Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is a city in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia and is the capital of Mecca Province. Mecca is considered the birthplace of Islam and the Islamic prophet Muhammad, as well as being the holiest city in Islam.
It is located 70 km (43 mi) inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea in a narrow valley 277 m (909 ft) above sea level. Its metropolitan population in 2022 was 2.4 million, making it the third most populated city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Jeddah. The Cave of Hira atop the Jabal al-Nour just outside the city is where Muslims believe the Quran was first revealed to Muhammad. The Great Mosque of Mecca, known as the Masjid al-Haram, is home to the Kaaba, believed by Muslims to have been built by Abraham and Ishmael. It is the direction of prayer (qibla) for all Muslims worldwide. Around 44.5% of the population are Saudi citizens and around 55.5% are Muslim foreigners from other countries. Pilgrims more than triple the population number every year during the Ḥajj pilgrimage, observed in the twelfth Hijri month of Dhūl-Ḥijjah as an obligation for all Muslims at least once in their lives. With over 19.3 million international visitors in 2024, Mecca was one of the five most visited cities in the world.
Muslim rulers from in and around the region long tried to rule the city, and thus, much like most of the Hejazi region, has seen several regime changes. The city was most recently conquered in the Saudi conquest of Hejaz by Ibn Saud and his allies in 1925. Since then, Mecca has seen a tremendous expansion in size and infrastructure, with newer, modern buildings such as The Clock Towers, the world's fourth–tallest building and fifth–largest by floor area, towering over the Great Mosque. The Saudi government has also carried out the destruction of several historical structures and archaeological sites, such as the Ajyad Fortress. However, many of the demolitions have officially been part of the continued expansion of the Masjid al-Haram at Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina and their auxiliary service facilities in order to accommodate the ever-increasing number of Muslims performing the pilgrimage. Non-Muslims are prohibited from entering the city.
Under the Saudi government, Mecca is governed by the Mecca Regional Municipality, a municipal council of 14 locally elected members headed by the mayor (called Amin in Arabic) appointed by the Saudi government. As of January 2022, the mayor of the city is Saleh Al-Turki. The City of Mecca amanah, which constitutes Mecca and the surrounding region, is the capital of the Mecca Province, which includes the neighbouring cities of Jeddah and Taif, even though Jeddah is considerably larger in population than Mecca. Prince Khalid Al-Faisal has been the provincial governor since 16 May 2007.
Etymology
Mecca has been referred to by many names. Its etymology is obscure as with many Arabic words. Widely believed to be a synonym for Makkah, it is said to be more specifically the early name for the valley located therein. At the same time, Muslim scholars generally use it to refer to the sacred area of the city that immediately surrounds and includes the Kaaba.
Makkah is the official transliteration used by the Saudi government and is closer to the Arabic pronunciation. The government adopted Makkah as the official spelling in the 1980s, but it is not universally known or used worldwide. The full official name is Makkah al-Mukarramah (Arabic: مكة المكرمة, lit. 'Makkah the Honored'). Makkah is used to refer to the city in the Quran in Surah Al-Fath (48), verse 24.
The word Mecca in English has come to be used to refer to any place that draws large numbers of people, and because of this some English-speaking Muslims have come to regard the use of this spelling for the city as offensive. Nonetheless, Mecca is the familiar form of the English transliteration for the Arabic name of the city.
Macoraba, another ancient city name Claudius Ptolemy says was within Arabia Felix, was also claimed to be Mecca. Some studies have questioned this association. Many etymologies have been proposed: the traditional one is that it is derived from the Old South Arabian root M-K-R-B which means "temple."
