The Blessing in the Sacred House and Touching the Corners

Question:
Your Excellency the Shaykh. You have clarified and made clear, may Allah reward you, the meanings of the blessing that exist in this great House. Many people today, and may Allah will that they are not many, have exaggerated the meaning of the blessing. They thought the blessing was in the House itself, and they sought blessing from its curtains and from the water flowing from its spout, and the like of that. Please guide us, may Allah reward you.

Answer:
This is an exaggeration (ghuluw). The blessing is in the worship around it: the tawaf (circumambulation) around it, touching the Black Stone, and touching the Yemeni Corner. Kissing the Black Stone has blessing in it. The water of Zamzam, drinking from it, is blessed water, so there is blessing in it, but only according to what has come in the evidence. What has no evidence for it is not done. One does not seek blessing from the curtains, and one does not touch any of the corners of the Ka'bah except what has come that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) used to touch, which is the Yemeni Corner and the Black Stone. As for the two corners, the Shammi (Northwest) and the Iraqi (Southeast), they are not touched and not kissed because they are not on the foundations of Ibrahim (peace be upon him). As for the Yemeni Corner and the Black Stone, they are on the foundations of Ibrahim (peace be upon him).
The reason the two Shammi corners are not touched and not kissed is that when Quraysh wanted to build the Ka'bah in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance (jahiliyyah), and they gathered money from the purest of their wealth, look, they were disbelievers and they did not build the House except with lawful money, with lawful wealth. So they gathered lawful money, but it was not sufficient to build the entire House. So they demolished the northern side of it and left the stone.
The stone now, the Hajar al-Aswad (Black Stone), this is part of the House, or most of it is part of the House, and it remained in this state. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) wanted to build it on the foundations of Ibrahim, but he said that he feared that the people would cause confusion at that time and say that the House has been changed and altered. So he left it, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him. He said to Aisha: “If it were not that your people are recent from the pre-Islamic age of ignorance, I would have demolished the House and rebuilt it on the foundations of Ibrahim.” This is the reason the two Shammi corners are not touched and not kissed, because they are inside the House and not on the foundations of Ibrahim. And this is the reason. Yes.