Mecca Province in the context of "Islamic holy sites"

Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is the holiest city in Islam. It is located in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia and is the capital of Mecca Province. Mecca is considered the birthplace of Islam and the birthplace of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

It is 70 km (43 mi) inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley 277 m (909 ft) above sea level. Its metropolitan population in 2022 was 2.4 million, making it the third–most populated city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Jeddah. The Cave of Hira atop the Jabal al-Nour, just outside the city, is where Muslims believe the Quran was first revealed to Muhammad. Visiting Mecca for the Ḥajj is an obligation upon all able Muslims. The Great Mosque of Mecca, known as the Masjid al-Haram, is home to the Kaaba, believed by Muslims to have been built by Abraham and Ishmael. It is Islam's holiest site and the direction of prayer (qibla) for all Muslims worldwide. Around 44.5% of the population are Saudi citizens and around 55.5% are Muslim foreigners from other countries. Pilgrims more than triple the population number every year during the Ḥajj pilgrimage, observed in the twelfth Hijri month of Dhūl-Ḥijjah. With over 10.8 million international visitors in 2023, Mecca was one of the ten most visited cities in the world.

The Eastern Province (Arabic: المنطقة الشرقية‎, romanized: al-Mintaqah ash-Sharqīyah), also known as the Eastern Region, is a province in Saudi Arabia. It is the nation's largest province by area and the third most populous after Riyadh and Mecca provinces. As of 2022, the population is 5,125,254. Its name reflects its location in the eastern part of the country.

More than a third of the population is concentrated in the Dammam metropolitan area. With an estimated population of 1.53 million as of 2022, Dammam, the seat of the province, is the fourth most populous city in the kingdom. Other populous cities in the province include Qatif, Hofuf, Hafar al-Batin, Jubail and Khobar. The region is extremely popular among tourists for its beaches on the Persian Gulf (also known as the Arabian Gulf) and proximity to the other countries of the eastern Arab world, such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, with the latter being linked to the province via the 25 km (15 mi) long King Fahd Causeway. The Province also shares a border with Oman, Yemen, Kuwait and Iraq. The province is bordered to the west, from north to south, by the provinces of the Northern Borders, Hail, Al-Qassim, Riyadh and Najran.

Jeddah is a governorate and the largest city in Mecca Province, Saudi Arabia, and the country's second largest city after Riyadh, located along the Red Sea coast in the Hejaz region. Jeddah is the commercial center of the country. It is not known when Jeddah was founded, but Jeddah's prominence grew in 647 when the Caliph Uthman made it a travel hub serving Muslim travelers going to the holy city of Mecca for Islamic pilgrimage. Since those times, Jeddah has served as a gateway for millions of pilgrims who have arrived in Saudi Arabia.

With a population of about 3,751,722 people as of 2022, Jeddah is the largest city in Mecca Province, the largest city in Hejaz, the second-largest city in Saudi Arabia (after the capital Riyadh), and the ninth-largest in the Middle East. It also serves as the administrative centre of the OIC. Jeddah Islamic Port, on the Red Sea, is the thirty-sixth largest seaport in the world and the second-largest and second-busiest seaport in the Middle East (after Dubai's Port of Jebel Ali).

Taif (Arabic: اَلطَّائِفُ‎, romanized: Aṭ-Ṭāʾif, lit. 'The circulated or encircled', Hejazi Arabic pronunciation: [atˤˈ tˤaː(j)ɪf]) is a city and governorate in Mecca Province in Saudi Arabia. Located at an elevation of 1,879 m (6,165 ft) in the slopes of the Hijaz Mountains, which themselves are part of the Sarat Mountains, the city has a population of 563,282 people in 2022, making it one of the most populous cities in the kingdom.

There is a belief that Taif is indirectly referred to in Quran 43:31. The city was visited by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, sometime in the early 7th century, and was inhabited by the tribe of Banu Thaqif. It is still inhabited to this day by their descendants. As a part of the Hejaz, the city has seen many transfers-of-power throughout its history, with the last being during the Saudi conquest of Hejaz in 1925.

The Riyadh Province (Arabic: منطقة الرياض Manṭiqat ar-Riyāḍ) is a province of Saudi Arabia, located in the geographic center of the country and the center of the Arabian Peninsula. It has an area of 404,240 km (156,080 sq mi) and with a 2022 population of 8,591,748, it is the second-largest region by area, behind the Eastern Province and the largest by population. The capital governorate of the province is the Riyadh Governorate and it is named after the capital of the kingdom, Riyadh, which is the most populous city in the region and the kingdom, with a little less than two-thirds of the population of the region residing within the city. The province was governed for nearly five decades by Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz from 1963 to 2011 shortly before he became the Crown Prince in 2012. Currently, it is governed by Prince Faisal bin Bandar.

Other populous cities in the region include Al Ghat, Dawadmi, Afif, Zulfi and Majma'ah. Approximately half of the region's area is desert, and it only borders other regions of the kingdom; it has no international borders. The region borders, clockwise from the north, the Eastern Province, Najran Province, ʽAsir Province, Mecca Province, Medina Province and the Al-Qassim Province. It is one of the seven regions of the kingdom that do not have a coastline.

Asir, officially the Aseer Province, is a province of Saudi Arabia in southern Arabia. It has an area of 76,693 square kilometres (29,611 sq mi), and an estimated population of 2,024,285 (in 2022). Abha is its seat and second-largest city, after Khamis Mushait. Asir is bounded by the Mecca Province to the north and west, Al-Bahah Province to the northwest, Riyadh Province to the northeast, Najran Province to the southeast, Jazan Province and the Saada Governorate of Yemen to the south.