MECCA (Om Al Kora, mother of cities), one of the oldest towns of Arabia, -the capi tal of the province of Hedjaz, and, through being the birthplace of Mohammed, the central and most holy- city of all Islam. It is situated in 21° 30' n. lat , and 40° 8' e. long., 245 m. s. of Medina, and about 65 m. e. of Jiddali, the well-known port on the Red sea, in a narrow, barren valley, surrounded by bare hills and sandy plains, and watered hy the brook Wadi-Al-Tarafeyn. The city is about 1500 paces long, and about 650 broad, and is divided into the upper and lower city-, with about 25 chief quarters. The streets are broad and rather regular, but unpaved; excessively dusty in summer, and muddy in the rainy season. The houses, three ur four stories high, are built of brick or stone, ornamented with paintings, and their windows open on the streets. The rooms are much more handsomely furnished, and altogether in a better state than is usual in the east; the inhabitants of Mecca making their living chiefly by lettiurr tLem to the pilgrims (see HAM who flock here to visit the Beit Ullah (house of God)°, or chief mosque, containing the kaaba (q.v.). This mosque, capable of holding about 35,000 persons, is surrounded by 19 gates surmounted by seven minarets, and contains several rows of pillars, about 20 ft. high, and about 18 in. in diameter, of marble, granite, porphyry, and common sandstone, which at certain distances are surmounted by small domes. A great number of people are attached to the mosque in some kind of ecclesiastical capacity, as katibs, muftis, mueddins, ete. No other public place or building, sacred or profane, of any
importance is to be found in this city, which also is singularly destitute of trees and verdure of any kind. It is protected by three castellated buildings, and is governed by a sherif. The population has, in consequence of the rapidly decreasing number of pil grims, fallen oft considerably of late, from above 100,000 to hardly 40,000, who do not find the 100,000 annual pilgrims sufficient to keep them in the state of prosperity of for mer years. The trade and commerce of Mecca hardly deserve mention; the chief articles manufactured there are chaplets for the pious pilgrims. The townspeople themselves are lively, polished, and frivolous, and growing up amid an immense concourse of stran gers from all parts of Asia, are generally able to converse in three or four eastern lan guages. Respecting the history of Mecca, it was known to Ptolemy already as Macoraba, and first belonged to the tribe of the Kosaites, later to the Koreish. Mohammed, who had been obliged to leave it precipitately (see HEI/TRAII) in 622, returned to it and con quered it in 627. Within the course of the present century, Mecca was taken by the Waltabites (1803), but oiven up again to the pasha of Egypt, Mehemed Ali (1833), whose son, Ibrahim, was made Sheik El Haram—" of the sacred place." At present, however, Mecca is directly dependent on the sultan.—A certain balm, called balm of Mecca, is made from a plant which grows in abundance in the neighborhood of the city, called hesem.