Other names
Another name used for Mecca in the Quran is at 6:92 where it is called Umm al-Qurā (أُمّ ٱلْقُرَى, meaning "Mother of all Settlements"). The city has been called several other names in both the Quran and ahadith. Another name used historically for Mecca is Tihāmah. According to an Islamic suggestion, another name for Mecca, Fārān, is synonymous with the Desert of Paran mentioned in the Hebrew Bible at Genesis 21:21. Arab and Islamic tradition holds that the wilderness of Paran, broadly speaking, is the Tihamah coastal plain and the site where Ishmael settled was Mecca. Yaqut al-Hamawi, the 12th-century Syrian geographer, wrote that Fārān was "an Arabized Hebrew word, one of the names of Mecca mentioned in the Torah."
Bakkah
The Quran refers to the city as Bakkah in Surah Al Imran (3), verse 96: "Indeed the first House [of worship], established for mankind was that at Bakkah." This is said to have been the name of the city at the time of Ibrahim and it is also transliterated as Baca, Baka, Bakah, Bakka, Becca and Bekka, among others. It was a name for the city in the ancient world.
History
Prehistory
In 2010, Mecca and the surrounding area became an important site for paleontology with respect to primate evolution, with the discovery of a Saadanius fossil. Saadanius is considered to be a primate closely related to the common ancestor of the Old World monkeys and apes. The fossil habitat, near what is now the Red Sea in western Saudi Arabia, was a damp forest area between 28 million and 29 million years ago. Paleontologists involved in the research hope to find further fossils in the area.
Early history (up to 6th century CE)
The early history of Mecca is still largely shrouded by a lack of clear sources. The city lies in the hinterland of the middle part of western Arabia of which there are sparse textual or archaeological sources available. This lack of knowledge is in contrast to both the northern and southern areas of western Arabia, specifically the Syro-Palestinian frontier and Yemen, where historians have various sources available such as physical remains of shrines, inscriptions, observations by Greco-Roman authors, and information collected by church historians. The area of the Hejaz that surrounds Mecca was characterized by its remote, rocky, and inhospitable nature, supporting only meagre settled populations in scattered oases and occasional stretches of fertile land. The Red Sea coast offered no easily accessible ports and the oasis dwellers and bedouins in the region were illiterate.
One study by Majied Robinson, based on early Islamic genealogical records, estimates that at the time of Muhammad the population of Mecca was around 550. Muslim scholars using traditional sources may place the number as high as 10,000.
The first clear reference to Mecca in non-Islamic literature appears in 741, long after the death of Muhammad, in the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle or Chronicle of 741. However, English writer Tom Holland claims that here the author places the region in Mesopotamia rather than the Hejaz.
Possible earlier mentions are ambiguous. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes about Arabia in the 1st century BCE in his work Bibliotheca Historica, describing a holy shrine: "And a temple has been set up there, which is very holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians." Claims have been made this could be a reference to the Kaaba in Mecca. However, the geographic location Diodorus describes is located in northwest Arabia, around the area of Leuke Kome, within the former Nabataean Kingdom and the Roman province of Arabia Petraea.
Ptolemy lists the names of 50 cities in Arabia, one going by the name of Macoraba. There has been speculation since 1646 that this could be a reference to Mecca. Historically, there has been a general consensus in scholarship that Macoraba mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE is indeed Mecca, but more recently, this has been questioned. Historian Glen Bowersock favors the identity of the former, with his theory being that "Macoraba" is the word "Makkah" followed by the aggrandizing Aramaic adjective rabb (great). The Roman 4th-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus also enumerated many cities of Western Arabia, most of which can be identified. According to Bowersock, he did mention Mecca as "Geapolis" or "Hierapolis," the latter one meaning "holy city" potentially referring to the sanctuary of the Kaaba. Danish writer Patricia Crone, from the Revisionist school of Islamic studies on the other hand, writes that "the plain truth is that the name Macoraba has nothing to do with that of Mecca [...] if Ptolemy mentions Mecca at all, he calls it Moka, a town in Arabia Petraea."
