Jeddah
Jeddah lies on the Red Sea coast in the Hijaz region of Saudi Arabia. It serves as a governorate, is the largest city in Mecca Province, and, after the capital, Riyadh, ranks as the country's second-largest city. 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 Hejaz, 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.
Jeddah is the principal gateway to Mecca Sharif, the holiest city in Islam, to the east, while Medina, the second-holiest city, is to the north. Economically, Jeddah is focusing on further developing capital investment in scientific and engineering leadership within Saudi Arabia, and the Middle East. Jeddah was ranked fourth in the Africa, MiddIe East, and 'stan countries region in the Innovation Cities Index in 2009.
Jeddah is one of Saudi Arabia's primary resort cities and was named a Beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Given the city's close proximity to the Red Sea, fishing and seafood dominate the food culture unlike other parts of the country. In Arabic, the city motto is "Jeddah Ghair", which translates to "Jeddah is different".
Etymology and spelling
There are at least two etymologies of Jeddah, according to Jeddah Ibn Al-Qudaa'iy, the chief of the Quda'a clan. The more common account has it that the name is derived from جدة Jaddah, the Arabic word for "grandmother". According to folk belief, the Tomb of Eve, who is considered the grandmother of humanity, is located in Jeddah.The Maghrebi traveler Ibn Battuta visited Jeddah during his world trip in around 1330. He wrote the name of the city into his diary as "Jiddah".
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other branches of the British government formerly used the older spelling of "Jedda", contrary to other English-speaking usages, but in 2007, it changed to the spelling "Jeddah".
T. E. Lawrence felt that any transcription of Arabic names into English was arbitrary. In his book Revolt in the Desert, Jeddah is spelled in three different ways on the first page alone.
On official Saudi maps and documents, the city name is transcribed "Jeddah", which is now the prevailing usage.
History
Pre-Islam
Traces of early activity in the area are testified by some Thamudic inscriptions that were excavated in Wadi Briman, east of the city, and Wadi Boweb, northwest of the city. The oldest Mashrabiya found in Jeddah dates back to the pre-Islamic era.Some believe that Jeddah had been inhabited before Alexander the Great, who had a naval expedition to the Red Sea, by fishermen in the Red Sea, who considered it a center from which they sailed out into the sea as well as a place for relaxation and well-being. According to the Ministry of Hajj, Jeddah has been settled for more than 2500 years.
Excavations in the old city have been interpreted to give the fact that Jeddah was founded as a fishing hamlet by the Yemeni Quda'a tribe, who left to settle in Makkah after the collapse of Marib Dam in Yemen in 115 BC.
Under the Caliphates
Jeddah first achieved prominence around A.D. 647, when the third Muslim Caliph, Uthman Ibn Affan, turned it into a port making it the port of Makkah instead of Al Shoaib port, which was southwest of Makkah.The Umayyads inherited the entire Rashidun Caliphate including Hejaz and ruled from 661 to 750. In 702, Jeddah was briefly occupied by pirates from the Kingdom of Axum. However, Jeddah remained a key civilian harbor, serving fishermen and pilgrims travelling by sea for the Hajj. It is also believed that the Sharifdom of Makkah, an honorary Viceroy to the holy land, was first started in this period of the Islamic Caliphate. Jeddah has been established as the main city of the historic Hijaz province and a historic port for pilgrims arriving by sea to perform their Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca.
In 750 in the Abbasid Revolution, the Abbasids successfully took control of almost the whole Umayyad Empire, excluding Morocco and Spain. From 876, Jeddah and the surrounding area became the object of wars between the Abbasids and the Tulunids of Egypt, who at one point gained control of the emirates of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Hejaz. The power struggle between the Tulunid Governors and the Abbasids over Hejaz lasted for nearly twenty-five years, until the Tulunids finally withdrew from Arabia in 900.
In 930 AD, the main Hejazi cities of Medina, Mecca and Taif were heavily sacked by the Qarmatians. It is probable, though not historically confirmed, that Jeddah itself was attacked.
Soon after, in early 935, the Ikhshidids, the new power in Egypt, took control of the Hejaz region. There are no historical records that detail the Ikhshidid rule of Hejaz. At this point in time, Jeddah was still unfortified and without walls.
