History of the al-Haram Mosque

The first extension to the mosque is carried out in the Islamic period, which was under the control of the reign of Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab. The Umayyad caliph Al Walid Ben Abdel Malek had a part of the land connected to the surface of the Mosque, so the building was renovated raised in arches decorated with mosaics of marble columns that were originally from Syria and Egypt.

Abbasí Abu Jaafar Al Mansu was a caliph who gave the order to join the surface to the Al Haram mosque ordering that a circular corridor be built. Later, the caliph Al-Mahdî, ordered to buy, on the occasion of his pilgrimage, 776 houses located between the Al Haram Mosque and the Massaa. These were destroyed to join their land to the mosque. That is why the surface was extended to 120 thousand square cubits.

In the times of the Caliph abasida Al Moutadid Billah and his successor the Caliph Al-Muqtadir Billah this area was enlarged with the importance of the al-Haram mosque and reached its height in the year 306 of the Hegira remaining unchanged until the Saudi era. As such, no changes were made to the reigns of the Fatimids, Memelucos, Ottomans and Ayubids in the Al-Haram Mosque and the works were limited to repair and restoration.

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With the King Saud ben Abdel Aziz Al-Saud it was proposed that in 1955, a very important program of expansion and reconstruction of this mosque be opened, as well as with the restoration of the Kaaba sanctuary. Thus, at the beginning of the 1960s, the total surface area of ​​the Mosque was already bordering 200,000 square meters (when previously it only had 30,000 square meters), reaching simultaneously 400,000 pilgrims. King Fahd Ben Abdel Aziz Al-Saud continued with the new works in the expansion which took a total of more than 320 thousand square meters of the Holy Mosque, which gave a capacity to accommodate more than one million faithful.

In recent years the Haka of Meka has suffered the impact of the pharaonic constructions that took place around it and that tend to dwarf the Kaaba and visually impose the presence of the power that has taken over Mecca.