Procopius' 6th century statement that the Ma'add tribe possessed the coast of western Arabia between the Ghassanids and the Himyarites of the south supports the Arabic sources tradition that associates Quraysh as a branch of the Ma'add and Muhammad as a direct descendant of Ma'add ibn Adnan.
Patricia Crone and Tom Holland has cast doubt on the claim that Mecca was a major historical trading outpost. However, other scholars such as Glen W. Bowersock disagree and assert that Mecca was a major trading outpost. Crone later on disregarded some of her theories. She argues that Meccan trade relied on skins, hides, manufactured leather goods, clarified butter, Hijazi woollens, and camels. She suggests that most of these goods were destined for the Roman army, which is known to have required colossal quantities of leather and hides for its equipment. The earliest Muslim inscriptions are from the Mecca–Taif area.
Islamic narrative
In the Islamic view, the beginnings of Mecca are attributed to the Biblical figures, Adam, Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael. It was Adam himself who built the first God's house in Mecca according to a heavenly prototype but this building was destroyed in the Noahic Flood. The civilization of Mecca is believed to have started after Ibrāhīm (Abraham) left his son Ismāʿīl (Ishmael) and wife Hājar (Hagar) in the valley at Allah's command. Some people from the Yemeni tribe of Jurhum settled with them, and Isma'il reportedly married two women, one after divorcing the first, on Ibrahim's advice. At least one man of the Jurhum helped Ismāʿīl and his father to construct or according to Islamic narratives, reconstruct, the Kaaba ('Cube'), which would have social, religious, political and historical implications for the site and region.
Muslims see the mention of a pilgrimage at the Valley of the Bakha in the Old Testament chapter Psalm 84:3–6 as a reference to Mecca, similar to the Quran at Surah 3:96 In the 'āl ʿimrān, a commentary on the Samaritan midrashic chronology of the Patriarchs, of unknown date but probably composed in the 10th century CE, it is claimed that Mecca was built by the sons of Nebaioth, the eldest son of Ismāʿīl or Ishmael.
Under the Quraysh
Sometime in the 5th century, the Ka'bah was a place of worship for the deities of Arabia's pagan tribes. Mecca's most important pagan deity was Hubal, which had been placed there by the ruling Quraysh tribe, and remained until the Conquest of Mecca by Muhammad. In the 5th century, the Quraish took control of Mecca, and became skilled merchants and traders. In the 6th century, they joined the lucrative spice trade, since battles elsewhere were diverting trade routes from dangerous sea routes to more secure overland routes. The Byzantine Empire had previously controlled the Red Sea, but piracy had been increasing. Another previous route that ran through the Persian Gulf via the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was also being threatened by exploitations from the Sasanian Empire, and was being disrupted by the Lakhmid kingdom, the Ghassanids, and the Roman–Persian wars. Mecca's prominence as a trading center also surpassed the cities of Petra and Palmyra. The Sassanids however did not always pose a threat to Mecca, as in 575 they protected it from a Yemeni invasion, led by its Christian leader Abraha. The tribes of southern Arabia asked the Persian king Khosrow I for aid, in response to which he came south to Arabia with foot-soldiers and a fleet of ships near Mecca.
By the middle of the 6th century, there were three major settlements in northern Arabia, all along the south-western coast that borders the Red Sea, in a habitable region between the sea and the Hejaz mountains to the east. Although the area around Mecca was completely barren, it was the wealthiest of the three settlements with abundant water from the renowned Zamzam Well and a position at the crossroads of major caravan routes.
The harsh conditions and terrain of the Arabian peninsula meant a near-constant state of conflict between the local tribes, but once a year they would declare a truce and converge upon Mecca in an annual pilgrimage. Up to the 7th century, this journey was intended for religious reasons by the pagan Arabs to pay homage to their shrine, and to drink Zamzam. However, it was also the time each year that disputes would be arbitrated, debts would be resolved, and trading would occur at Meccan fairs. These annual events gave the tribes a sense of common identity and made Mecca an important focus for the peninsula.