The series
Masjid al-Haram, the building that cannot stop
It is the one building in the world whose centre cannot move, around which millions of people must circle, whose numbers keep growing, and which cannot close for works. Fourteen centuries of technical answers to a constraint that never changes.
What this series is about
It does not tell the story of a monument, it follows a problem. As early as 638 the circling crowd spills into the neighbouring houses, and the answer is already the one used today: buy, demolish, push the boundary out. What changes across the centuries is the scale and the price. The method does not, because the constraint does not either.
The constraint is religious, the answer is technical. We deal with the second and never settle the first.
Where the Series series covers the direction and its geometry, this one covers the enclosure and its engineering. For general facts about the building, see its page in our selection.
They had to demolish a neighbourhood
In 638 there is no mosque in Mecca. What triggers its construction is not prestige but the fact that the circling crowd spills into the neighbouring houses.
The fire was put out by a flood
In 1399 a fire takes a third of the sanctuary. A flood puts it out, bringing down more porticoes on its way. From that night follows the reason the building's oldest stone is only 450 years old.
The Kaaba you see was rebuilt after a flood
Mecca lies in a valley and the sanctuary at its lowest point. In April 1630 a flood brought down walls of the Kaaba. The building we see today is the one raised again afterwards.
Chapters to come
The series is open-ended. Chapters appear as they are verified.
- The stone taken for more than twenty years, and the mount that is a repair
- The kiswa, remade in full every year
- The throughput problem
- The solution: stacking the levels
- The building site that never interrupts the prayer
- Zamzam: the wellhead removed to clear the way
- The Maqam Ibrahim (peace be upon him): the structure shrunk to widen the circuit