The Siege of Mecca deaths and ending only after the intervention of Saudi National Guard and Special Forces. Yaroslav Trofimov's book provides the first detailed account of this siege. The book is based on interviews with surviving participants and eyewitnesses, including former terrorist supporters of Juhayman al-Otaybi, as well as hundreds of declassified U.S., British and French government documents. 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
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