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Mecca, the holiest site of

Islam, is getting a twenty first
century makeover. but not
everyone is happy about it
By Orlando Crowcroft

76 esquire j a n u a r y 2011
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A hotel in down-
town Cairo and
Sami Angawi, the
renowned Saudi
architect and academic,
is struggling to make
himself heard over an
Internet phone line.
I’m only able to hear
every other word, plus
he is obviously angry.
“What is going on in Mecca and Medina is wrong,” he says,
before the picture again crackles and disappears. “Clock tower,”
he says, suddenly re-appearing. “That stupid clock tower.”
An hour earlier I was gliding through the heavy Jeddah
traffic in an immaculate white SUV with Sami’s son, Ahmad
Angawi. Ahmad was also talking about the Royal Mecca Clock
Tower, speaking quickly and gesturing with one hand as he
wove the car in and out of lane with the other. Every now and
then he’d go quiet, as if in thought, use his free hand to flick back
the corners of his white guthra headscarf, and then press on.
We were on our way to the Angawi family home, a beautiful
villa on the outskirts of Jeddah, where I was due to meet
Ahmad’s father, Sami Angawi, via a Skype connection. It was
what I thought was a fairly innocuous comment about the
tower that had started Ahmad talking about Mecca, but as he
grew more animated he suddenly stopped, glanced at me, and
realised I wasn’t really getting it. He quickly turned back to
the road. “When you see my house, insha’Allah, you will know
what I mean,” he said, straightening his headscarf.
It is a difficult place to get, Mecca, considering that non-
Muslims are not allowed to enter it. Photography, as elsewhere
in Saudi Arabia, is also frowned upon. As you approach the city,

“The gigantic Royal Mecca Clock Tower has been the pivotal
development of the new millennium in Mecca. When it opens at
the end of this year it will be the tallest and largest hotel in the
world, topping out at 601 metres and quite literally eclipsing
every other luxury hotel in the holy city”

driving east fifty miles from the coastal city of Jeddah, you reach
a junction, known as the Christian Bypass. It has separate lanes
for Muslims and non-Muslims — the latter are taken on a detour
of the city and farther inland to the mountain retreat of Ta’if some
three hours away.
Still, Mecca isn’t short of visitors. There are 1.4billion
Muslims in the world today and those who are able-bodied and
can afford to travel are abliged to make the Hajj at least once
in their lives. Three million pilgrims now visit every year and
the city has become a proverbial cash cow for developers. Over
the last twenty years, luxury hotels, restaurants and facilities
have sprung up on the roads surrounding the Grand Mosque.
Starbucks and KFC outlets border Sheraton and Hilton hotels,
with rates rising every month.
But the gigantic Royal Mecca Clock Tower is the pivotal
development of the new millennium in Mecca. When it opens
at the end of this year it will be the tallest and largest hotel
in the world, topping out at 601 metres and quite literally
eclipsing every other luxury hotel in the Holy City. Service
will be seven star (naturally), providing wealthy pilgrims with
twenty-four-hour butler services, spas and banquets, while
the best suites directly overlook the Kaaba, towards which all
Muslims pray five times a day. The building will also house a
four-story shopping mall, two heliports, parking for a thousand
vehicles and a conference centre.
It was my comment about the project that got Ahmad riled
during the drive on that warm summer night in Jeddah. And as
he fired up the Internet connection to link us to Sami in Cairo,
I had the sense that he was indeed his father’s son. On the wall
above the sofa was a black and white framed photograph of
Mecca taken in the mid-twentieth century. There are no tower
blocks or fast-food outlets and the mosque is surrounded by
low-level traditional houses, much like those that can now be
seen in the Al Ballad district of Jeddah’s old town, close to the
city’s port.
The Angawi family home, where Ahmad lives with his
parents, has become a centre for Saudi Arabia’s limited arts,
music and social scene, and has hosted dignitaries from all over
the world, including two visits by former U.S. President Jimmy
Carter. At the time of my visit a European diplomat was being

