Mecca

Mecca (in Arabic, مكة المكرمة‎ [Makkah al-Mukarrama] or simply مكة‎‎ [Makkah]) is the main city of the Hijaz region, in present-day Saudi Arabia, and one of the most important in the Arabian Peninsula. It is located to the west of the peninsula and has 1,675,368 inhabitants (2010 census), located in a narrow valley, 277 m above sea level; It is located 80 km from the Red Sea.

The full name it has carried since Muslim times is Makka al-Mukarrama, which means "Makkah, with honor". Ptolemy, in the second century, referred to it as Makoraba, a Hellenization of the Arabic Makkah Harb, or "Mecca of Harb" (name of a tribe).

The birthplace of Muhammad, it is the most important of all the holy cities of Islam, visited every year by millions of pilgrims. Before Muhammad preached Islam, this was already a holy city for pagans, with several places of religious importance, including the most important of all: the Kaaba.

For Muslims, the pilgrimage to Mecca is part of one of the fundamental aspects of their faith, the so-called pillars of Islam. Every year, about three million pilgrims head to the holy city for the major pilgrimage, or Hajj, during the Muslim month of du l-hijjah.

Many more make the minor pilgrimage or Umrah, which can be done throughout the year. An approximate calculation of the Muslims who visit Mecca annually would reach 13 million visitors, adding the major and minor pilgrimages. Very few non-Muslims have been able to see the rites and rituals of the Hajj, since non-believers are totally prohibited from entering Mecca and Medina.

Etymology and usage

"Mecca" is the traditional Spanish form evolved from the city's Arabic name, although the official Saudi government transliteration is Makkah, which is closer to the Arabic pronunciation., the word “Mecca”, which comes from the Hispanic Arabic Makka and this from the classical Arabic Mákkah, has ended up being used to refer to a place where many people go for to be the main center or best place where something is done. This usage, which extends to other languages as well, is offensive to many Muslims. The Saudi government adopted the form Makkah as an official script in the 1980s, but it is not widely used throughout. The full official name of the city is Macarama (المكرمة), pronounced [makka lmukarrama] or [makkah almukarrama]), meaning "Honest Mecca", but sometimes translated as "The holy city of Mecca".

The ancient or primitive name for the settlement of Mecca is Baca or Bakkah (also transliterated as Baka, Bakah, Bakka, Becca, Bekka, etc.). The etymology of this Arabic word, as it occurs with the origin of the word Mecca, is unknown. they generally use it to refer to the sacred area of the city that is in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba.

The form Baca is used for Mecca in the Qur'an in 3:96, while the form Mecca is used in 48:24. In the South Arabic language, the language spoken in the southern part of the peninsula Arabic in the time of Muhammad, "b" and "m" could be interchanged. Other references to Mecca in the Qur'an (6:92, 42:5) call it Umm al-Qura, meaning "mother of all settlements". Another name for Mecca is Tihama.

Another name for Mecca, or for the wild lands and mountains surrounding the city, according to Arab and Islamic tradition, is Faran or Paran, and refers to the desert of Faran or Paran. Arab and Islamic tradition holds that the Pharaoh wilderness mentioned in the Bible is, roughly speaking, Tihama, and Mecca is the place where Ishmael settled. Abu Abdallah Yaqut ibn-Abdallah al-Rumi al-Hamawi, a 12th-century Syrian geographer, wrote that Fārān was “an Arabicized Hebrew word. One of the names of Mecca mentioned in the Torah."

Government

The city of Mecca is governed by the municipality of the same name, whose government is made up of 14 locally elected members and headed by a mayor (called Al-Amin) appointed by the country's government. The current mayor of the city is Usama al-Bar.

Mecca is the capital of the province of the same name, which includes the city of Jeddah, the largest in the province. The provincial governor was Prince Abdul Majeed bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the year of his death, between 2000 and 2007. On May 16, 2007, Prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud was appointed as the new governor.

History

History before Muhammad

According to Islamic tradition, it is Adam who carries out the first construction in Mecca at the request of Allah. Over time the construction gradually disappeared until the days of Ishmael and Abraham. Sarai, Abraham's wife, being barren, offered her slave Hagar to Abraham. Hagar conceives soon. Sarai, jealous, treats Hagar harshly, forcing her to flee with her son into the desert. As they are both on the verge of dying of thirst, an angel appears before Ishmael's mother and asks her to hit the ground. Upon hitting it, water begins to gush out of the ground and the well of Zamzam is formed. Around this well they settle together with more people from the desert and Mecca (Beka) arises.

