The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Mecca and Medina

The cities of Mecca and Medina, located in western Saudi Arabia, are the most ritually significant sites in Islam. Both cities appear in Islamic cosmological legends as centers or origins of God’s creation, and one of the epithets for Mecca, “Mother of Towns” (umm al-qurā), celebrates this precedence.

Mecca was the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, and according to Islamic tradition, he received his first revelations from God in its environs in 610. Mecca was also home to the Ka‘ba, a black, cubic structure believed by Muslims to be the earliest bayt, or house of worship, first built by Adam and then rebuilt by Abraham and his son Ishmael. At the time of Muhammad’s birth, it housed a set of idols and attracted pilgrims from among the largely polytheistic peoples of the Arabian Peninsula. Mecca also seems to have been a commercial center of at least local importance, though its role in longer distance trade has been debated. When Muhammad took control of the city in 630, he maintained its status as a pilgrimage destination, although he destroyed the idols at the Ka‘ba and dedicated it to the one true God. In the following year, he performed a series of rituals at the Ka‘ba and sites in its vicinity that became the blueprint for the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

Medina, known in pre-Islamic times by the name Yathrib, was an oasis settlement of farmers and pastoralists some 200 miles north of Mecca. The Prophet Muhammad emigrated to Yathrib with a group of his followers in 622 to escape persecution from Meccan elites. This event, known as the hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Yathrib, which is referred to simply as al-madīna (the city) in the Qur’an, would remain the residence of the Prophet until his death in 632. His tomb, located in the Prophet’s Mosque of Medina, is a site of pious visitation for Muslims.

According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad established a paradigm for religious and political authority during his career in Medina. One of the earliest political documents in Islamic history, known as the Constitution of Medina, establishes the Prophet as the leader of “believers” and “Muslims” who compose an umma, the term now used for the worldwide community of Muslims. Its text combines the language of tribal confederations, kinship-based mutual aid pacts well-established on the Arabian Peninsula, with a language of religious belonging and identity. Muslims date the revelation of those chapters of the Qur’an that contain the most explicit guidance for ritual practice and ethical standards of behavior to the Medinan period. Thus while Mecca figures more prominently in pre-Islamic sacred history, Muslims regard Medina as the crucible of a self-conscious religious community with a tradition of political and legal discourse.

Despite this, after Muhammad’s death, Medina acted as a seat of political authority only during the reigns of the first four caliphs, or “successors” to the Prophet, up to the year 661, when a new dynasty of caliphs, the Umayyads, was established in Damascus. During the Umayyad and later Abbasid periods, caliphal involvement in Mecca and Medina was largely limited to the erection or renovation of ritual structures and patronage of the wives of the Prophet, who lived in Medina after his death. However, from time to time both cities were known or suspected to host politically fractious elements, which resulted in retribution or periods of relative neglect from the authorities. The most famous of these episodes was the rebellion of ‘Abdallah b. al-Zubayr against the Umayyads, which culminated in the partial destruction and subsequent rebuilding of the Ka‘ba in the late seventh century. Nonetheless, the expectation that the caliphs would be patrons and protectors of the annual pilgrimage meant that appearances and investments in Mecca and Medina were frequent and well documented. Successor regimes, including the Shi‘i Fatimids based in Cairo as well as the Sunni Mamluks and later the Ottomans, also sought legitimacy through their control of Mecca and Medina. Today much of Saudi Arabia’s prestige in the Islamic world stems from its role as regulator and protector of pilgrimages to the two holy cities.