78 esquire j a n u a r y 2011
 shown around by a well-spoken Saudi, who explained that
when Carter had visited they had to close the road outside.
As I left he gave me a copy of a poem, written by his eight-year-
old daughter, lamenting religious intolerance and violence in
surprisingly candid terms, and a CD of traditional chanting,
from the Hejaz region, where both Jeddah and Mecca are
located. Al Makkiyah, as the Angawi house is known, conforms
to few of the stereotypes I expected to find in Saudi Arabia.
As I sat on an plush sofa facing a brand new Mac, Sami
was talking about the clock tower from hundreds of miles
photos: Hasan Hatrash/ orlando crowcroft/ getty images
away through a flickering screen. Ahmad had been right in the
car — in such beautiful surroundings as these, it was easier to
understand objections to the development in Mecca. As well
as being culturally progressive, Al Makkiyah fuses traditional
architectural methods from Saudi’s western region, together
with modern attributes such as air-conditioning, double
glazing and structural concrete and steel. It’s as far from the
glitz and glam of today’s Mecca as one can get — glitz and glam
that Angawi and others argue has come at the expense of the
city’s historical heart.
“Would you allow that tower in Rome? Or in the middle
of London?” Sami said, as the picture faded in and out.
“Even if somebody now wanted to make Big Ben bigger,
you would have all Londoners objecting to it. We copy like
monkeys, bring our Big Ben tower to be the biggest tower in
the world, in Mecca. Of course that makes me angry.”
Angawi spent the best part of three decades researching
and documenting historical buildings in Mecca and Medina
after founding the Hajj Research Centre in 1971, but he admits
that much of this work has been fruitless. In 2006 the UK’s
Independent newspaper reported that there were fewer than
twenty structures remaining that date back to the time of the
Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) 1,400 years ago. Demolished
buildings include the house of Khadijah, the wife of the
Prophet, which made way for public toilets and the house of
Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s companion and first caliph, which is
now the site of a Hilton hotel.
Some would say it is not just about modernisation. There
is an argument to be made that Saudi Arabia’s strict brand
of Islam is responsible for the lax attitude that city planners
have adopted towards Mecca’s historical sites. Wahhabi Islam,
which developed from the eighteenth century Muslim thinker,
Mohammed Ibn Abd Al Wahhab, is strict in its condemnation
of shrines, or the worship of religious sites and idols.
Other strands of Islam, including the Saudi minority Shias
and Ismailis, who live in the far north east and south west
respectively, are well known for their reverence of religious
sites, particularly those associated with the Prophet Mohammed
(PBUH). But these views have been the minority ever since
1744 when Muhammad Ibn Saud pledged his support to
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s reformist project, enabling him to found
the First Saudi State –an alliance that holds fast to this day.
j a n u a r y 2 0 11 esquire 79
 Speaking in 2006, Irfan Ahmed al-Alawi, chairman of the
U.S.-based Islamic Heritage Foundation, said that because the
Wahhabis fear that places of historical or religious interest
could give rise to alternative forms of pilgrimage, they have
aimed to flatten all evidence of a past that does not agree with
their interpretation of Islam. The IHF published pictures five
years ago that showed the ruins of the grave of the Prophet’s
wife, destroyed in the 1950s, and the dynamiting of the
1,200-year old Al-Oraid Mosque, named after the Prophet’s
grandson who was buried there. Al-Alawi also told the
Independent that the case of the grave of Amina bint Wahb,
the mother of the Prophet, discovered in 1998, is typical
of what is happening in Mecca. “It was bulldozed in Abwa
and gasoline was poured onto it. Even though thousands of
petitions throughout the Muslim world were sent, nothing
could stop this action.”
But while Wahhabism doctrine helps explain the desire
to obliterate sites of historical importance, the financial
imperitative to modernise Mecca is still hugely significant.
Saudi Arabia’s government says revenue from tourism
will reach $17.6 billion this year and could double by 2015.
The number of pilgrims is also expected to rise from twelve
million to almost seventeen million by 2025.
In the short term this means tens of thousands of jobs in
a country with ten percent unemployment. But look further
ahead and a bigger picture emerges. Religious tourism is a
potentially vast industry that could help reduce the country’s
unsustainable dependence on oil receipts.
This helps explain why a rail line between Mecca and
Medina is under construction, with plans to link the Holy
City to a network eventually covering the entire country —
and one day join with similar projects in the UAE. It will
be backed up by an expansion of both Jeddah and Medina
airports, with the former due to expand its capacity from
thirty to eighty million by 2012. Reda was born in Mecca, but lives and works in Jeddah,
It is also fair to say that Mecca is not alone in seeing its where he runs a small architecture practice. He was one of
heritage eroded for the sake of bigger profits. Cairo has seen those who wrote to me during an email exchange called
vast swathes of the historical area around the Pyramids of “Voice from the Eastern Shore”, which was provoked by a
Giza destroyed or “modernised”, while areas of the city’s piece I had written for Middle East Architect [published by
Islamic quarter have also fallen into disrepair. Equally, ITP Business] criticising the Royal Mecca Clock Tower.
numerous other Gulf cities — Dubai, Manama and Doha Over the following few days the replies came in droves, each
among them — have suffered a similar fate. raising new points about the recent development, and written
Some of the developments in and around the Grand Mosque by a broad cross-section of of writers, artists and architects.
have been welcomed — especially given the increased numbers I was surprised to see such a debate, particularly about a
and the ongoing threat of stampedes, traffic accidents and subject as contentious as Mecca, so I contacted some of the
general overcrowding. But critics such as Angawi say this is writers to find out more about their thinking. A few weeks
happening at the expense of the city’s cultural identity and later, when Reda had the opportunity to travel to Dubai for
something precious is being lost along the way. a dental conference (his wife is a dentist), he suggested we
“They have proven everywhere else in the world that the meet in person to talk.
most valuable parts of the city are the old parts, so there must He speaks like an architect, unsurprisingly, but for Reda
be something wrong – either with that experience or with there is something personal in his criticisms of the kind of
our thinking,” he told me. development that is taking place. As someone who is used to
looking at the minutiae of design, the profitability of projects

