Great Mosque of Mecca Great Mosque of Mecca The Great Mosque of Mecca, also called "Al-Haram Mosque" (, "the Forbidden Mosque", "the Holy Mosque" or "the Sacred Mosque") or "Grand Mosque of Makkah", is the largest mosque in the world, and surrounds the Islamic "Qiblah", that is the "Ka‘bah" in the Hejazi city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Muslims face the Kaaba while praying. One of the Five Pillars of Islam requires every Muslim to perform the "Ḥajj", one of the largest annual gatherings of people in the world, at least once in their lifetime when able to do so, including circumambulating the Kaaba. It
Black mecca of Harlem" was also the title of a 2010 book by Temple University professor Zain Abdullah about Muslim West African immigrants in New York City, using "Mecca" not only in the generic sense of "a place that people are drawn to" but also playing on the original meaning of Mecca as the Muslim holy city. Rarely are places other than Atlanta and Harlem mentioned as black meccas, though in questioning the status of Atlanta as a black mecca, comparisons are often made to other cities with large black populations with cities over 200,000 people, such as Birmingham, Detroit, St. Louis,