Al-Masjid al-Haram

Al-Masjid al-Haram is a mosque in the city of Mecca. A mosque is a building where Muslims pray.

In the middle is an open courtyard. In the courtyard stands the Kaaba, a building shaped like a big box. For most of the year, it is covered with a black cloth.

Al-Masjid al-Haram, also called the Great Mosque of Mecca, is in Mecca, a city in western Saudi Arabia. The mosque was built around the Kaaba, a cube-shaped building in the middle of a large courtyard. Muslims everywhere face toward the Kaaba during their five daily prayers.

Each year, millions of Muslims travel here on pilgrimage, a special journey made for religious reasons. One of them is the hajj: in 2026, 1,707,301 pilgrims took part. Covered prayer halls surround the courtyard, and the mosque can hold up to about one million worshippers.

The Great Mosque of Mecca, or Masjid al-Haram, was built to enclose the Kaaba, which Muslims regard as the most sacred spot on Earth and toward which they orient their five daily prayers. Its plan is a rectangular central courtyard surrounded by covered prayer areas; the courtyard is where pilgrims perform the tawaf, walking around the Kaaba.

As a destination of both the hajj and the umrah pilgrimages, it receives millions of worshippers a year. Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Statistics counted 1,707,301 hajj pilgrims in 2026, of whom 1,546,655 came from outside the country. The oldest parts of the present structure date from the 16th century, and Britannica puts its capacity today at up to one million worshippers.

The Kaaba is about 15 meters tall. It is made of gray stone and marble.

For most of the year, a huge black cloth covers it. The cloth has gold writing on it. Every year, it gets a brand new cloth.

Kaaba means "cube" in Arabic. It is about 15 meters high and about 10 by 12 meters at its base, built of gray stone and marble. Its corners point roughly north, south, east and west. Inside, there are just three pillars holding up the roof, and hanging silver and gold lamps.

For most of the year, the Kaaba is covered by the kiswah, an enormous cloth of black brocade, a heavy fabric with a woven pattern. A new kiswah is put on every year. Since 2022 this has happened on the first day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic year.

The Kaaba (Arabic ka'bah, "cube") is roughly 15 m high and 10 by 12 m at the base, of gray stone and marble, with its corners oriented roughly to the points of the compass. Its interior holds only the three pillars supporting the roof and suspended silver and gold lamps. In its eastern corner is set the Black Stone, now in broken pieces held by a ring of stone and a heavy silver band.

The kiswah, a vast cloth of black brocade, covers the Kaaba for most of the year and is replaced annually, since 2022 on the first day of Muharram. A ceremonial washing with perfume and water from the nearby Zamzam well takes place in the same month, in recent times led by a representative of the Saudi government. Britannica notes that the Kaaba itself has been damaged and rebuilt several times over its history.