black Jews have been validated. Close to three hundred thousand of those black Falasha Jews live in the modern State of Isreal as practising Jews.

The Lembas of South Africa, another so-called Bantu tribe have a cogent and valid claim to Jewish ancestory and heritage backed by solid genetic evidence i.e. the prevalence of the so-called Cohen modal J haplogroup. The Lembas as a group are indistinguishable from their Bantu neighbours suggestiing that most Bantus groups possess this archetypal Jewish genetic haplogroup. It implies that there are potentially more bloodline Jews on the continent of Africa than anywhere else including modern Europe and Israel.

The names of old Jewish communities south of the Atlas mountains (around the regions of modern Niger, Nigeria), many of which existed well into Renaissance times, can be found in documents in synagogue archives in Cairo. See “George E. Lichtblau”

Jewish and Islamic chronicles cite the existence of Jewish rulers of certain Jewish tribal groups and clans (self identifying as Jewish) scattered throughout Mauritania, Senegal, the Western Sudan, Nigeria, and Ghana. See Ismael Diadie Haidara, “Les Juifs a` Timbouctou”, Recueil de sources relatives au commerce juif a Timbouctou au XIXe siecle, Editions Donniya, Bamako, 1999.

According to the Tarikh es Soudan recorded by Abderrahman ben Abdallah es-Sadi (translated by O.Houdas) a Jewish community was formed by a group of Egyptian Jews, who had travelled to the West Africa through Chad. See also: al-Kati M., “Tarikh al-Fattash, 1600″.

Another such community was located near the Niger River by the name of Koukiya led by a ruler known as Dia or Dji, a shortened form of “Dia min al Yaman” or Diallaiman (meaning he who comes from Yemen). According to local traditions, Diallaiman was a member of one of the Ethiopian-Jewish colonies transplanted from Yemen to Ethiopian-Abbysinia in the 6th century C.E. Dialliaman is said to have moved to West Africa along with his brother. They set up the Jewish community in Northern Nigeria which later merged with the famous 7 Hausa States. See Meek C.K., “Northern Nigeria Tribes” Volume 1, Oxford, p.66.

A 9th century Jewish traveller Eldad ben-Mahli (also known as Eldad the Danite) related accounts about the location of some of the lost tribes of the House of Israel. According to this account, the tribe of Dan had migrated from Palestine so as not to take part in the internecine civil wars at the time of Yeroboam’s succession. It was reported that this section was residing in the land of Havila beyond the waters of Ethiopia where there was much gold i.e. West Africa.

It was further reported that three other tribes had joined the tribe of Dan namely Naphtali, Gad, Asher. Those joined up with Dan in the land of Havila in the times of Sennacherib. They had an entire body of scriptures barring Esther and Lamentations. They neither used the Talmud nor the Mishna, but they had a Talmud of their own in which all the laws were cited in the name of Joshua the son of Nun. See Nahum Slouschz, “Travels in North Africa” Philadelphia 1927, p.227.

Ibn Khaldun, who lived in the 13th century, a respected authority on Berber history testified about the Black Jews of Western Sudan with whom he personally interacted. The famous muslim geographer al-Idrisi, born in Ceuta, Spain in the 12th century, wrote extensively about Jewish Negroes in the Western Sudan.

Black Jews were fully integrated and achieved pre-eminence in many West African kingdoms. For instance Jews were believed to have settled in great West African empires such as Songhai, Mali, Ghana and Kanem-Bornu empires. According to numerous accounts of contemporary visitors to the region several rulers, and administrators of the Songhai empire were of Jewish origins until Askia Muhammad came to power in 1492 and decreed that all Jews either convert to Islam or leave the region. See Ismael Diadie Haidara, “Les Juifs a` Timbouctou”, Recueil de sources relatives au commerce juif a Timbouctou au XIXe siecle, Editions Donniya, Bamako, 1999.

