Mina is the plain of Arafat, which has a hillock
called the Mount of Mercy and two mosques—
Namira and Muzdalifa. The cave nearby in the
Mount of Light is where Muhammad is said to
have received his first revelation. There are many
other sites in Mecca containing traces of past
events in Islamic sacred history, but the passage
of time, urban development, and the conservative
nature of Saudi rule have combined to erase many
of them.
The legendary holiness of the city of Mecca
and the distinctiveness of its landscape are inex-
tricably connected to an amalgam of ritual prac-
tices and celebrations, which intensify during the
annual hajj season. In addition to the five daily
prayers, these rites include sevenfold circum-
ambulation of the Kaaba, sevenfold “running”
between Safa and Marwa, communal gatherings
in Mina and Arafat, stoning Mina’s three pillars,
animal sacrifices and feasting during the i
d
al
-
a
dha
, and collecting water at the Zamzam well.
The Quran is recited, sermons are delivered, and
pilgrims pronounce special ritual phrases and
petitions to God. During the hajj, pilgrims are
The Sacred Mosque in Mecca, as depicted in Ottoman ceramic tilework in the Sabil-Kuttab of Abd al-Rahman
Katkhuda (18th century), Cairo, Egypt. The Kaaba is in the center, Safa and Marwa in the foreground, and the
sacred mountains of Arafat and Light are in the background.
(Juan E. Campo)
K 466
Mecca
also required to follow strict rules to maintain
their bodily and spiritual purity, which heighten
their awareness that they are in a sacred place
permeated with
baraka
, God’s grace and blessing.
Assuming the condition of ritual purity, known as
ihram, explicitly links pilgrims to the sacredness
of the city, which is called al-haram al-Makki, the
Meccan
haram
, or sacred precinct. This precinct is
delimited by outlaying stations known as miqats,
where pilgrims are supposed to enter their sacral-
ized condition before entering the city to perform
the hajj or
umra
. Since the seventh century non-
Muslims have been forbidden from going to the
city beyond these stations, further enhancing its
holiness.
In the past, prior to the arrival of the Saudis
in the 20th century, other religious activities
were also conducted in Mecca. Ulama taught
Islamic sciences, especially those related to the
Quran, hadith, and law, in the arcades of the
Sacred Mosque, and, after the 12th century, in as
many as 23 madrasas (religious colleges). From
the ninth century Muslim ascetics and Sufis
traveled there as pilgrims, and also to study,
teach, and engage in Sufi rituals. There were an
estimated 59 hospices (ribats) built for the poor
and Sufis in Mecca during the medieval period.
Eventually almost all the Sufi tariqas would
have lodges in Mecca, including the Qadiris,
Naqshbandis, Khalwatis, Bedawis, Ahmadis (of
the Idrisi tradition of Sufism), Fasis, and Sanu-
sis—some surviving the anti-Sufism of Saudi
W
ahhabism
until the 1950s. Meccan natives had
their own local festivals and ritual practices, even
when they were not actually performing the hajj.
In addition to marriage and funerary rites, they
celebrated the prophet Muhammad’s birthday
(
mawlid
), and several rituals during the month
of Rajab that included parading decorated camels
through the streets of the city, setting aside a day
when only women were allowed into the Sacred
Mosque, and the cleansing of the Kaaba. Another
time of great celebration was the arrival of the
mahmal, a camel-borne palanquin that accom-
panied the pilgrim caravans from Egypt, Syria,
and Istanbul.
Mecca’s success as a city has long depended on
pilgrimage and the local and transregional econo-
mies driven by it. Scholars once thought that the
city originally owed its growth to long-distance
Arabian trade in spices in luxury goods, but this
theory has been found to have serious flaws. Reli-
able archaeological and textual evidence from
pre-Islamic Arabia is scanty, but evidence drawn
from early Islamic texts indicates that before
Islam Mecca was a shrine city that benefited
from pilgrimage trade and the transport of local
products to nearby settlements and towns. The
ancient Kaaba housed idols and relics that were
worshipped by peoples living in western Arabia,
not just Mecca. The q
Uraysh
, the tribe to which
Muhammad belonged, played a major role in
governing the city, maintaining the shrine, and
regulating the pre-Islamic pilgrimage. Muham-
mad and his followers abandoned it in 622 when
the opposition of the Quraysh and other Meccan
opponents became too much to bear, but he made
its Sacred House (the Grand Mosque) the
qibla
(prayer direction) for his community shortly after
arriving in Medina, and it has remained so for all
Muslims through the centuries. Mecca’s rulers,
the Abd Shams clan of the Quraysh, launched
attacks against the Muslims of Medina, but in 630
Muhammad triumphantly returned to take con-
trol of the city with very little loss of life.
Ever since Muhammad’s time Mecca has been
governed by Muslims, though it never served as
the political capital for any of the Muslim caliph-
ates or medieval sultanates. The Rashidun caliphs
governed it from Medina and Kufa (632–661),
then the Umayyads from Damascus (661–750),
after defeating Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr (d. 692),
who had briefly occupied Mecca and attempted to
make himself caliph. Umayyad rule was followed
by Abbasids in Baghdad (750–1258), but Abbasid
decline in the 10th century left the city vulnerable
to attack by the Qarmatians, an Ismaili Shii sect.
In 930 the Qarmatians actually plundered the city
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