Mecca Mecca Mecca (; "" () is a city in the Hejazi region of the Arabian Peninsula, and the plain of Tihamah in Saudi Arabia, and is also the capital and administrative headquarters of the Makkah Region. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level, and south of Medina. Its resident population in 2012 was roughly 2 million, although visitors more than triple this number every year during the "Ḥajj" (, "Pilgrimage") period held in the twelfth Muslim lunar month of "Dhūl-Ḥijjah" (). As the birthplace of Muhammad, and the site
Sharifate of Mecca of Mecca was always from the Hashemite clan of Muhammad. This situation was ended in 1803, when fundamentalist Wahhabis deposed the ruling Emir of Mecca, Sharif Ghalib. The Wahhabis started to be a threat on the Hejaz from the 1750s onwards. They had risen as a religious movement in Dira’iyya in the Nejd in 1744-1745. Their doctrine found few sympathisers in the Hejaz, and the Mufti of Mecca pronounced them heretics. They were able to take the two holy cities in 1801. In 1803 the Wahhabis, led by Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, attacked Mecca. Sharif Ghalib fled to Jeddah, which was