The 16th century historian and traveler Leon Africanus, was a Hebrew-speaking Jewish convert to Islam, raised in a Jewish household by Jewish parents of Moroccan descent. Leon Africanus travelled extensively in Africa south of the Sahara where he encountered innumerable Black African Jewish communities. Leon later converted to Catholicism but remained interested in Jewish communities he encountered throughout his travels in West Africa. See Leo Africanus (al-Hassan b. al -Wazzan al-Zayyati), Della discrittione dell’Africa per Giovanni Leoni Africano, Settima Parte, in G.B. Ramusio, Delle navigationi e viaggi. Venice 1550, I, ff.78-81r.

Additional evidence is provided by surviving oral traditions of numerous African ethnic groups, including links to biblical ancestors, names of localities, and ceremonies with affinities to Jewish ritual practices. Moreover, the writings of several modern West African historians indicate that the memories of Jewish roots historical in West Africa continue to survive.

For instance, there are a number of historical records of small Jewish kingdoms and tribal groups known as Beni Israel that were part of the Wolof and Mandinge communities. These existed in Senegal from the early Middle Ages up to the 18th century, when they were forced to convert to Islam. Some of these claimed to be descendants of the tribe of Dan, the traditional tribe of Jewish gold and metal artisans, who are also said to have built the “Golden Calf”.

Black Jews are said to have formed the roots of a powerful craft tradition among the still-renowned Senegalese goldsmiths, jewelers and other metal artisans. The name of an old Senegalese province called “Juddala” is said to attest to the notable impact Jews made in this part of the world. In addition to the Jewish tribal groups in Senegal who claim to be descendants of the tribe of Dan, the Ethiopian Jews also trace their ancestry to the tribe of Dan.

Additionally, Mr. Bubu Hama, a former president of the National Assembly in Niger and a prolific writer on African history has argued in many treatise as well as lecture tours that the Tuaregs had a Jewish queen in early medieval times, and that some Jewish Tuareg clans had preserved their adherence to that faith, in defiance of both Islamic and Christian missionary pressure, until the 18th century. In several of his books Hama cites the genealogies of Jewish rulers of the Tuareg and Hausa kingdoms. See “Lichtblau”.

Some accounts place some West African Jewish community in the Ondo forest of Nigeria, south of Timbouctou. This community maintained a Torah Scroll as late as 1930s, written in Aramaic that had been burnt into parchment with a hot iron instead of ink so it could not be changed. See Gonen Rivaka, “The Quest for the Ten Lost tribes of israel: To the Ends of the Earth”, Jason Aronson Inc., Northville, NJ., 2002 at pages 180-181.

The Igbos of Nigeria, one of the bigger nations that comprise Nigeria lay a strong claim to Jewish ancestry as borne out by their mores, laws, rituals and idioms which have a heavily accented old testament Hebrew flavour.See Ilona R, “The Ibos: Jews of Nigeria,” volume 1, Research Findings Historical Links, Commentaries, Narratives,” 2004, Mega Press Limited, Abuja, Nigeria

Some of the established Jewish communities existed in such still renowned places as Gao, Timbuktu Bamako, Agadez, and Kano. In Timbucktu, the UNESCO still maintains notable archives containing records of the old Jewish community of Mali and the Hausa states of Nigeria.