Mount Yabal al-Nur, where is the cave of Hira in which Mohammed had the revelations of the angel Gabriel.

After several visits by Abraham to Ishmael, Abraham proposes, at the request of Allah, to build the room of the Kaaba for people to make pilgrimages to this place. Over time, worshiping a single god was forgotten, and the different tribes began to arrive at Mecca carrying their stone gods. Mecca soon became a pilgrimage site for various forms of idolatry. This situation lasted until Muhammad arrived, who "remembered" to the peoples, among other things, to worship only Allah without associating anything with him.

The harsh conditions of the Arabian peninsula generally meant a constant state of conflict between the various tribes of Arabia, but once a year a truce was declared and they converged on Mecca on an annual pilgrimage. This journey was undertaken for religious reasons, to pay homage to the sanctuary and to drink the waters of the Well of Zamzam. But it also served each year as a time and place to arbitrate disputes, settle debts, and develop trade at the Meccan fairs. These annual events of the tribes gave a sense of common identity and made Mecca a very important city in the entire peninsula.

In the fifth century, the Quraysh tribe gained control of Mecca and its members became skilled merchants and traders. In the sixth century they joined the lucrative spice trade, as fighting in other parts of the world caused trade routes to be diverted from dangerous sea routes to relatively safer land routes.

Mohammed

Ottoman map of 1787 of the Masyid al-Haram and other nearby religious enclaves such as Yabal al-Nur.

He was a member of a small faction, the Hashemite, of the ruling Quraysh tribe. After he began receiving revelations and began preaching against the city's paganism, he emigrated (see Hijra) in 622 with some followers to the city of Medina, and launched a series of raids against Meccan commerce, attacking caravans At the Battle of Badr he decimated the Meccan leadership and gained considerable prestige for himself among the Bedouin tribes. The conflict continued, as in the battle of Uhud and the battle of the Trench.

In 628, Muhammad took a more peaceful stance: he and some followers tried to enter Mecca on a pilgrimage to show that traditional rituals could be adopted by Islam. With the treaty of Hudaybiyyah a truce was agreed that would allow Muslims to enter the city. Two years later, the truce was broken, but instead of fighting, the city of Mecca simply surrendered to Muhammad, who declared amnesty for the inhabitants and gave generous gifts to the leading Quraysh.

He thus made the main changes, ordering the removal and destruction of all cult images inside the Kaaba, which at that time became the holiest place for Islam and the center of Muslim pilgrimage. He returned to Medina after appointing Attab Bin Usaid governor with a salary of 1 dirham a day. Many of the Arabian tribes decided to accept Islam as their own faith. Muhammad then achieved something that seemed impossible: to unite the warring tribes of the Arabian peninsula into a single umma. His preaching and Qur'anic visions of him were based on a synthesis of multiple belief systems, combining elements of pre-Islamic Arabia with Jewish and Christian religious ideas.

Muhammad died in 632, but with the sense of unity he had transmitted to the Arabs, Islam began a rapid expansion, spreading over the next hundred years to North Africa and Asia. As the Islamic Empire grew, Mecca continued to attract pilgrims, not just from Arabia, but henceforth from across the Empire.

Another important change was that Muslims had prostrated themselves in the direction of Jerusalem in their daily prayers, but after his confrontation with the Jewish community of Medina, Muhammad claimed that a verse from the Koran (Quran) had descended., revealing to him the change of this practice and demanding everyone face the Kaaba instead.

Political history

Throughout Islamic history, Mecca has never been the capital of any caliphate. Muhammad's emigration to Medina established the city as the first capital of the Ummah. Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad's son-in-law and the fourth of the so-called well-guided caliphs, moved the capital of the Ummah to Kufa in Iraq. The city briefly re-entered Islamic political history when a group led by Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, opposed the new Umayyad caliphs. Caliph Yazid I besieged Mecca in 683. When the Umayyad Dynasty seized power, he moved the capital to Damascus in Syria, and then the Abbasid Caliphate transferred the capital to Baghdad in Iraq. The center of the Muslim Ummah remained in Baghdad for almost 500 years, and it flourished as a center of research and commerce. However, Mecca did not remain untouched by the fighting between Muslim factions. In the year 930 the Carmatians conquered and sacked the city, seizing the black stone of the Kaaba, which they would not return until several decades later.

Mecca in 1850

In the 13th century, the Mongols invaded Baghdad and looted the city. This event was one of the most detested actions in Islamic history. Shortly after the Battle of Baghdad (1258), the Mongols reappeared in the west and conquered Syria. Cairo, which in Arabic means "The Triumphant" or "The Radiant", quickly emerges as the new center of power in the Umma. When the Ottoman Empire became powerful, the capital was moved to Istanbul (Constantinople). When pilgrims arrived for Hajj, they often financed the trip with goods that could be sold in the markets of Mecca, and purchased goods that they could sell when they returned home.

