Makkah al-Mukarramah

Where Makkah is, and why it matters

Makkah sits in a narrow valley in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia, about 340 km (210 miles) south of Madinah in a straight line — about 450 km by the actual road — and roughly 70 km inland from the Red Sea coast. At its center is the Kaaba, inside Masjid al-Haram — the qiblah every Muslim faces in every prayer, everywhere on earth, and the destination of Hajj and Umrah. The Quran also calls it Umm al-Qura, "the Mother of Cities/Settlements" (Quran 6:92, 42:7) — a name reflecting both its ancient standing as the region's central settlement and its unmatched place in Islam.

"Bakkah" is the name the Quran itself uses here — most commentators take it as an older name for Makkah, or the name of the sacred area immediately around the Kaaba specifically. The Kaaba's construction, in its form known today, is tied to Ibrahim and his son Ismail:

See the full account in the story of Ibrahim. The Kaaba they raised has been rebuilt and repaired several times since — after flood damage, and once during the Prophet's ﷺ own lifetime before his prophethood — but the location and the basic form have remained the same.

The discovery of Zamzam

Before the Kaaba was raised, the valley was already marked by another miracle. Ibrahim left his wife Hajar and their infant son Ismail here, by Allah's command, with a waterskin, a pouch of dates, and nothing else in any direction — praying as he walked away that Allah would settle his family "in an uncultivated valley near Your sacred House" (Quran 14:37). When the water ran out and the infant cried with thirst, Hajar ran between the two nearby hills, as-Safa and al-Marwah, searching for help — seven times back and forth, the very distance every pilgrim retraces today in sa'i. On the seventh crossing, water broke through the ground at the infant's feet. The Prophet ﷺ later described what she did next:

Birds circling the new water drew the tribe of Jurhum to settle beside it — the beginning of Makkah as a place people actually lived, not just visited. Ismail grew up, married, and lived among them, and it was here, around this well, that he and his father later raised the Kaaba's walls. Generations afterward the well was lost, filled in and forgotten, until the Prophet's ﷺ own grandfather Abd al-Muttalib rediscovered it after being directed to its location in a dream — the rediscovery that made him the most honored man in Makkah, and put the office of watering the pilgrims (siqayah) in his family, still remembered in the Quran itself (9:19). Full account, sources, and what makes the water distinctive: The Well of Zamzam →

Timeline of Makkah

The Prophet's ﷺ own life in Makkah, before the Hijrah — each entry links to the fuller account elsewhere on the site.

Prayer in Masjid al-Haram

A prayer here carries the greatest reward of any mosque in the world — greater even than the Prophet's own mosque in Madinah:

Why the Hijr Ismail sits outside the Kaaba

The low semicircle isn’t decorative — it marks a piece of the original Kaaba that no longer sits within the walls. When the Quraysh rebuilt the Kaaba in the Prophet’s ﷺ youth (after a flood had weakened it), they ran short of lawful (halal) funds to complete it on Ibrahim’s full foundations, so they shortened the building and walled off part of the original floor plan. That excluded arc — the Hijr (also called al-Hatim) — is therefore part of Ibrahim’s Kaaba, which is why praying inside it counts as praying inside the Kaaba, and why tawaf must pass around it, never through. Aisha (رضي الله عنها) reported the Prophet’s ﷺ own words:

He ﷺ left it as the people knew it to avoid unsettling hearts still new to faith — a quiet lesson in weighing a good against the greater harm of causing confusion over a lesser matter.

What Maqam Ibrahim actually is

It is not a grave, a shrine, or an object of worship — it is a stone that Ibrahim ﷺ stood upon. As he and his son Ismail raised the Kaaba’s walls, the stone served as his standing-place; the reports describe his footprints preserved in it, and connect it to where he stood to call mankind to the pilgrimage. Allah made it a sign of the sanctuary and a place of prayer:

Today the stone rests in a small glass-and-brass enclosure a few metres from the Kaaba’s door. After finishing tawaf it is sunnah to pray two rak’ah behind it — “behind” only in position: the prayer is to Allah alone, and the footprints are honoured as a trace of Ibrahim’s obedience, never venerated in themselves — the very tawhid that cleared the 360 idols from around this House.

Kissing the Black Stone is a beloved sunnah — and Islam is emphatic about what the act is not. Umar ibn al-Khattab kissed it and then declared before the pilgrims:

The gesture is pure following of the Prophet ﷺ, not veneration of an object — the same tawhid that removed 360 idols from around the Kaaba governs how the Stone itself is approached. When the crowd makes kissing impossible, it is enough to gesture toward the corner from a distance as each circuit passes; no one should push or harm others to reach it.

The Kiswah, and how the mosque itself has grown

Two things change year to year even though the Kaaba's location and form never have: the cloth that covers it, and the size of the mosque built up around it.

The Kaaba, rebuilt more than once

The Kaaba has stood on the same spot since Ibrahim raised it — but its walls have fallen and risen more than once. When Quraysh rebuilt it during the Prophet's ﷺ young adulthood, their lawfully-earned funds ran short, so several cubits of Ibrahim's foundation were left outside the structure: the semicircular space of the Hijr. The Prophet ﷺ told Aisha he would have restored Ibrahim's full foundations himself, were it not that her people had so recently left ignorance (Sahih al-Bukhari 1583; Sahih Muslim 1333). Decades later, Abdullah ibn az-Zubayr did exactly that — extending the Kaaba over the Hijr, with two doors at ground level — before al-Hajjaj, under the Umayyads, returned it to Quraysh's footprint, the form it keeps today. This is also why the Hijr matters so much to pilgrims: praying inside it is praying within the House itself.

Masjid ʿĀʾishah (at-Tanʿīm) — and how many umrahs are Sunnah

Masjid ʿĀʾishah stands at at-Tanʿīm, about 7 km northwest of Masjid al-Haram, at the nearest point of the ḥill — the land just outside the sacred Ḥaram boundary. It is the mīqāt most used by those already in Makkah who wish to enter iḥrām for a fresh umrah, since one must go out to the ḥill to begin.

Its name comes from an incident on the Farewell Pilgrimage. ʿĀʾishah (ra) had entered iḥrām for umrah, but her menses came before she could perform ṭawāf, so the Prophet ﷺ told her to bring her umrah into her Hajj and perform every rite except ṭawāf until she was pure. When the Hajj was complete she grieved that the others had done a separate Hajj and a separate umrah while hers had been merged — so the Prophet ﷺ ordered her brother, ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ibn Abī Bakr, to take her out to at-Tanʿīm to enter iḥrām for a fresh umrah, "in place of your umrah" (Sahih al-Bukhari 1786; Sahih Muslim 1211). The mosque marks that spot.

How many umrahs in one journey?

The Prophet ﷺ performed umrah four times in his life — every one of them on a separate journey, and all in the month of Dhul-Qaʿdah: the umrah of Ḥudaybiyyah (turned back), the umrah of al-Qaḍāʾ the following year, the umrah from al-Jiʿrānah, and the umrah joined with his Hajj (Sahih al-Bukhari 1778; Sahih Muslim 1253). On no single stay in Makkah did he leave again and again to the ḥill to perform umrah after umrah. ʿĀʾishah's umrah from at-Tanʿīm was a particular consolation for what her menses had cost her — not a standing encouragement to repeat umrah within one trip.