Islam’s holiest city sits in a narrow Red Sea valley
Mecca—officially Makkah al-Mukarramah—capital of Mecca Province in western Saudi Arabia’s Hejaz, is revered as Islam’s birthplace and Muhammad’s city, hence the faith’s holiest site. It lies 70 km inland from Jeddah in a valley 277 m above sea level, with about 2.4 million metro residents in 2022.
Cave of Hira on nearby peaks marks Qur’anic revelation memory. Hejazi regime changes repeatedly seized the city; Ibn Saud’s 1925 conquest of Hejaz brought it under modern Saudi rule it still holds.
It ranks third in Saudi Arabia by population, after Riyadh and Jeddah. A municipal council of 14 elected members runs it under a government-appointed mayor, or Amin, who as of January 2022 was Saleh Al-Turki. Makkah became the official Saudi spelling during the 1980s, and the full name means Makkah the Honoured; because English uses mecca for any crowd-drawing place, some English-speaking Muslims find that spelling offensive.
The Quran also calls the city Umm al-Qura, Mother of all Settlements, and Bakkah, said to be its name in Abraham's time. Ptolemy listed a Macoraba among 50 Arabian cities, long identified with Mecca though recently questioned, and one traditional etymology draws on an Old South Arabian root meaning temple. In 2010 a fossil of Saadanius, a primate close to the common ancestor of Old World monkeys and apes, was found in the area.
Early Mecca is poorly documented. Majied Robinson, working from early genealogies, estimates its population in Muhammad's time at about 550, while traditional scholars go as high as 10,000. The first clear non-Islamic mention comes in the Chronicle of 741, and Patricia Crone questioned its role as a great trading post, a view Glen Bowersock rejects. Islamic tradition credits Adam with building the first house of God there, destroyed in the Flood, and ties the city's beginnings to Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael.
Source: Mecca
