In pre-Islamic Mecca the goddesses Uzza, al-Manāt and al-Lāt were known as " the daughters of god ".

Prior to Islam the Kaaba of Mecca was covered in symbols representing the myriad demons, djinn, demigods, or simply tribal gods and other assorted deities which represented the polytheistic culture of pre-Islamic Arabia.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, apart from a small number of urban trading settlements, such as Mecca and Medina, located in the Hejaz in the west of the peninsula, most of what was to become Saudi Arabia was populated by nomadic tribal societies or uninhabitable desert.

For example, Souq Ukadh used to be held in pre-Islamic times in an area between Mecca and Ta ’ if during the month of Dhu al-Qi ' dah every year.

Shortly after the Conquest of Mecca Muhammad began to despatch platoons and errands aiming at eliminating the last symbols reminiscent of pre-Islamic practices.

Hubal () was a god worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia, notably at the Kaaba in Mecca.

* Al-Lāt, pre-Islamic Arabian goddess who was one of the three chief goddesses of Mecca

South of Mecca, the mountains exceed 2, 400 meters in several places with some peaks nearing 3, 000 meters.

* The Idiots Abroad: The Brothers are split up attempting to travel to Colombia hoping to score on cheap dope down there, yet none of them manages to even just reach Bogotá ; Fat Freddy accidentally joins a group of nuclear terrorists in Scotland before disrupting the International Workers ' Day military parade in Moscow, USSR and being subsequently sold to slavery in Africa, Franklin is almost killed by a native apocalyptic South American cult before joining a group of pirates, while Phineas ends up in Mecca and becomes the world's richest man after founding a new religion.

The first results of his extensive studies in Oriental literature, Arabic language and history, manifested themselves in 1847, when he published a translation from Abdelwahid al-Marrakushi, born 1185, resident in South Spain between 1208 and 1217, leaving then for Egypt and visiting Mecca in 1221, dated 1224, Kitab al-mujib fi talkhis akhbar ahl al-Maghrib under the title The history of the Almohads, preceded by a sketch of the history of Spain from the time of the conquest till the reign of Yusuf ibn Tashfin, and of the history of the Almoravids, printed again in 1881 and reprinted in 1968.

Outside South Arabia, Hubal's name appears just once, in a Nabataean inscription ; there hbl is mentioned along with the gods Dushara ( ذو الشراة ) and Manawatu — the latter, as Manat, was also popular in Mecca.

Headstones facing Mecca in Farina's cemeteryFarina is a town in the far north of South Australia.

The Malay Community has a much more varied tradition with graduates of Al-Azhar in Egypt, Umm-al Qurra in Mecca & other universities in Saudi Arabia & South Asia.

It has been dubbed the " Inland Water Mecca of South Africa ".

In 1979 the Grand Mosque in Mecca Saudi Arabia was seized by an armed fundamentalist group and held for over a week.

* Shah Waliullah of India and Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab of Arabia were contemporaries who met each other while studying in Mecca.

With a change in the monsoon winds, Ibn Battuta sailed back to Arabia, first to Oman and the Strait of Hormuz then on to Mecca for the hajj of 1330 ( or 1332 ).

Khalid al-Mihdhar was born on May 16, 1975 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia to a prominent family, related to the Quraysh tribe of Mecca.

In late 2000, Mihdhar was back in Saudi Arabia, staying with a cousin in Mecca.

In modern-day Saudi Arabia, the Grand Mosque and all of Mecca are open only to Muslims.

Mecca (;, Makkah, ) is a city in the Hejaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia.

Also the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus who flourished between 60 BCE and 30 BCE writes about the isolated region of Arabia in his work Bibliotheca historica describing a holy shrine that Muslims see as referring to the Kaaba at Mecca " And a temple has been set-up there, which is very holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians ".

The tribes of the southern Arabia, asked the Persian king Khosrau I for aid, in response to which he came south to Arabia with both foot-soldiers and a fleet of ships into Mecca.

The Persian intervention prevented Christianity from spreading eastward into Arabia, and Mecca and the Islamic prophet Muhammad who was at the time a six year boy in the Quraysh tribe " would not grow up under the cross.

Goods from Africa and the Far East passed through on route to Syria including spices, leather, medicine, cloth, and slaves ; in return Mecca received money, weapons, cereals and wine, which in turn were distributed throughout Arabia.

As the Islamic Empire grew, Mecca continued to attract pilgrims not just from Arabia, but now from all across the Muslim world and beyond, as Muslims came to perform the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

In 930, Mecca was attacked and sacked by Qarmatians, a millenarian Ismaili Muslim sect led by Abū-Tāhir Al-Jannābī and centered in eastern Arabia.

