20 November – 4 December 1979

The seizure of the Grand Mosque

Hundreds of armed militants led by Juhayman al-Otaybi seize the Grand Mosque in Mecca and proclaim a messiah; the state retakes it after two weeks of fighting, then hands the clergy more power over society.

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine — Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday (2007)
Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 — Thomas Hegghammer, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia — Stéphane Lacroix, Harvard University Press (2011)
A History of Saudi Arabia (2nd edition) — Madawi Al-Rasheed, Cambridge University Press (2010)

Debated by historians religionterrorismpoliticssecurity

At dawn on 20 November 1979, the first day of the Islamic year 1400, tens of thousands of worshippers were at prayer in the Grand Mosque in Mecca. As the prayer ended, gunmen who had smuggled weapons in coffins and hidden them in the mosque’s basements seized the microphone and locked the gates. Their leader, Juhayman al-Otaybi, a former National Guard corporal from a Najdi tribal family once prominent among the Ikhwan, announced that his brother-in-law, Muhammad Abdullah al-Qahtani, was the Mahdi, the redeemer expected at the end of time.

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine — Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday (2007)
Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 — Thomas Hegghammer, Cambridge University Press (2010)

Who they were

Juhayman’s group had grown out of a pietist movement in Medina. They accused the Saudi royal family of corruption, of selling out to Western unbelievers and of letting television, football and women’s images corrupt the faith. Their rhetoric echoed the Ikhwan who had fought Abdulaziz half a century earlier. Most were Saudis, with followers from Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen and elsewhere.

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine — Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday (2007)
Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 — Thomas Hegghammer, Cambridge University Press (2010)

The siege

Most hostages were released or escaped in the early hours, but the militants, several hundred strong, held out in the minarets and the warren of basements. Saudi forces could not fight inside the sanctuary without religious sanction; the senior clergy issued a fatwa permitting it. Repeated assaults failed with heavy losses. The alleged Mahdi was killed in the fighting. In the final phase, with advice from a small team of French special forces officers, Saudi troops used gas and explosives to clear the underground chambers, and on 4 December the last militants, including Juhayman, surrendered.

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine — Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday (2007)
A History of Saudi Arabia (2nd edition) — Madawi Al-Rasheed, Cambridge University Press (2010)

Official figures put the dead at 127 members of the security forces, 26 civilians and 117 militants; independent estimates are higher, and Yaroslav Trofimov argues the true toll ran far beyond the official count.

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine — Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday (2007)

On 9 January 1980 Juhayman and dozens of his followers were publicly beheaded in cities across the kingdom.

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine — Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday (2007)
Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 — Thomas Hegghammer, Cambridge University Press (2010)

Shock waves abroad

Rumours spread that the United States and Israel were behind the attack. On 21 November a mob burned the US embassy in Islamabad, and attacks on American missions followed elsewhere. The same year saw the Iranian revolution, a Shia uprising in the Saudi Eastern Province, and in December the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine — Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday (2007)
Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 — Thomas Hegghammer, Cambridge University Press (2010)

The aftermath

The rulers concluded that their legitimacy depended on showing themselves more pious than their critics. Women presenters disappeared from television, cinemas stayed closed, the religious police gained power, and the religious establishment received more money and more control over education. The state also funded mosques, schools and preachers abroad and backed the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, where a generation of Saudi volunteers, among them Osama bin Laden, were radicalised.

Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia — Stéphane Lacroix, Harvard University Press (2011)
Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 — Thomas Hegghammer, Cambridge University Press (2010)
A History of Saudi Arabia (2nd edition) — Madawi Al-Rasheed, Cambridge University Press (2010)

For Saudis who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, the strict, segregated society that followed simply was Saudi Arabia, until the reforms of the late 2010s began to dismantle it.

How it's seen

Today's official and reformist view

Juhayman's band were extremists who desecrated the holiest place in Islam. The real damage came afterwards, when the shock of 1979, together with Iran's revolution, led the state to let ultra- conservatives shape schools, media and public life for a generation. Saudi Arabia is now "returning to moderate Islam".

MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine — Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday (2007)

Historians

Many historians agree the siege pushed the rulers towards the clergy, but caution against making 1979 the only turning point: social conservatism, the Islamic "Awakening" (Sahwa) and religious funding abroad all had longer roots in the 1960s and 1970s, and the oil boom and the Afghan jihad mattered too. The full death toll remains unclear because the government released only limited information.

Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia — Stéphane Lacroix, Harvard University Press (2011)
Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 — Thomas Hegghammer, Cambridge University Press (2010)
A History of Saudi Arabia (2nd edition) — Madawi Al-Rasheed, Cambridge University Press (2010)
The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine — Yaroslav Trofimov, Doubleday (2007)

Why it matters today

Saudi Arabia

Many Saudis, including the crown prince, now describe 1979 as the year the country took a wrong turn: to placate religious hardliners after the siege, the state imposed decades of strict social rules and religious influence. Vision 2030's reforms are often presented as a return to the more relaxed Saudi Arabia that came before.