No, a Shivaling wasn’t revealed in ‘Mecca Madina’

Two images are circulating on social media with the claim that for the first time in history the Shivaling was revealed in Mecca-Madina. The claim requests Hindus to share the images.

[Original text in Hindi: इतिहास में पहली बार मक्का मदीना का शिवलिंग दिखाया गया हे सभी हिन्दू भाई चुके नही शेयर जरूर करे]

The first image has recently been shared on Facebook while the second image has been on the platform at least since 2017.

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The claim is viral on both Twitter and Facebook. Alt News has also received several requests to verify the claim on its official WhatsApp helpline number (+91 76000 11160).

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Fact-check

Image 1

For the first image, we performed a reverse image search on Yandex which took us to a page on Pinterest that describes the image as “Rukn E Yamani corner of Kaaba”. The image carries the name of the Facebook page ‘Cities of muhammad (pbuh)’ on top. A rummage through the page took us to the original photo published in 2012.

We found a reference to the Rukn-e-Yamani on the Government of India’s Haj guide PDF (page 41) prepared by the Haj Committee of India, a statutory body of the Ministry of Minority Affairs. It says that the Kaaba in Mecca has four corners 1) Hajr-e-Aswad, 2) Rukn-e-Shami, 3) Rukn-e-Iraqi and 4) Rukn-e-Yamani.

Rukn-e-Yamani translates to “The Yemeni Corner” and is situated on the southwestern corner of the Kaaba. It faces Yemen thus the name Rukn-e-Yamani. Pilgrims perform “Istilaam” on the exposed corner i.e., they kiss or touch the corner and make a prayer.

Furthermore, Rukn-e-Shaam is the “The Syrian Corner”, Rukn-e-Iraqi is “The corner that faces Iraq” and Hajr-e-Aswad or “Black Stone” is on the eastern corner of the Kaaba.

Second image

For the second viral image, we again performed a reverse image search which took us to a page on Pinterest that identifies the idol as “12 Heads Shivalinga, Veeratpur, Rajasthan, India”. Taking this as a clue, we looked for more details and found a mapsofindia.com link that says a huge cave in Pandu Hills of Virat Nagar, Rajasthan houses a statue of Nandi and a Shivaling decorated with 12 faces of Shiva. The photo was uploaded in 2015 on the website Maps of India.

We also found a vlog on YouTube that gives a tour of the temple. Below we have added a screenshot that show the structure in the viral image is the same as the one in the vlog.

Hence, the Rukn-e-Yamani corner of the Kaaba in Mecca and a Shivaling located at the Pandu Hills in Rajasthan were shared with the false claim that a Shivaling was displayed in “Mecca-Medina”. It must be noted that the viral claim erroneously clubs “Mecca and Medina” together. Mecca and Medina are two different cities. Mecca is considered to be the holiest of three cities in Islam, the other two being Medina and Jerusalem.