Following the Battle of Mecca ( 1924 ), the Sharif of Mecca was overthrown by the Saud family, and Mecca was incorporated into Saudi Arabia.

Hira is a cave near Mecca, on the mountain named Jabal Al-Nūr in the Hejaz region of present day Saudi Arabia.

In contrast to the rest of Saudi Arabia, and particularly Nejd, Mecca has, according to the New York Times, become " a striking oasis " of free thought and discussion and, also, of " unlikely liberalism " as " Meccans see themselves as a bulwark against the creeping extremism that has overtaken much Islamic debate ".

Football is the most popular sport in Mecca, the city hosting some of the oldest sport clubs in Saudi Arabia such as, Al-Wahda FC ( established in 1945 ).

* 1979 – Grand Mosque Seizure: About 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Saudi Arabia at the site of the Kaaba in Mecca during the pilgrimage and take about 6000 hostages.

Nawaf was born in Mecca in Saudi Arabia to Muhammad Salim al-Hazmi, a grocer.

The new calculation requires that conjunction occur before sunset in Mecca, Saudi Arabia and that moon set on the following day must take place after sunset.

Eventually, most of the remaining chieftains went to Mecca to confront Muhammed, and became Muslims after some negotiation, resulting in the destruction of the religion of Allāt.

The heads were bundled together in a gruesome package and sent to the Abbasid caliph who was on pilgrimage at Mecca.

Cairene merchants were instrumental in bringing goods to the barren Hejaz, especially during the annual hajj to Mecca.

The Quraysh were the guardians of the Kaaba within the town of Mecca and was the dominant tribe of Mecca upon the appearance of Islam.

Pilgrimages to Mecca were common ; Cairo had hostels set aside specifically for pilgrims from Kanem.

In 1613, the Portuguese seized the Mughal ship Rahimi, which had set out from Surat on its way with a large cargo of 100, 000 rupees and Pilgrims, who were on their way to Mecca and Medina in order to attend the annual Hajj.

The expedition was defeated and two of Raynald's men were actually taken to Mecca to be executed in public.

Two months later, Gaddafi asserted that he wanted his agents to assassinate dissident refugees, even if they were just on pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca — in August 1984, a Libyan plot in Mecca was thwarted by Saudi Arabian police.

Alliances were struck between the merchants in Mecca and the local nomadic tribes, who would bring goods – leather, livestock, and metals mined in the local mountains – to Mecca to be loaded on the caravans and carried to cities in Syria and Iraq.

On 2 July 1990, a pilgrimage to Mecca ended in tragedy when the ventilation system failed in a crowded pedestrian tunnel and 1, 426 people were either suffocated or trampled to death.

In pre-modern Mecca the most common sports were impromptu wrestling and foot races.

27 epidemics were recorded during pilgrimages to Mecca from the 19th century to 1930, and more than 20, 000 pilgrims died of cholera during the 1907 – 08 hajj.

In the ten years following the Hijra, Medina formed the base from which Muhammad and the Muslim army attacked and were attacked, and it was from here that he marched on Mecca, entering it without battle in 629 AD / 8 AH, all parties acquiescing to his leadership.

They then free a number of black African men, who speak Yoruba, from a rear hold and discover that they had paid for the voyage to Mecca, but were intended to be sold as slaves instead.

In 1981 Iran supported an attempt to overthrow the Bahraini government, in 1983 expressed political support for Shi ' ites who bombed Western embassies in Kuwait, and in 1987 Iranian pilgrims rioted at poor living conditions and treatment during the Hajj ( pilgrimage ) in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and were consequently massacred.

The actual construction of the Muslim monuments at the southeast corner, facing Mecca, near which the al-Aqsa Mosque were built 78 years later.

In Arabic, the corresponding term for the Biblical Amalek is Imlīq, whose descendants Al -′ Amālīq were early residents of the ḥaram at Mecca, later supplanted by the Banu Jurhum, and formed one of the first tribes of ancient Arabia to speak Arabic.

To Uthman, the conquest of Mecca and Ta ’ if were of particular significance, as he had considerable property in both cities, and he could now profitably develop them.

In Medina, a number of wells were dug to provide drinking water for the people and in Mecca the water supply was also improved.

Omar Khayyám's years in Isfahan were very productive ones, but after the death of the Seljuq Sultan Malik-Shah I ( presumably by the Assassins sect ), the Sultan's widow turned against him as an adviser, and as a result, he soon set out on his Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.