R
and the organisation of urban hubs, he is all the more keen to
eda Sijini is sitting in the stress that Mecca is different to cities elsewhere in
lobby of Dubai’s Al-Qasr the world.
Hotel when I arrive to meet him. “We have been both arrogant and naïve in
He is casually dressed and as he rises to thinking it would be acceptable to apply in Mecca,
greet me I am conscious of two young which is a sanctuary, that which is applicable in
children hovering a few metres away, pointing and other urban centres,” he explains.
giggling. “They’re waiting to go to the water park,”
he says, as if reading my mind. His wife appears, Mecca-born architectReda Sijini is concerned about the
preservation of the Holy City. “Mecca — a city which has
smiles and waves at us, and then hustles the kids witnessed all these droves of pilgrims throughout the centuries
into a cab. — is the way it is for a reason.”

80 esquire j a n u a r y 2011

“Demolished buildings in Mecca include the house of Khadijah,
the wife of the Prophet [PBUH], which made way for public toilets
and the house of Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s companion and first
caliph, which is now the site of a Hilton hotel”
“To assume that economic models, urban planning and
infrastructural design methods that have been successful
elsewhere would simply work, without highlighting the
uniqueness of Mecca and the Hajj, is not just ignorant,
it’s reckless.”
He pauses to take a sip of his coffee, and then looks across
the table. Unlike many of the pilgrims that travel to the Holy
City once or twice in their lives, Mecca is the city of his birth,
his home, and it is changing fast.
“The aura of sanctity evaporates once you enter on the
congested highway, with its exhaust fumes,” he explains.
“All this amidst overbearing stacks of concrete with cheap
marble and granite cladding.”
Lastly, Reda adds, the Hajj itself cannot be boiled down to
a tick-list of activities sandwiched in between luxury meals.
“The Hajj is not only about a set of rituals to be carried out
in a pre-ordained period of time. It is a spiritual journey
connected with the location and its sense of place,” he says.
“The geography and the topography of Mecca — a city which
has witnessed all these droves of pilgrims throughout the
centuries — is the way it is for a reason.”
Given the growing number of visitors, few would deny the
necessity for making the city more user-friendly. However
Reda thinks the Hajj Research Centre findings showed that
knocking down swathes of the city is not the only way to
modernise Mecca.
“They have constantly shown that the solution to large
problems need not be only via major construction
interventions, but could also be achieved through simple
schemes that tackle the smaller details,” he says.
The broader point, as the people who replied to the
“Voice from the Eastern Shore” email pointed out, is that
Saudi Arabia is in danger of letting one of its greatest
assets suffer. While Mecca is undoubtedly of commercial
importance to the Saudi government, it needs to be treated
sensitively — something that has been lacking so far.
“There are monuments of far lesser importance around
the world that have been treated with much more sanctity,
sensitivity and respect than we’re treating the Haram
[Grand Mosque],” one person tells me anonymously via
email. “In my mind this Clock Tower is tantamount to
criminal negligence.”
This kind of backlash, albeit limited, is surprising
given the fear among many Saudis of speaking critically
about their government. This is all the more pronounced
when discussing Mecca, ownership and control of which
is integral to the legitimacy of the Saudi state. (King
Abdullah’s full title is “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques
King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz”, meaning those in Mecca
and Medina.) That said, many of those who live on Saudi
Arabia’s west coast feel that the time has come to speak out
and the Internet has given them the opportunity to do so.
“The erection of high-rise commercial structures at the
footsteps of the Haram, as well as the destruction of the
surrounding hills to create such developments, is in serious
conflict with this fundamental concept. This opportunistic
tendency must be halted immediately,” says Hisham
Malaika, a Jeddah-based architect. “The relevant authorities
should treat developments surrounding the Mecca Haram
and its vicinity with the caution attributed to world heritage
sites — even if it isn’t yet designated as such officially.”
S
ami Angawi, for his part, is not
holding out much hope for the city
of his birth. As the dilapidated merchant
houses of Jeddah’s Al Ballad district show, historic
buildings continue to suffer as Saudi Arabia
presses forward on its march into the twenty-first century.
Whether it is for ideological or commercial reasons — or
both — the situation looks like it will get worse before it gets
better.
He doesn’t say it, but the sound of defeat in his voice
gives you the feeling that for Sami, the Clock Tower was the
final straw. “All we are showing to God and to the people
who come in the future is that we have money, and we will
spend it,” Sami said, sadness now more prevalent than anger.
“We could have used at least part of our money to
do something for the world — to serve humanity, not
only ourselves. How are we advancing humanity with
what we are doing in the Middle East?”
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