Mecca scholarship governed by the Hashemite Sharifs. In 930, Mecca was attacked and sacked by Qarmatians, a millenarian Ismaili Muslim sect led by Abū-Tāhir Al-Jannābī and centered in eastern Arabia. The Black Death pandemic hit Mecca in 1349. In 1517, the Sharif, Barakat bin Muhammed, acknowledged the supremacy of the Ottoman Caliph but retained a great degree of local autonomy. In 1803 the city was captured by the First Saudi State, which held Mecca until 1813. This was a massive blow to the prestige of the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire, which had exercised sovereignty over the holy city since 1517. The Ottomans
Battle of Mecca (883) aftermath of the caliph's flight, al-Muwaffaq ordered that Ibn Tulun be publicly cursed in mosques throughout the empire and "de jure" dismissed him from his governorships, while Ibn Tulun similarly had al-Muwaffaq publicly cursed, declared him deposed from his position as al-Mu'tamid's second heir and proclaimed a "holy war" against him. As Ibn Tulun's relations with the Abbasid government deteriorated, he began to turn his attention to the city of Mecca in western Arabia. As one of the Holy Cities of Islam, Mecca carried with it a significant amount of symbolic prestige, and leadership of the annual hajj or pilgrimage