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Mecca or Makkah (in full: Makkah al-Mukarramah ; ) is the capital city of Saudi Arabia's Makkah province, in the historic Hejaz region. It has a population of 1,294,167 (2004 census). The city is located 73 kilometres (45 miles) inland from Jeddah, in the narrow sandy Valley of Abraham, 277 metres (909 ft) above sea level. It is located 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the Red Sea.
The city is revered by Muslims for containing the holiest site of Islam, the Masjid al-Haram, and a pilgrimage that involves an extended visit to the city is required of all able-bodied Muslims who can afford to go at least once in an individual's lifetime.
The term 'Mecca' has come into common usage metaphorically to mean any all-important site for any particular group of people, or a main attraction in a certain place or group of people that has a large turnout. In the 1980s the government of Saudi Arabia changed the official English transliteration of the city's name from 'Mecca', as it had been and continues to be commonly spelled by westerners, to 'Makkah'.
Mecca is at an elevation of 277 m (910 ft.) above sea level. The city is situated between mountains, which has defined the contemporary expansion of the city. The city centers around the Masjid al-Haram (holy place of worship). The area around the mosque comprises the old city. The main avenues are Al-Mudda'ah and Sūq al-Layl to the north of the mosque, and As-Sūg as Saghīr to the south. Houses near the mosque have been razed and replaced with open spaces and wide streets. Residential complexes are more compacted in the old city than in residential areas. Traditional homes are built of local rock and are two to three stories. The city has a few slums, where poor pilgrims who were unable to finance a trip home after the hajj settled.[1]
Transportation facilities related to the Hajj or Umrah (minor pilgrimage) are the main services available. Mecca has no airport, or rail service. Paved roads and modern expressways link Mecca with other cities in Saudi Arabia. The city has good roads. Most pilgrims access the city through the hajj terminal of King Abdul Aziz International Airport (JED) or the Jeddah Islamic Port both of which are in Jeddah.[1]<div style="float:right;width:315px;"> </div>
Population density in Mecca is very high. Most of the people who live in Mecca live in the old city. The city has an average of four million visitors as "pilgrims" and that is only in hajj time each year. Pilgrims also visit all year round for Umra. [1]
The mayor of Mecca is appointed by the king of Saudi Arabia. The current mayor of the city is Usama Al-Barr. A municipal council of fourteen locally elected members is responsible for the functioning of the municipality.
Mecca is also the capital of Makkah province.[1], which also includes neighboring Jeddah. The governor was Prince Abdul-Majid bin Abdul-Aziz from 2000 until his death in 2007.[2] On May 16, 2007, Prince Khalid al-Faisal was appointed as the new governor.[3]
The Kaaba, a large cubical building now surrounded by the Masjid al-Haram, is said by Muslims to have been built by Abraham and to have been a religious center ever since.
Academic historians, however, state with certainty only that Mecca was a shrine and trading center for a number of generations before Muhammad. The extent of Meccan trade has been hotly debated. Some historians believe that Mecca was a waypoint on a land route from southern Arabia north to the Roman and Byzantine empires, and that Arabian and Indian Ocean spices were funneled through Mecca. Patricia Crone, in her book Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, argues that the Meccans were small merchants dealing in hides, camel butter, and the like.
According to the Qur'ān and Muslim traditions, the city was attacked by an Ethiopian Aksumite army led by Abraha in 570, the year of Muhammad's birth. The attack was said to have been repelled by stones dropped by thousands of birds, followed by a plague. Before the time of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, Mecca was under the control of the Banu Quraish.[4] Muhammad, a member of the Banu Quraish, exiled from the city for preaching against paganism, returned to the city in triumph in 630 CE and after removing the cult images from the Kaaba, dedicating it as the center of Muslim pilgrimage. (For further information, see the main article, Conquest of Mecca.)
After the rise of the Islamic empire, Mecca attracted pilgrims from all over the extensive empire, as well as a year-round population of scholars, pious Muslims who wished to live close to the Kaaba, and local inhabitants who served the pilgrims. Due to the difficulty and expense of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage was small compared to the millions that swell Mecca today. Pilgrims arrived by boat, at Jedda, and came overland, or joined the annual caravans from Syria or Iraq. The city was small. 18th and 19th century maps and pictures show a small walled city of mud-brick houses crowded around the mosque.
Mecca was never the capital of the Islamic empire; the first capital was Medina, some 250 miles (400 km) away. The capital of the caliphate was soon moved to Kufa by the fourth Caliph Ali and then to Damascus by the Ummayads and Baghdad by the Abbasids and then to Cairo after the mongol invasion, and then at last to Constantinople by the Ottomans.
