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Mecca: Ancient Mecca
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Mecca... Makkah (ancient Macoraba), is a city in western Saudi Arabia, located in Al Hij�z (Hejaz) Province, near Jiddah. Mecca is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam, and the most sacred of the Muslim holy cities. According to Islamic tradition, Muslims around the world must face Mecca during their daily prayers. Every year, during the last month of the Islamic calendar, more than 1 million Muslims make a pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca. The city's location on several trade routes has made it commercially important since ancient times. Mecca was a religious center before the time of Muhammad, and several holy sites within the sacred precincts of the great mosque, called al-Haram, had religious significance in pre-Islamic times.
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Mecca (in Arabic Makkah) is the center of the Islamic world and the birthplace of both the Prophet Muhammad and the religion he founded. Located in the Sirat mountains inland from the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia, ancient Mecca was an oasis on the old caravan trade route that linked the Mediterranean world with South Arabia, East Africa, and South Asia. By Roman and Byzantine times it had developed into an important trade and religious center, and was known as Macoraba. According to ancient Arabian legend, when Adam and Eve were cast forth from Paradise they fell in different parts of the earth; Adam on a mountain on the island of Serendip, or Sri Lanka, and Eve in Arabia, on the border of the Red Sea near the present port of Jeddah. For two hundred years they wandered separated and lonely about the earth. Finally, in consideration of their penitence and wretchedness, they were permitted to come together again on Mt. Arafat, near the present city of Mecca.
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Mecca (Makkah in Arabic) is the center of the Islamic world and the birthplace of both the Prophet Muhammad and the religion he founded. Located in the Sirat Mountains of central Saudi Arabia and 45miles inland from the Red Sea port of Jidda (Jeddah), ancient Mecca was an oasis on the old caravan trade route that linked the Mediterranean world with South Arabia, East Africa, and South Asia. By Roman and Byzantine times it had developed into an important trade and religious center, and was known as Macoraba. The sacred land in which Mecca and Medina are located, known as the Hijaz, is the western region of the Arabian peninsula, a narrow tract of land about 875 miles long east of the Red Sea with the Tropic of Cancer running through its center. The land is called Hijaz, meaning barrier, because its backbone, the Sarat Mountains consist of volcanic peaks and natural depressions creating a stark and rugged environment dominated by intense sunlight and little rain fall.
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Ancient Mecca was an oasis on the old caravan trade route that linked the Mediterranean world with South Arabia, East Africa, and South Asia. The town was located about midway between Ma'rib in the south and Petra in the north, and it gradually developed by Roman and Byzantine times into an important trade and religious centre. It was known to Ptolemy as Macoraba.
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Some have identified Mecca with an ancient city called Bakkah, identified with the Biblical "valley of Baca" in Psalm 84, but this identification is controversial. However, the Qur'an does identify Bakkah as it the location of the first mosque, which can be taken to imply that Mecca and Bakkah are the same location. One school of thought has it that Bakkah is just an alternative pronunciation of Mecca.
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Ancient Mecca