NOTABLE SOUTH AFRICAN JEWS

Politicians and activists
Hilda Bernstein, anti-apartheid activist
Lionel Bernstein, anti-apartheid activist
Harry Bloom, anti-apartheid activist
Jules Browde, barrister, jusrist and anti-apartheid activist. Law school classmate of Nelson Mandela.
Selma Browde, physician, anti-apartheid activist, former Councilwoman - Johanessburg City Council, AIDS activist.
Arthur Chaskalson, chief justice
Abba Eban, Israeli diplomat (South African-born)
Bernard Friedman, anti-apartheid MP
Richard Goldstone, judge and international war crimes prosecutor
Joel Joffe, human rights activist
Ronnie Kasrils, current South African Intelligence Minister
Tony Leon, previous opposition leader
Joe Slovo, ANC activist and leader of the South African Communist Party
Harry Schwarz, anti-apartheid politician, lawyer and diplomat
Helen Suzman, anti-apartheid MP
Harold Hanson, QC and strong supporter of civil liberties
Robin Philip Cranko, Lawyer, Anti Aphartheid activist
Helen Zille, Mayor of Cape Town, Leader of the Opposition Party
Other Jewish ANC activists included Ruth First, Albie Sachs and five of the six whites arrested in the Rivonia Trial: Denis Goldberg, Lionel Bernstein, Arthur Goldreich, James Kantor, Harold Wolpe and Gaby Shapiro.

Academics
Abraham Manie Adelstein, UK Chief Medical Statistician
Selig Percy Amoils, Inventor & Surgeon
Moses Blackman, crystallographer
Sydney Brenner, biologist, Nobel Prize (2002)
Sydney Cohen, pathologist
Meyer Fortes, anthropologist
Max Gluckman, anthropologist
Aaron Klug, chemist, Nobel Prize (1982)
Ludwig Lachmann, economist
Arnold Lazarus, psychologist
Roland Levinsky, biologist
Stanley Mandelstam, physicist
Shula Marks, historian
Frank Nabarro, physicist
Seymour Papert, Artificial Intelligence pioneer
Peter Sarnak, mathematician
Isaac Schapera, anthropologist
Anthony Segal, biochemist
Phillip V. Tobias, palaeoanthropologist
Joseph Wolpe, psychotherapist
Lewis Wolpert, developmental biologist
Basil Yamey, economist
Solly Zuckerman, UK zoologist

Cultural figures
Lionel Abrahams, poet
Jillian Becker, writer
Dani Behr, tv presenter
Harry Bloom, writer & anti-apartheid activist (father (non-biological) of Orlando Bloom)
Lisa Chait, radio presenter
Johnny Clegg, World Beat musician
John Cranko, choreographer
David Goldblatt, photographer
Nadine Gordimer, writer, Nobel Prize (1991)
Laurence Harvey, actor
Ronald Harwood, playwright
Manu Herbstein, writer
Dan Jacobson, writer
Sid James, comic actor
Danny K, pop singer
William Kentridge, artist
Lennie Lee, artist
Laurence Lerner, poet
Manfred Mann (Manfred Lubowitz), R&B keyboardist
Sarah Millin, writer
Trevor Rabin, guitarist & film composer
Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro), political cartoonist
Anthony Sher, stage actor
Janet Suzman, stage actress
Rachel Zadok, novelist

Business and professional figures
Raymond Ackerman, supermarket tycoon
Barney Barnato, diamond magnate
Alfred Beit, diamond magnate
Donald Gordon, founder of insurance company Liberty Life, shopping centre owner & philanthropist
Sydney Jacobson, newspaper editor
Solomon Joel, financier
Sol Kerzner, hotel & casino owner
Sammy Marks, early entrepreneur from Pretoria
Ernest & Harry Oppenheimer, diamond tycoons & philanthropists (Harry converted to Christianity)
Percy Yutar, South Africa’s first Jewish attorney-general and prosecutor of Nelson Mandela in the 1963 Rivonia Treason Trial.

Sports figures
Ali & Adam Bacher, cricketers
Okey Geffin, rugby player
Ilana Kloss, tennis player
Peter Lindenberg, powerboat racer (uconfirmed)
Syd Nomis, rugby player
Sarah Poewe, swimmer
Philip Rabinowitz (runner), 100-year-old sprinter
Wilf Rosenberg, rugby player
Jody Scheckter, Formula 1 driver
Joel Stransky, rugby player
Shaun Tomson, surfer
Mandy Yachad, cricketer