Background:
Mecca, correctly known as Makkah, is located 75 km inwards and to the east of Jeddah, the western port city of Saudi Arabia. Its iconic Kaaba was established by Prophet Abraham (Ibrahim A.S.) many centuries before the advent of Islam. Named by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as the holiest city of Islam, Makkah existed as a city since over 2500 years; earlier, it was a meeting place for the nomadic warring tribes of the area. Although the tribes fought each other throughout the year, they would meet in Mecca once a year to perform pilgrimage (there was no Islam then, just a pagan form of religion), negotiate trades and generally try and sink their differences with each other. In Mecca, they would converge at the “Kaabaâ€, then a shrine with statues of pagan Gods.
The city and its areas were ruled by the Quraysh tribes, and Prophet Muhammad was born into the same tribe in the year 570 A.D. After the Koran was revealed to him by the angel Jibreel in the Hira cave in the local mountain Jebel al Nour, the Prophet (PBUH) destroyed the pagan idols and “sanctified†the Kaaba, making it synonymous with the “House of Allahâ€. He also ordained that as per the revelations made by Allah in the Qur^an, a true Muslim was bound to visit Mecca to perform a pilgrimage named as the “Hajj†if he was physically and financially capable of going there. Since then, Mecca has become synonymous with the identity of being the “Holiest place in Islamâ€. One of the keenest desires expressed by a Muslim is to be able to perform Hajj at least once before they die. As a “minor†pilgrimage, they perform what is known as an “Umrahâ€. While the Hajj has to be performed at a specific time of the year (in the twelfth month of the Hijri calendar), and involves a visit to many other locations in and around the Holy Mosque, an Umrah is a simpler, easier and shorter version of the pilgrimage which can be completed in just one day. Furthermore, it can be performed at virtually any time during the year.
Those familiar with me already know that I shifted to Saudi Arabia in November 2011, to further my career as a Pediatrician. Although I have been posted more than 300 km from the holy city of Mecca, I have gone there thrice already to perform the Umrah. This, rather touristy account is an attempt to synthesize my experience from all the three visits – one in November last year (2011), one in February  and one in April this year (2012), – into a single narration that I hope will enlighten, educate and entertain both Muslim and non-Muslim readers.
Mecca – The Holy City
No account of Mecca can be complete without referring to its being a holy place for Muslims from all over the world. Perhaps the best way to sum up my experience is this: every time I went to Mecca and looked at the Kaaba and prayed before it, I wept with reverence, piety, humility and the utmost sense of being in the House of Allah. (to those who think Allah and God are different names, let me assure you they are not: it’s like someone calling a head cover “dupatta†and someone else calling it “odhniâ€. It’s just a matter of two different languages, and the entity addressed by the two words is the same as, say, Bhagwan or Parmatma).
However, this is not a religious lesson, so let me move on to describe the main mosque at Mecca, which, incidentally, is known as the “Haram Mosqueâ€, or simply, “Haramâ€.
It is the largest mosque in the world, and can accommodate over 4000000 people at the same time while praying the Namaaz (or Salaah, as it is called in Arabic) during the Hajj season. Covering a huge area of 88.3 acres, including the areas within the walls and the huge courtyards without, it surrounds the Kaaba from all the four sides and is considered the single largest place for prayers all over the world. Structurally, it is composed of a huge circumferential building that stretches two storeys above the ground floor. Accessible from all the directions through its ornamentally carved gates (named after previous and present Kings of Saudi Arabia), it is under 24X7X365 maintenance, renovation and surveillance. Its gates are open to pilgrims at all times of the day and night, and I have personally performed Umrah at the late hour of from 10:00 p.m. to 02:00 a.m., so as to be able to do so with relatively lesser crowds.
While the pilgrims are busy circumnavigating the Kaaba, or performing Salaah, or reading the Qur^an, the mostly Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi (but also Indonesian, Filipino and Saudi) staff are busy cleaning, mopping, and vacuuming the entire place round the clock.
Their industriousness is truly mind-boggling. Go at any hour, and you will find them moving around with their cleaning machines, wires trailing here and there. At the same time, hundreds of workers are busy at several places inside and outside, laying down fresh marble flooring, digging, filling and renovating the huge grounds. Still others are operating huge cranes, building ever more new structures to create new entrance gates, new corridors, and new sanctuaries for praying.
This is not all. A complete crew of staff is only employed to clean, fill and replace the thousands of drinking water containers located all around and inside the mosque. These are filled with water from the thousands of years old wells, the Zamzam well. The water is called Zamzam too, and devotees are seen performing the pre-namaaz ablutions with this holy water, drinking it, and filling large containers with it to take back with them when they return to their respective homelands.
There are many other workers here – those who maintain the lavatories, the luggage locker rooms, the electrical fixtures, the scholars who help pilgrims understand the niceties of the religion, the police, the security staff, the voluntary NGOs who look after lost children, welfare of women, charity donations, and so on, and so many more that I cannot even begin to count them.
Architecturally, some of the structures of the Haram mosque are simply magnificent. The huge chandeliers, the cavernous halls topped with huge domes, the marble-columns, hundreds upon thousands of them, the beautiful carvings on each of these trying to outdo each other, the sheer grandeur of the place … it is all very humbling when you think about it.
