The Siege of Mecca The Siege of Mecca The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda is a 2007 book by Wall Street Journal correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov about the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca. Hundreds of Islamic radicals led by Saudi preacher Juhayman al-Otaybi invaded the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine, on Nov. 20, 1979. The intruders included men from all over the Muslim world and a handful of American converts. Tens of thousands of worshipers were trapped inside the compound. The battle for the shrine lasted two weeks, causing hundreds of
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