Red Sea grandmother port that opened Mecca to the ocean
Jeddah is Saudi Arabia’s second city after Riyadh, Hejaz’s largest, and the kingdom’s main commercial centre on the Red Sea. Caliph Uthman made it Mecca’s chief port in 647 CE, sixty-five kilometres west of Islam’s holiest city—and it still funnels pilgrims while ranking among the world’s larger seaports.
Folk etymology links the name to jaddah, “grandmother,” and the Tomb of Eve tradition. Ibn Battuta wrote “Jiddah” around 1330; British official spelling flipped from Jedda to Jeddah only in 2007. Thamudic inscriptions and a pre-Islamic mashrabiya mark early presence; the Ministry of Hajj cites more than 2,500 years of settlement. Some excavators tie a fishing hamlet to Yemen’s Quda’a tribe after the Marib Dam’s collapse around 115 BCE.
Umayyad and Abbasid eras kept the harbour busy for Hajj fleets despite a brief Axumite pirate occupation in 702. Fatimid Red Sea networks reached toward Song China; Ayyubid rule from 1177 drew sailors from Sindh, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. Facing Portuguese raids after Vasco da Gama’s Indian Ocean entry, Mamluk governor Hussein the Kurd fortified the town with forced labour. Ottomans rebuilt stone walls with six towers and gates after 1525; walls largely fell in 1947, though Al-Balad’s coral houses still draw preservationists after a 1982 fire.
Nejdi forces held the city in 1802 before Muhammad Ali retook it in 1813. Ibn Saud secured Jeddah by agreement in December 1925, folding Hejaz into his realm; Khuzam Palace (1928–32) later became a museum. Jeddah Islamic Port ranks about thirty-sixth globally and second in the Middle East; the city hosts the OIC’s administrative centre and remains Medina’s Red Sea neighbour 360 kilometres south. Innovation indexes once placed it fourth in a broad Africa–Middle East–stan cohort.
Source: Jeddah