The Kaaba itself – what to say about it! It is almost always being circumnavigated – day and night, Covered with a black cloth that is embroidered with pure gold designs, it stands at the centre of the Haram, marvelous, unique and pronouncing the Glory of the Maker of the Universe. People who go around it (a prescribed 7 times) are seen sending it flying kisses, crying unashamedly, weeping at the wall by laying their heads on it and entreating Allah to listen to their private woes, and generally looking at it with awe and 100% reverence. When I first went to Mecca in November and entered the Haram and saw the Kaaba, I dropped down on my knees and wept. The sight of the Kaaba can really do that, even to someone whose faith is not very strong. Add to this the sight of hundreds of pilgrims reciting Arabic prayers and walking shoulder to shoulder with you; the fact that each person around you is from a different race, a different country, a different culture – and yet, all are but one before the House of Allah – and it is enough to humble and melt the most uncompromising heart.
During each of my three Umrahs, and the several other opportunities I had of circumnavigating the Kaaba on the days following the actual performance of the Umrah, my faith grew and grew. In the real sense.
The Area Around the Haram:
As per the Wahhabi Islam view that the Saudi Arabian government and people adopted, preservation of ancient or heritage structures is a no-no, and every attempt has been made by the Government of Saudi Arabia to erase monuments of the past. Thus, for example, residences of the Prophet, his Companions, his wives or other family members have all been obliterated systemically to make way for promenades, hotels, shopping complexes, and even lavatories. Thus, as soon as you step outside the Haram, you are faced with some of the most modernistic structures in Saudi Arabia. To top the list is the huge hotel that also doubles as the world’s largest Clock-Tower, a part of the Abraj-al-Bait complex, which is also the record holder for being the world’s tallest hotel, the world’s biggest building by floor-space, the world’s largest clock-face, and the world’s second tallest building (see http://www.abrajal-bait.com/ for details and videos).
It rises just meters away from the Haram complex, a grandiose structure of seven towers, capped by an astronomical laboratory at the top. The huge clock face with the golden crescentic moon at its apex is truly a structure to behold. Housing as it does one of the largest 5-star hotels of the world with over 1600 rooms, it has, on its ground and the next three storeys, the world’s biggest shopping complexes. Although I was not fortunate to stay in this hotel, I spent many hours visiting the shopping complex and buying stuff that will rival the best buys in any part of the world, whether the Far East, the European continent or the US of A.
There are hundreds of other hotels here, as well as eateries of all kinds, selling Saudi, Turkish, Indian, Pakistani, Yemeni, Lebanese and other kinds of street cuisine.
Night-Life:
After the last prayers of the evening, the streets around the Haram come alive with hundreds of tourists. They are here to visit the shops that line the roads leading away from the Haram Mosque. The night-life is abuzz with shoppers who come out to merely look at or actually shop for clothes, bags, purses, shoes and slippers, jewellery, toys and utensils, and more. The market is lit up with 200 watt bulbs all over the place, and the unending stream of shoppers makes the roads look much like markets in any large city of the world, my own Mumbai not excluded! Here are some pictures of the revelry seen as evening turns to night.
Transportation, Roads and The City outside the Haram Area:
As I already mentioned earlier, Mecca is out of bounds for non-Muslims. In spite of such an injunction, which is, to this day, obeyed unquestioningly by the Saudi authorities, there have been non-Muslim visitors to this city in the past, for example, Guru Nanak himself, the founder of Sikhism, who visited Mecca in December 1518.
Down the centuries, Mecca has continually changed to make it more and more welcome to the millions of tourists and pilgrims that throng it every year. No old structures exist, however, as mentioned above. The roads and bridges are modern, and as Mecca is a city within a hilly region, one can see that buildings and structures are made around the hills, and roads tunneled through the hills to allow convenient commuting. The photographs below are some records of the city outside the Haram area. In particular, I wish to draw the attention of the readers to the immaculate and beautiful tunnel road. There are several of these tunnels in the city and they take one from one part of the city to another in a matter of seconds.
The last picture above shows how frenetic activity is ongoing as a new gate is being added to the haram. The building in the foreground has been vacated, its owners more than adequately compensated, and it is in a state of partial demolition. On the next day, I saw that it had been demolished, and a heap of rubble was the only proof that it had existed until the previous day.
Mecca: Getting There and Away:
To complete this write-up, I am including a small paragraph for those desirous of visiting Mecca
Mecca has a very small airport, and pilgrims usually land in Jeddah at the King Abdul Aziz Airport, from where they can proceed to Mecca by road. The distance is 75 km or so. The government bus service runs from all the cities in Saudi Arabia to Mecca all through the day. It is air-conditioned, luxury buses, 2X2, and the service is punctual, clean and efficient. In fact, so convenient is it that one would always prefer to travel by bus (as I did) than go by private taxis. There are no internal public buses or public taxis in Mecca. One can always rent a car through one of the many international car-rental agencies available in the city.
Accommodation is expensive, as hotel and tourism is the only major means of livelihood for the majority of Meccans and demand for rooms is at a premium throughout the year except just after the conclusion of the Hajj season, when one can secure rooms even in 4 and 5 star hotels for sums that are as low as 200-500 Saudi Riyals per night (the peak rates for the rooms would be SAR 2000 or more per night),
Conclusion and Summary:Â Â
Mecca is and will always remain one of the most popular destinations for more than two billion people of the planet. I have attempted to demystify the city and open its heart so that they (the people) may understand a little of its piety and glory even if only by proxy.