MECCA, Saudi Arabia - As a child, Osama al-Bar would walk from his home past Islam's holiest site, the Kaaba, to the market of spice and fabric merchants where his father owned a store. At that time, ...

MECCA, Saudi Arabia — For Zainab Abdu, the holiest sites in Islam were the backdrop for her weekends growing up. Raised in Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, Abdu remembers roller skating with friends near the ...

The week of Easter, in 2007, I was waiting in line to get into St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, when suddenly Pope Benedict XVI burst through the front doors to greet the crowd. The gathered ...

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - The annual haj pilgrimage began in Mecca on Monday when hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims put on white clothes, packed their bags and left for a tented ...

Mecca, Islam's holiest city, is the world's hottest city. It is the warmest inhabited place on earth, with an average annual temperature of 87.3 degrees Fahrenheit. In summer, temperatures can reach ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Muslim pilgrims ...

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - About 1 million Muslim pilgrims from across the world packed the mosque and streets around the Kaaba shrine in the holy city of Mecca for the last Friday prayers before ...

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Cairo: Authorities in the Saudi holy city of Mecca have launched the first edition of a map designed to help visitors explore the city’s historical sites more easily. The "Discover Mecca" map, ...