Later, the city played little role in politics, being more a city destined for devotion. For centuries it was ruled by the Hashemites, Sherifs of Mecca, descendants of Muhammad by his grandson Hasan ibn Ali. The sherifs ruled in the name of the caliph or any Muslim ruler, and had been prominent as the guardians of the Two Holy Mosques.

Ottoman invasion

Mecca in the 1880s

In the 16th century, the Turks took over the city, which remained under their rule, although they allowed the Hashemite sherifs, descendants of Muhammad and his son-in-law Ali, to continue to administer it. In 1916 the sherif Husayn ibn Ali became king of the Hijaz after an uprising against Ottoman power, which would become known as the Arab Rebellion. Mecca was the capital of this ephemeral kingdom, which in 1924 was conquered by the Saudis and annexed to their kingdom of central Arabia (in 1932 both territories would be renamed Saudi Arabia).

Climate

Mecca has an extremely arid climate. Unlike other cities in Saudi Arabia, Mecca maintains its warm temperature during winter, which can vary from 18°C at night to 30°C in the evenings. Summer temperatures are considered very hot, often exceeding 40°C in the afternoons, dropping to 30°C at night. The rains usually fall in small amounts between the months of November and January.

Because of this scarcity, rainfall poses a threat of flooding and has been a hazard since ancient times. In the last century, the most severe occurred in 1942. Since then, several dams have been built to solve the problem.

Average weather parameters of La Meca
Month	Ene.	Feb.	Mar.	Open up.	May.	Jun.	Jul.	Ago.	Sep.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Annual
Temp. max. abs. (°C)	37.4	38.3	42.4	44.7	49.4	49.6	49.8	49.7	49.4	47.0	41.2	38.4	49.8
Average temperature (°C)	30.5	31.7	34.9	38.7	42.0	43.8	43.0	42.8	42.8	40.1	35.2	32.0	38.1
Average temperature (°C)	24.0	24.7	27.3	31.0	34.3	35.8	35.9	35.7	35.0	32.2	28.4	25.6	30.8
Temp. medium (°C)	18.8	19.1	21.1	24.5	27.6	28.6	29.1	29.5	28.9	25.9	23.0	20.3	24.7
Temp. min. abs. (°C)	11.0	10.0	13.0	15.6	20.3	22.0	23.4	23.4	22.0	18.0	16.4	12.4	10.0
Total precipitation (mm)	20.8	3.0	5.5	10.3	1.2	0.0	1.4	5.0	5.4	14.5	22.6	22.1	111.8
Precipitation days (≥ 1 mm)	4.0	0.9	1.8	1.8	0.7	0.0	0.3	1.5	2.0	1.9	3.9	3.6	22.4
Relative humidity (%)	58	54	48	43	36	33	34	39	45	50	58	59	59
Source No. 1: Jeddah Regional Climate Center
Source No. 2: Weather2Travel (sunshine)

The holy places

A pilgrim praying at the Masyid al-Haram mosque in Mecca.

The main industry in Mecca in modern times is still hosting the annual Hajj pilgrimage, as well as pilgrims who visit the city at all other times of the year. The main stops of your visit are the Masjid al-Haram Mosque and the Zamzam Well.

Masjid al-Haram Mosque

The Masjid al-Haram (in Arabic المسجد الحرام, "the holy mosque") is the most important mosque in the city of Mecca and the first holy place of Islam. It is considered the largest mosque in the world.

The current mosque dates from 1570. It is in the form of a central square surrounded by stone walls. Around the inner sanctum is a marble pavement, the mataf. In the center of the central courtyard is the Kaaba, the holiest temple in Islam.

The first mosque was built in 638, when the increase in Muslims led Caliph Úmar ibn al-Khattab to expand the site. The Ottomans enlarged it again and reformed it in their style in 1570. Since the 1990s, the Saudi government began a large program of expanding the outer courtyard and creating entrances, destroying old mosques and cemeteries around it (destruction of Islamic heritage in Saudi Arabia).

Kaaba

The Kaaba

The Kaaba (in Arabic, الكعبة‎, al-ka'ba, lit 'the dice' or 'the cube'), the 'house of God', is a fragment of meteorite covered with the kiswa -a black silk cloth with gold-embroidered calligraphy of the Muslim profession of faith and Qur'anic verses—to which all Muslims pray five times a day. The direction of the prayer is known by the name of the qibla, which is represented by one of the walls of the mosque, easily recognizable because the niche called mihrab opens in it.

