Mecca

Mecca (/ˈmɛkə/) or Makkah (Arabic: مكة‎ Makkah) is a city in the Hejaz in Saudi Arabia. It is the capital of that kingdom's Makkah Region. The city is located 70 km (43 mi) inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of 277 m (909 ft) above sea level. Its resident population in 2012 was roughly 2 million, although visitors more than triple this number every year during the hajj ("pilgrimage") period held in the twelfth Muslim lunar month of Dhu al-Hijjah.

As the birthplace of Muhammad and the site of Muhammad's first revelation of the Quran (specifically, a cave 3 km (2 mi) from Mecca), Mecca is regarded as the holiest city in the religion of Islam and a pilgrimage to it known as the Hajj is obligatory for all able Muslims. Mecca is home to the Kaaba, by majority description Islam's holiest site, as well as being the direction of Muslim prayer. Mecca was long ruled by Muhammad's descendants, the sharifs, acting either as independent rulers or as vassals to larger polities. It was conquered by Ibn Saud in 1925. In its modern period, Mecca has seen tremendous expansion in size and infrastructure, home to structures such as the Abraj Al Bait, also known as the Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel, the world's third tallest building and the building with the largest amount of floor area. During this expansion, Mecca has lost some historical structures and archaeological sites, such as the Ajyad Fortress. Today, more than 15 million Muslims visit Mecca annually, including several million during the few days of the Hajj. As a result, Mecca has become one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse cities in the Muslim world, despite the fact that non-Muslims are prohibited from entering the city.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia (ⁱ/ˌsɔːdiː əˈreɪbiə/, ⁱ/ˌsaʊ-/), officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is an Arab state in Western Asia constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. With a land area of approximately 2,150,000 km² (830,000 sq mi), Saudi Arabia is geographically the second-largest state in the Arab world after Algeria. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast, and Yemen to the south. It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast, and most of its terrain consists of arid inhospitable desert or barren landforms.

The area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of four distinct regions: Hejaz, Najd, and parts of Eastern Arabia (Al-Ahsa) and Southern Arabia ('Asir). The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud. He united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. The country has since been an absolute monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. The ultra-conservative Wahhabism religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called "the predominant feature of Saudi culture", with its global spreading largely financed by the oil and gas trade. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "the Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram (in Mecca), and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (in Medina), the two holiest places in Islam. The Kingdom has a total population of 28.7 million, of which 20 million are Saudi nationals and 8 million are foreigners.

Ibn Saud

Abdulaziz ibn Abdul Rahman ibn Faisal ibn Turki ibn Abdullah ibn Muhammad Al Saud (Arabic: عبد العزيز بن عبد الرحمن آل سعود‎, ‘Abd al-‘Azīz ibn ‘Abd ar-Raḥman Āl Sa‘ūd; 15 January 1875 – 9 November 1953), usually known within the Arab world as Abdulaziz and in the West as Ibn Saud, was the first monarch and founder of Saudi Arabia and the House of Saud, the "third Saudi state".

He reconquered his family's ancestral home city of Riyadh in 1902, starting three decades of conquests that made him the ruler of nearly all of central Arabia. He consolidated his control over the Najd in 1922, then conquered the Hejaz in 1925. He extended his dominions into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. As King, he presided over the discovery of petroleum in Saudi Arabia in 1938 and the beginning of large-scale oil production after World War II. He fathered many children, including 45 sons, and all of the subsequent kings of Saudi Arabia.

Early life and family origins

Ibn Saud was born on 15 January 1875 in Riyadh in the region of Najd in central Arabia. He was the son of Abdul Rahman bin Faisal, last ruler of the Emirate of Nejd, the "Second Saudi State", a tribal sheikhdom centered on Riyadh. His family, the House of Saud, had been a power in central Arabia for the previous 130 years. Under the influence and inspiration of Wahhabi Islam, the Saudis had previously attempted to control much of the Arabian peninsula in the form of the Emirate of Diriyah, the "First Saudi State", until its destruction by an Egyptian army in the early 19th century. Ibn Saud's mother was a member of the Sudairi family, Sarah Al Sudairi. She died in 1910.

Holy Land

The Holy Land (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ הַקוֹדֵשׁ Eretz HaKodesh, Latin: Terra Sancta; Arabic: الأرض المقدسة Al-Arḍ Al-Muqaddasah) is an area roughly located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea but also includes the Eastern Bank of the Jordan River. Historically, it is synonymous with both the Land of Israel and Palestine and currently it is part of the State of Israel, the Palestinian Territories, the Lebanese Republic, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It is considered holy by certain Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Part of the significance of the land stems from the religious significance of Jerusalem, the holiest city to Judaism, the historical region of Jesus's ministry, and the Isra and Mi'raj event in Islam and Mount Nebo, where Moses presumably died. The perceived holiness of the land to Christianity was part of the motivation for the Crusades, as European Christians sought to win the Holy Land back from the Muslim Seljuk Turks. The Turks had taken over the Holy Land after defeating the Muslim Arabs, who had in turn conquered the area from the Christian Byzantine Empire.

Abd al-Aziz

Abd al-Aziz (Arabic: عبد العزيز‎, DMG: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz), frequently also transliterated Abdul Aziz, is a male Muslim given name and in modern usage, surname. It is built from the Arabic words Abd, al- and Aziz. The name means "servant of the Almighty", Al-Azīz being one of the names of God in the Qur'an, which give rise to the Muslim theophoric names.

The letter a of the al- is unstressed, and can be transliterated by almost any vowel, often by u. So the first part can appear as Abdel, Abdul or Abd-al. The second part may appear as Aziz or Azeez, or in other ways. The whole name is subject to variable spacing and hyphenation.

It may refer to:

Males