Introduction of Qurʼân by Edward Henry Palmer (1880)  

The worship of stones is a very old form of Semitic cult, and it is curious to note that Jacob ‘took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it; and he called the name of the place Bethel[1]:’ and that at Mecca the principal object of sacred interest is a stone, and that the Kaabah has been known, from time immemorial, as Bâit allâh, ‘the house of God.’

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