All pilgrims are required to walk to the left around the Kaaba seven times and have to try to touch the corner of the Black Stone, in a ritual called Tawaf.

Zamzam Well

Muslims believe that the Well of Zamzam was revealed to Hagar, Ishmael's mother, as she desperately went to fetch water for her young son. She did not find water until she discovered Zamzam, which quenched the little boy's thirst. Mecca lies in a hot dry valley with few water sources, and according to tradition, the Zamzam water is blessed by God.

Zamzam water is believed to have special properties, calming hunger and curing disease. Few pilgrims return from their pilgrimage without a bottle of Zamzam water. It is the water that is served to the public through coolers throughout the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and the Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina. All pilgrims do their best to drink this water during their pilgrimage and some dip their ihram robes in it so that the cloth can be used for their own burial, as a shroud when they die.

Mina and Mount Arafat

Mine in 2007

During the major pilgrimage, pilgrims travel to Mina, a small nearby town, where the devil is represented by a 26-meter wall. Pilgrims symbolically stone him, in what is called the Stoning of the Devil. Until 2004 the devil was represented by three columns, but then the Saudi government replaced them with the aforementioned wall. After Mina, the pilgrims head to Mount Arafat, 70 meters high, a place for prayer. It is believed that it was there that the Prophet Muhammad delivered his final speech.

Incidents in Mecca

A significant number of pilgrims travel annually to participate in Hajj in Mecca. Since the middle of the XX century, the constant increase in pilgrims due to the generalization of modern transport and the great increase in the birth rate In Muslim countries, with so many people gathered in the same place at the same time, any mistake in crowd control can cause a real disaster. Some of the most recent tragedies have been:

The Kaaba Caught of pilgrims in 1910

• Between 20 November and 4 December 1979, Islamist dissidents took the Al-Masjid al-Haram mosque in the so-called Big Mosque Incident. Saudi forces supported by the GIGN raided the mosque with a balance of 127 deaths between the Saudi government forces and 117 deceased and 68 executed among dissidents.
• On 31 July 1987, some 400 Shiite pilgrims, followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Jomeini, were killed by Saudi police shots at an anti-American demonstration.
• On 15 July 1989, five Palestinians were killed and 34 injured by the burning of a camp near the holy city.
• On 10 July 1989, a double attack caused the death of one person and wounds to another 16. On 21 September that year, 16 Shiites from Kuwait were executed accused of being the perpetrators of the attacks.
• On 2 July 1990, a stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel leading to Mecca led to the death of 1402 pilgrims.
• On 23 May 1994, a stampede killed 270 pilgrims, mostly Turks.
• On 15 April 1997, 340 pilgrims died during a fire that ravaged some 70,000 tents.
• 1998, 118 people died when they attended the symbolic stoning of the devil.
• On 1 February 2004, 244 persons were killed and 244 others were injured during the demon Lapidation ritual.
• On 11 September 2015, at least 100 people were killed and dozens were injured by the fall of a crane over the large Al-Masjid al-Haram mosque due to a wind storm.
• On September 24, 2015, a stampede during the Devil's Lapidation ended the lives of between 700 and 2400 people, making this incident the most deadly or the second most deadly in history, depending on the source that is quoted.

Economy

Abraj Al Bait in 2010

Mecca's economy depends almost exclusively on the money spent by people who attend the Hajj. During this pilgrimage, more than 100 million dollars enter the city, and the Saudi government spends about 50 million dollars on services for the pilgrims.

There are some industries and factories in the city, but Mecca no longer plays a major role in Saudi Arabia's economy, which is largely based on oil exports. The few industries that operate in Mecca are textiles and furniture. Water is scarce and food must be imported. ^{[citation required]}

Health

Healthcare is provided by the Saudi government free of charge to all pilgrims. There are seven main hospitals in Mecca:

• Ajyad Hospital (in Arabic: مستشى أجياد)
• King Faisal Hospital (in Arabic: مستشى الملك فيصل)
• King Abdul Aziz Hospital (in Arabic: مستشى الملك عبدالعزيز)
• Sheesha Hospital (in Arabic: مستشفى الشة)
• Al Noor Hospital (in Arabic: مستشفى النور)
• Hira Hospital (in Arabic: مستشفى حراء)
• Maternity and Children Hospital (in Arabic: مستشى الولادة والأكال)
• King Abdullah Medical City (in Arabic: مدينة الملك عبدالله الstakeholderبية)

There are also many clinics available for both residents and pilgrims.