Mecca

Mecca, also Makkah (ancient Macoraba), city in western Saudi Arabia, located in the Al Ḩijāz (Hejaz) region, near Jiddah. Mecca is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad (the founder of Islam), the center of pilgrimage for Muslims, and the focal point of their daily prayers. In Arabic, the city is known as Makkah al-mukkaramah (“Mecca the blessed”). Pilgrimage to the city is one of the Five Pillars of Islam and is required of all able adult Muslims at least once in their lifetimes. The pilgrimage (hajj in Arabic) is the defining factor in the growth and life of the city. The influx of close to 2 million pilgrims each year during the last month of the Islamic calendar is a grand human spectacle as well as one of the largest logistical and administrative undertakings in the world.

Located in an arid valley surrounded by rocky hills, Mecca has had religious and commercial significance for centuries. Muslims believe that one of the city’s sacred sites, the Kaaba, was built by the Old Testament patriarch Abraham and his son, Ishmael (to whom Arab people trace their descent), and that a nearby well, Zamzam, was used by Ishmael’s mother, Hagar. The city stood at the crossroads of two major trade routes: one connecting southern Arabia (present-day Yemen and Oman) with the lands of Egypt and Syria, and the other linking the Red Sea with the Persian Gulf coast and Mesopotamia (roughly present-day Iraq). By the time Muhammad was born in about 570, Mecca had become an important trading center; Muhammad himself came from a merchant family. After the spread of Islam and the growth of the Muslim community, the fortunes of Mecca rose and fell with the yearly ebb and flow of pilgrims. To this day, the economy of the city depends to a great extent on accommodating, feeding, transporting, and otherwise caring for large numbers of pilgrims.

Mecca was led by local sharifs, rulers who claimed descent from Muhammad, from 966 until the 20th century. In 1517, however, the sharifs of Mecca came under the authority of the expanding Ottoman Empire. During World War I (1914-1918), Sharif Husein ibn Ali, with British support, declared an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, expelling them from the city in 1916. In 1924 central Arabian ruler Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, defeated Husein’s forces and added Mecca and the Al Ḩijāz region to his domain. Population (1995 estimate) 770,000.