Mecca (Makkah)

city · earth

A settlement in the Hijaz on the western Arabian caravan corridor, and the city Muslims hold to be the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the site of the Kaaba, toward which Muslims pray and to which the Hajj pilgrimage is directed. Its pre-Islamic role as a trading and cult centre is described in later Arabic sources; the scale of that earlier commerce has been questioned by some modern historians who find little corroboration in external records, and this remains debated. Under Saudi law access to Mecca is restricted to Muslims — a legal fact of the present day that also constrains which researchers can survey the site, and therefore what archaeological evidence exists.