History of Mecca Timeline

Different rulers invested into extensive repairs of Mecca's water system in 1245, 1361, 1400, 1474, and 1510.

Around 1327 (729 AH), the Moroccan scholar and traveler Ibn Battuta arrived at the holy city, one of the most famous travelers to Mecca in the 14th century. He remained for three years and left in 1330.

The Black Death pandemic hit Mecca in 1349, bringing devastating mortality to the holy city.

Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna made the first recorded example of a non-Muslim entering the city of Mecca in 1503.

In 1517, the Sharif of Mecca, Barakat bin Muhammad, acknowledged the supremacy of the Ottoman Caliph but retained a great degree of local autonomy.

Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, is said to have visited Mecca in December 1518 during his travels.

Due to persisting troubles with the water system, Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent began a construction project in 1525 to rebuild the aqueduct in its entirety; the project took until 1571 to complete.

In 1803 the city was captured by the First Saudi state, which held Mecca until 1813, destroying some of the historic tombs and domes in and around the city.

Muhammad Ali Pasha successfully returned Mecca to Ottoman control in 1813 after defeating the First Saudi state.

In 1818, the Saud were defeated again but survived and founded the Second Saudi state, which lasted until 1891 and led on to the present country of Saudi Arabia.

Between 1830 and 1930, cholera broke out among pilgrims at Mecca 27 times, making disease a recurring hazard for visitors to the holy city.

By the 19th century, people of South Asian origin had come to constitute 20% of Mecca's population.

In 1853, Sir Richard Francis Burton undertook the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina disguised as a Muslim, traveling as a Qadiriyya Sufi from Afghanistan. Though not the first non-Muslim European to make the Hajj, his pilgrimage remains one of the most famous and documented of modern times.

The first printing press was brought to Mecca in 1885 by Osman Nuri Pasha, an Ottoman Wāli.

The first major attempt to improve education in Mecca was made by Jeddah merchant Muhammad ʿAlī Zaynal Riḍā, who founded the Madrasat al-Falāḥ in Mecca in 1911–12 at a cost of £400,000.

T.E. Lawrence conspired with the Ottoman governor, Hussain bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, to revolt against the Ottoman Empire; Mecca was the first city captured by his forces in the Battle of Mecca (1916).

News reports in November 1916 via contact in Cairo with returning Hajj pilgrims stated that with the Ottoman Turkish authorities gone, the Hajj of 1916 was free of the previous massive extortion and monetary demands made by the Turks who were agents of the Ottoman government.

Following the Capture of Mecca in 1924, the Sharif of Mecca was overthrown by the Saud family, and Mecca was incorporated into Saudi Arabia.

The city was most recently conquered in the Saudi conquest of Hejaz by Ibn Saud and his allies in 1925, cementing Saudi rule over Mecca.

The city hosts some of the oldest sport clubs in Saudi Arabia, such as Al-Wehda FC, established in 1945.

For higher education, the city has only one university, Umm Al-Qura University, which was established in 1949 as a college and became a public university in 1981.

On 20 November 1979, two hundred armed dissidents led by Juhayman al-Otaybi seized the Grand Mosque, claiming the Saudi royal family no longer represented pure Islam and that the Masjid al-Haram and the Ka'bah must be held by those of true faith.

Under Saudi rule, it has been estimated that since 1985 about 95% of Mecca's historic buildings, most over a thousand years old, have been demolished.

Prince Khalid Al-Faisal has been the provincial governor since 16 May 2007.

In 2019, the Hajj attracted 2,489,406 pilgrims to the holy city, reflecting the growth in pilgrimage facilitated by modern travel.

As of January 2022, the mayor of the city is Saleh Al-Turki.

With over 19.3 million international visitors in 2024, Mecca was one of the five most visited cities in the world.

In 1929, wireless stations were set up in various towns in the region, creating a network that would become fully functional by 1932.

While under Hussein bin Ali there had been about 20 public telephones in the entire city; in 1936, the number jumped to 450, totaling about half the telephones in the country.

In the last century, the most severe flood in Mecca was that of 1942. According to al-Kurdī, there had been 89 floods by 1965.

Broadcasting started in 1950 with the initiation of broadcasts on the Day of 'Arafah, and increased until 1957, when Radio Makkah became the most powerful station in the Middle East at 50 kW.

By 1985, Mecca, like other Saudi cities, possessed modern telephone, telex, radio and television communications.

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 a stampede.

The Al Masha'er Al Muqaddassah Metro is a metro line in Mecca opened on 13 November 2010 to serve pilgrims.

On 24 September 2015, 700 pilgrims were killed in a stampede at Mina during the stoning-the-Devil ritual at Jamarat.

In 2018, the Haramain High Speed Railway entered operation, connecting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina together via Jeddah, King Abdulaziz International Airport and King Abdullah Economic City in Rabigh.

Mecca will experience a total solar eclipse on Monday, 2 August 2027, for a duration of 5 minutes and 8 seconds.