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
Siege of Mecca (683) August 683 and proceeded to sack Medina—one of the impious acts for which the Umayyads are denounced in later Muslim tradition. After taking Medina, Muslim set out for Mecca, but on the way he fell ill and died at Mushallal, and command passed to his lieutenant Husayn ibn Numayr al-Sakuni. For his sack of Medina, subsequent tradition remembers Muslim ibn 'Uqba as the "heathen incarnate" (J. Wellhausen). Husayn's army arrived before Mecca in September. Ibn al-Zubayr and his supporters refused to surrender, and after they were defeated in a first engagement, a siege of the city began, in which the