رجل مسن ظهر في المسجد النبوي .. وكأنه من زمن غير زمننا

 The Great Mosque of Mecca, also known as the Holy Mosque or the Haram Mosque, is a mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, that was constructed to enclose the Kabah, Islam's holiest shrine. It is also known as al-Masjid al-arm. It receives millions of worshippers annually because it is one of the destinations of the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages. The modern structure's earliest components date back to the 16th century.

Numerous pilgrimage ceremonies take place at the mosque, which has a rectangular central courtyard surrounded by covered prayer areas. Travelers utilize the yard to play out the custom circumambulation of the Kaʿbah, known as the ṭawāf. The courtyard contains two additional sacred locations: the place where Abraham stood (Arabic: maqām Ibrāhīm), a stone which Islamic custom partners with the Qurʾānic record of the modifying of the Kaʿbah by Abraham and Ismāʿīl (Ishmael), and the Zamzam well, a sacrosanct spring. Quickly toward the east and north of the patio are al-Ṣafā and al-Marwah, two little slopes which travelers should run or stroll between in a custom known as the saʿy. The mosque received an enclosed passageway between the two hills in the 20th century.

The building of today is the result of centuries of progress. The Kabah was a shrine for Arab polytheists in the pre-Islamic era. Worshippers gathered there to pray and perform rituals. The first Muslims to follow the Prophet held the Ka'bah in high esteem as well. Muslims briefly prayed in the direction of Jerusalem until a Qur'anic revelation designated the Ka'bah as the qiblah, or direction of prayer, following their emigration to Medina in 622 CE (the Hijrah). In 630, when Muhammad came back to Mecca, he ordered the shrine's idols to be destroyed to get rid of any traces of polytheism.

A wall around the Kabah that was constructed in 638 by the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khab, was the first Muslim structure on the site. Columns, partial ceilings, and other decorative embellishments were added by subsequent caliphs. The Abbasid caliph al-Mahd (775–785) undertook a more extensive renovation of the building, moving the outer walls so that the Kabah stood in the center of the courtyard. After being destroyed by fire and flooding at the beginning of the 14th century, the mosque was rebuilt once more. In 1571, the Ottoman sultan Selim II instructed the court architect Sinan to carry out a second round of renovations on the mosque. Small domes took the place of the flat roof by Sinan. The modern structure's oldest remaining components are the Ottoman additions.

Throughout the 20th century, the mosque underwent a series of modernization and expansions. During the time of Usayn ibn Al, king of Hejaz from 1916 to 24, the first electric lighting system was installed. Usayn ibn Al was emir of Mecca from 1908 to 1916. In 1948, the mosque used an electric public address system for the first time. In the second half of the 20th century, when the rise of commercial air travel led to an increase in the number of pilgrims traveling to Mecca and Saudi Arabia's new oil wealth enabled its rulers to fund massive construction projects, the mosque underwent the most significant transformations. During King Saud's reign, the first Saudi expansion of the mosque began in 1955. The extension, finished in 1973, added new development around the Ottoman mosque, growing the all out region of the construction from around 290,000 square feet (27,000 square meters) to around 1,630,000 square feet (152,000 square meters) and expanding its most extreme ability to 500,000. The mosque's structure included an expanded and incorporated passageway connecting al-af and al-Marwah.

In order to accommodate the growing number of hajj pilgrims, which reached more than one million annually in the 1980s, King Fahd ordered a second expansion of the mosque in 1984. Structures around the mosque were wrecked to account for the extension and the development of a wide cleared region around the mosque. The building was outfitted with escalators and pedestrian tunnels and passageways to reduce traffic during the hajj. A cutting edge correspondences framework and a high level indoor and open air cooling framework were likewise built. After the expansion, the mosque had around 3,840,000 square feet (356,800 square meters) and held up to 820,000 admirers.