Al-Masjid Al-Haram
Interesting facts
- The 2025 lighting of the circumambulation area used about 550 custom chandeliers and luminaires gilded with more than 200 kg of 24-carat gold.
- In 2013 an Austrian firm supplied some 4,700 chandeliers and fittings in 26 sizes for the northern extension; the largest gilded pieces cost about a million euros each.
- Since 1979 the Kaaba has had 300 kg gold doors, set 2.13 m above the ground and made by the son of the craftsman behind the 1942 silver pair.
- The oldest surviving parts of the building are domes and columns from a renovation that Sultan Selim II entrusted to the architect Mimar Sinan in 1570.
- When Caliph Umar enlarged the sanctuary in 637 it covered about 3,600 m²; by 2008 indoor and outdoor prayer space had grown to almost 357,000 m².
- In 930 the Qarmatians raided Mecca and carried the Black Stone off to eastern Arabia, where it was held for about two decades until its return in 952.
- Today the Black Stone survives as seven or eight cemented fragments in a silver frame, its exposed face only about 20 by 16 cm.
- The Zamzam well is about 30 m deep; since 1964 its mouth lies in a closed basement, and pumps send the water 5 km to a plant at Kudai.
- The hills of Safa and Marwa, between which pilgrims walk in memory of Hagar's search for water, were once outside the mosque and are now enclosed in a covered gallery.
- The black silk covering of the Kaaba, the kiswah, is replaced every year; a band of gold-embroidered Quranic text runs around it two-thirds of the way up.
Why it is worth it
Muslim tradition holds that the Kaaba at the centre of this mosque was first built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, and that the Prophet Muhammad, after his conquest of Mecca in 630 CE, cleared away the idols that had gathered around it and rededicated the site to the worship of one God. A mosque enclosing the Kaaba has stood on this spot ever since, though the oldest sections of the structure visible today date only to Ottoman-era rebuilding in the 16th century.
The mosque has been expanded repeatedly since, most dramatically during 20th- and 21st-century Saudi projects that multiplied its prayer space many times over to keep pace with a Hajj that now draws several million pilgrims within the same few days each year, on top of a much larger year-round flow of Umrah visitors. By covered floor area it is, without real competition, the largest mosque on Earth. Within its precinct sit the Black Stone set into the Kaaba's corner, the Zamzam well, and the Maqam Ibrahim, a stone said to preserve Abraham's footprint.
One detail rarely mentioned alongside the scale: the keys to the Kaaba's door have been held by the same family, the Bani Shaiba, for more than fifteen centuries — an unbroken hereditary custodianship that predates every one of the mosque's current walls by a thousand years or more.
Good to know
Entry to the city of Mecca itself — not only the mosque — is restricted by Saudi law to Muslims, enforced at road checkpoints on every route into the city. This is a matter of national law rather than a booking rule or local custom, and it applies regardless of the reason for travel.
Getting there
Located in Makkah. King Abdulaziz International Airport (JED) is about 75 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Masjid al-Haram, also known as the Great Mosque of Mecca, is a mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, serving as the holiest and most important mosque in Islam. As of 2026, the Great Mosque is the largest mosque in the world.
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