The Fatimids, Ayyubids, and Mamluks
In 969 AD, the Fatimids from Algeria took control in Egypt from the Ikhshidid Governors of Abbasids and expanded their empire to the surrounding regions, including The Hijaz and Jeddah. The Fatimids developed an extensive trade network in both the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea. Their trade and diplomatic ties extended all the way to China and its Song dynasty, which eventually determined the economic course of Tihamah during the High Middle Ages.After Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem in 1171, he proclaimed himself sultan of Egypt, after dissolving the Fatimid Caliphate upon the death of al-Adid, thus establishing the Ayyubid dynasty. Ayyubid conquests in Hejaz included Jeddah, which joined the Ayyubid dynasty in 1177 during the leadership of Sharif Ibn Abul-Hashim Al-Thalab. During their relatively short-lived tenure, the Ayyubids ushered in an era of economic prosperity in the lands they ruled and the facilities and patronage provided by the Ayyubids led to a resurgence in intellectual activity in the Islamic world. This period was also marked by an Ayyubid process of vigorously strengthening Sunni dominance in the region by constructing numerous madrasas in their major cities. Jeddah attracted Muslim sailors and merchants from Sindh, Southeast Asia and East Africa, and other distant regions.
In the year 1258, after the fall of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire, to the Mongols, Hejaz became a part of the Mamluk Sultanate.
The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, having found his way around the Cape and obtaining pilots from the coast of Zanzibar in AD 1497, pushed his way across the Indian Ocean to the shores of Malabar and Calicut, attacked fleets that carried freight and Muslim pilgrims from India to the Red Sea, and struck terror into the surrounding potentates. The Princes of Gujarat and Yemen turned for help to Egypt. Sultan Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri accordingly fitted out a fleet of 50 vessels under the Governor of Jeddah, Hussein the Kurd. Jeddah was soon fortified with a wall, using forced labor, as a harbor of refuge from the Portuguese, allowing Arabia and the Red Sea to be protected.
Ottoman Empire
In 1517, the Ottoman Turks conquered the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt and Syria, during the reign of Selim I.The Ottomans rebuilt the weak walls of Jeddah in 1525 following the defense of the city against the Lopo Soares de Albergaria's Armada at the Siege of Jeddah. The new stone wall included six watchtowers and six city gates. They were constructed to defend against the Portuguese attack. Of the six gates, the Gate of Mecca was the eastern gate and the Gate of Al-Magharibah, facing the port, was the western gate. The Gate of Sharif faces south. The other gates were the Gate of Al-Bunt, Gate of Al-Sham, and Gate of Medina, facing north. The Turks also built The Qishla of Jeddah, a small castle for the city's soldiers. In the 19th century, these seven gates were minimized into four giant gates with four towers. These giant gates were the Gate of Sham to the north, the Gate of Mecca to the east, the Gate of Sharif to the south, and the Gate of Al-Magharibah on the seaside.
Jeddah became a direct Ottoman Eyalet, while the remaining Hejaz under Sharif Barakat II became a vassal state to the Ottoman Empire eight years after the Siege of Jeddah in 1517. The Portuguese attempted to attack the port again in 1541, but were repelled.
Parts of the city wall still survive today in the old city. Even though the Portuguese were successfully repelled from the city, fleets in the Indian Ocean were at their mercy. This was evidenced by the Battle of Diu. The Portuguese soldiers' cemetery can still be found within the old city today and is referred to as the site of the Christian Graves.
Ahmed Al-Jazzar, the Ottoman military man mainly known for his role in the Siege of Acre, spent the earlier part of his career at Jeddah. In Jeddah in 1750, he killed some seventy rioting nomads in retaliation for the killing of his commander, Abdullah Beg, earning him the nickname "Jezzar".
On 15 June 1858, rioting in the city, believed to have been instigated by a former police chief in reaction to British policy in the Red Sea, led to the massacre of 25 Christians, including the British and French consuls, members of their families, and wealthy Greek merchants. The British frigate, anchored at the port, bombarded the city for two days in retaliation.