Mecca was the birthplace and hometown of The Prophet Muhammad. According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad received the first verses of The Qur'an through the Archangel Gabriel on Jabal al-Nur, a hill outside Mecca, in 610 CE. Subsequently, he attempted to preach the message among Meccans for 12 years, gaining followers but also enemies, the latter of whom forced him to emigrate to Yathrib, a city some 450 km to the north. Yathrib, renamed Al-Madinah al-Munawwarah or simply Medina, was the place where he consolidated the Muslim community, but Muhammad always dreamed of returning back and conquering his hometown, a dream that was realized eight years later.
Mecca is one of the three holiest cities in Islam, alongside Medina and Jerusalem, and the only one that has any role in Muslim worship. This is because of two reasons. First, Mecca contains the Kaaba, a black cube-shaped building in the center of Masjid al-Haram, the largest mosque in the world. The Kaaba is the place where all Muslims face towards during prayer, as dictated by QS 2:144, in which Muhammad was instructed to switch the direction where he was facing from the "heavens" to the Masjid al-Haram (while the word "heavens" is ambiguous, before the decree, Muslims followed the Jews' cue and worshipped towards the Temple Mount in Jerusalem). In addition to prayer, Muslims also traditionally position dead bodies about to be buried so they face the direction of the Kaaba. The second reason is that, according to QS 22:27-29, all Muslims are required to visit the Masjid al-Haram at least once in their lifetimes to circumambulate the Kaaba and perform animal sacrifices. This second rule leads to the fifth Pillar of Islam: Hajj (lit. "pilgrimage"). Each year, millions of able-bodied and financially well Muslims visit Mecca to perform pilgrimage during the first thirteen days of Dhu al-Hijjah, the last month in the Islamic calendar. Traditionally, pilgrims boarded caravans crossing the Arabian desert to reach Mecca, a perilous journey that took months if not years, but the advent of modern technology has made the journey far easier to attempt. Still, the sheer number of people congregating during a very specific time of the year makes Hajj an almost prohibitively-expensive undertaking, while the yearly quota that Saudi Arabia imposes towards each foreign country means an average person would have to queue for decades before they can finally visit Mecca. This annual ritual has caused the word Mecca to enter the English lexicon, designating a place that is frequented by people (e.g. tourist mecca, sports mecca).
Although it plays an immense role in Islam, Mecca has a relatively young history compared to other cities in the Middle East. There is no unambiguous reference to the city before the rise of Islam (the city of "Macoraba" mentioned by Greek geographer Ptolemy c. 2nd century CE might refer to Mecca, but it is still disputed) and no mention of a bustling trade around the area; trade in Arabia was mainly concentrated in the south in present-day Yemen or the northwest in present-day Jordan. Many secular scholars have even argued that Mecca was born by Islam, not the other way around. Still, they did concede that the area in and around Mecca was a major pagan pilgrimage site and that the Kaaba predated Islam (though due to decay and destruction, it had been continuously rebuilt over the years; the modern structure dates back to 1626). After Islam, the city serves as a pilgrimage site first and the foremost and is seldom used as the center of a state, kingdom, or empire. From the 10th to the 20th century, the Hashemites, an Arab dynasty who claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatimah,note ruled the Hejaz region from their base in Mecca, often as a vassal of foreign powers like the Ayyubids, Mamluks, and Ottomans. During World War I, the Hashemites rebelled alongside the other Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, and made Mecca the capital of an independent state, the Kingdom of Hejaz. In 1925, however, the Hashemites were overthrown by the Saudis, who then consolidated Hejaz and their homeland, Najd, into a single dominion, Saudi Arabia. Those who conquer the city and Medina (or rather the Masjid al-Haram and Masjid an-Nabawi, Medina's largest mosque and Muhammad's burial place) can claim the title "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" (خادم الحرمين الشريفين, Khadim al-Haramayn ash-Sharifayn). The Saudis, having driven out the Hashemites, currently claim the title.
Geographically, Mecca is nestled in a narrow valley on the western side of the Hejaz Mountains. It is also, like most of the Hejaz, infamously very hot, thanks to the fair amount of humidity that keeps the blisteringly hot weather of the desert even into the winter. Despite the low precipitation, Mecca had seen seasonal floods before dams were built, due to its relatively low-lying location.
Mecca is served by King Abdulaziz International Airport, located in the coastal city of Jeddah 100 km to the west. Jeddah is the largest city in Hejaz, and has a long history of welcoming Hajj pilgrims who arrived by sea. Owing to its coastal location, Hejaz is more culturally diverse and less conservative than Najd, the home of the Saudi monarchy, though the Saudi control over the area has eroded this. Mecca used to have lots of historical buildings, many of which have been demolished by the Saudi government, partly for redevelopment and partly to prevent them from turning into shrines, which is forbidden under the Wahhabi orientation that the government officially adopts. Since the oil boom, there has also been many construction projects, including Abraj al-Bait, a massive hotel composed of seven skyscrapers with a clock tower at the top that overlooks the Masjid al-Haram, to cater the swelling number of pilgrims arriving every year.
As a last bit of note, Mecca is off-limits to non-Muslims. The same held true in Medina until 2021; now, only the Masjid an-Nabawi is closed to non-Muslims.note This didn't prevent a few high-profile non-Muslims from disguising themselves as a believer and visiting however (British explorer Richard Francis Burton famously circumcised himself to gain entry).