Mecca re-entered Islamic political history briefly when it was held by Abd-Allah ibn al-Zubayr, an early Muslim who opposed the Umayyad caliphs. The caliph Yazid I besieged Mecca in 683 CE. Thereafter the city figured little in politics; it was a city of devotion and scholarship. For centuries it was governed by the Hashemite Sharifs of Mecca, descendants of Muhammad by his grandson Hassan ibn Ali. The Sharifs ruled on behalf of whatever caliph or Muslim ruler had declared himself the Guardian of the Two Shrines. Mecca was attacked and sacked by Ismaili Muslims in 930 CE . In 1926, the Sharifs of Mecca were overthrown by the Saudis, and Mecca was incorporated into Saudi Arabia.
On November 20, 1979 two hundred armed Islamist dissidents seized the Grand Mosque. They claimed that the Saudi royal family no longer represented pure Islam and that the mosque, and the Kaaba, must be held by those of the true faith. The rebels seized hundreds of pilgrims as hostages and barricaded themselves in the mosque. The mosque was eventually retaken, after some bloodshed, and the rebels were executed. There is a great deal of uncertainty as to what forces were involved in retaking the mosque and how the assault was carried out. See the Grand Mosque Seizure for further discussion.
The city has grown substantially in the last several decades, as the convenience and affordability of jet travel has increased the number of pilgrims participating in the Hajj. Thousands of Saudis are employed year-round to oversee the Hajj and staff the hotels and shops that cater to pilgrims; these workers in turn have increased the demand for housing and services. The city is now ringed by freeways, and contains shopping malls and skyscrapers.[5]
Non-Muslims are not permitted to enter Mecca, with the only exceptions being journalists and non-Muslim blood relatives.[6] Road blocks are stationed along roads leading to the city, with officials conducting occasional random checks to confirm that intending visitors are legitimate pilgrims and in possession of the required documentation. While one of the purpose of these checks is to ensure that the visitor is, in fact, a Muslim, they also serve to prevent illegal immigrants including guest workers whose visas have expired or who have not attained the extra permit required to perform the pilgrimage. As one might expect, the existence of cities closed to non-Muslims and the mystery of the Hajj aroused intense curiosity in European travellers. A number of them disguised themselves as Muslims and entered the city of Mecca and then the Kaaba to experience the Hajj for themselves . The most famous account of a foreigner's journey to Mecca is A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Mecca and Al-Madina, written by Sir Richard Francis Burton. Burton traveled as a Qadiri Sufi from Afghanistan; his name, as he signed it in Arabic below his frontpiece portrait for "The Jew, The Gypsy and al-Islam," was al-Hajj 'Abdullah.
Mecca has long been the accepted English spelling for the holy city as a transliteration of the original Arabic. The word has become part of the English language as a metaphor for a site of pilgrimage for people with a particular interest. In an effort to distinguish between the metaphorical and official references to the holy site, the Saudi Arabian government in the 1980s began promoting a new transliteration, Makkah al-Mukarramah, meaning Mecca the Blessed, which is closer to the original Arabic. This new usage has been adopted in many places and by certain organizations, such as the U.S. Department of State,[7] but is not part of the active vocabulary of English-speakers at large. Almost all leading media organizations such as Reuters, the BBC and New York Times continue to use Mecca.
The Meccan economy is almost entirely dependent on money spent by people attending the hajj. The city takes in more than $100 million during the hajj. The Saudi government spends about $50 million on services for the hajj. There are some industries and factories in the city, but Mecca no longer plays a major role in Saudi Arabia's economy, which is mainly based on oil exports.[8] The few industries operating in Mecca include textiles, furniture, and utensils. The majority of the economy is service oriented. Water is scarce and food must be imported.[1]
Crone, in her 1987 book, gives a precis of various Greek and Roman texts thought by some to have referred to Mecca. She argues that there is no hard evidence linking those references to the South Arabian trade to Mecca.
Some Muslims believe that Mecca is mentioned in the Jewish Torah/Christian Bible. They say that verse in Qur'an implies that Mecca was once called "Bakkah". They claim that the word "Baca" can be found in Psalm 84:6. [4] However, some non-Muslim commentators of Qur'an do not accept that reading of Qur'an 3:96, and most modern translations of the Bible use "Valley of Weeping" instead of "Baca." In Arabic "Buka'" means weeping; for example, the famous Tabi'in, Muhammad ibn Munkadir was (due to his fear of God) nicknamed al-Bakka', which means "the one who cries much".[5]