The practice of covering the walls of the Ka'aba in the great mosque at Mecca with a curtain of cloth (kiswah), bound halfway up with a band embroidered in Qur'anic text (hizam) apparently dates from pre-Islamic times. Traditionally it is changed annually and from the time of the Mamluks until 1961 the cloth was manufactured in Egypt. This panel comes from a part of the hizam; when the new covering is in place, the old is cut into pieces and distributed as relics.