Mecca: The Birthplace of Islam
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Mecca is closed to non-Muslims: Saudi law bars entry at checkpoints on every approach road, and this is not a tourist destination in any ordinary sense. What follows is Mecca’s history and significance for readers who cannot enter, and practical orientation for the Muslim pilgrims who can.
Mecca, Makkah al-Mukarramah, sits in a narrow valley of the Hejaz, in the Sirat Mountains of western Saudi Arabia, roughly 70 kilometres inland from Jeddah. It is Islam’s holiest city, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad around 570 CE, and the qibla, the direction Muslims worldwide face in prayer. It is not, despite a common assumption, the capital of Saudi Arabia; that is Riyadh, several hundred kilometres to the east. Mecca’s population runs around 2.4 million, swelling enormously during Hajj.
Before Islam
Pre-Islamic Mecca was a caravan-trade hub run by the Quraysh tribe, already a pilgrimage site of sorts, though the Kaaba at its centre then held idols rather than serving the monotheistic role it holds today.
The Life of the Prophet and the Founding of Islamic Mecca
The Prophet Muhammad received the first Quranic revelation in 610 CE, in the Cave of Hira on Jabal al-Nour near the city. Facing persecution, he and his followers undertook the Hijra to Medina in 622 CE, an event that marks Year 1 of the Islamic calendar. In 630 CE, the largely bloodless Conquest of Mecca saw the Kaaba’s idols removed and the site rededicated to the worship of God alone, founding Mecca as an exclusively Islamic sanctuary from that point forward.
Expansion, Century by Century
The Grand Mosque around the Kaaba has been expanded repeatedly: modestly under the early caliphs, to roughly 28,000 square metres under the Abbasids, re-clad but not enlarged by the Ottomans under the architect Mimar Sinan in the 1570s, then vastly under Saudi governance, in phases from 1955-76, again under King Fahd from 1986-94, and again from 2008 onward under King Abdullah, a programme costing roughly 40 billion SAR. The mosque’s history includes a 1979 armed seizure and a 2015 crane collapse that killed 111 people.
The Skyline: Abraj Al-Bait
The Abraj Al-Bait, or Makkah Royal Clock Tower complex, rises directly beside the mosque: a supertall cluster of towers roughly 601-607 metres high, completed 2011-12 at a cost of around $15 billion, topped by the world’s largest clock face at 43 by 43 metres per side. Seven hotel towers, including Fairmont and Raffles properties, sit above a shopping mall. The complex was built in part on the site of the 18th-century Ottoman Ajyad Fortress, demolished in 2002, a decision that drew objections from Turkish heritage groups at the time.
A Neutral Note on Heritage Loss
Heritage researchers estimate that roughly 95 percent of Mecca’s historic buildings have been demolished since the 1980s, leaving fewer than 20 structures surviving from the Prophet’s era. Saudi authorities cite two reasons: religious concern about grave-veneration and shirk, and the practical need for pilgrim capacity at a scale no historic city fabric could support. Both the preservation critique and the Saudi rationale are presented here as fact, without taking a side.
Ziyarah: What’s Left to Visit, Respectfully
A building traditionally identified as the Prophet’s birthplace now houses the Maktabat Makkah al-Mukarramah library, though historians dispute the exact original location. Jannat al-Mu’alla cemetery holds the grave of Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, the Prophet’s first wife, in a plain, unmarked plot since the site’s domed tombs were removed in 1925-26. Both are visited quietly, as ziyarah rather than sightseeing; see lesser-known sacred sites in Mecca for more on this.
For the pilgrimage itself, from visas to the rites to where to stay, start with the Mecca pilgrimage primer .
Treat “historical Mecca” as a documented location and a living tradition rather than a city of preserved old buildings; that expectation, set early, avoids most of the disappointment first-time visitors describe.